The Sex Was Absolutely Divine

And now a section I have never heard a sermon on. Genesis 6:1-4

When men began to increase on earth and daughters were born to them, the divine beings saw how beautiful the daughters of men were and took wives from among those that pleased them. The LORD said, “My breath shall not abide in man forever, since he too is flesh; let the days allowed him be one hundred and twenty years.” It was then, and later too, that the Nephilim appeared on earth-when the divine beings cohabited with the daughters of men, who bore them offspring. They were the heroes of old, the men of renown.

That is from the Jewish Publication Society, Tanakh Translation. The NIV calls them the sons of God. I call it interesting either way.

Were angels/divine beings/sons of God coming ‘down’ to be with earth girls?

The scriptures say this led to the shortening of man’s lifetime to 120 years. Except it didn’t. Not immediately anyway. Noah lived 950 years. His son Shem lived 500 years. Shem’s son lived 403 years and on and on until just before the birth of Abraham’s father, Terah, who lived 119 years.

The passage could be out of chronological order and the event could have occurred about the time of Terah.

So who were the sons of God? I guess when a preacher is going on about Jesus being the only son of God, you can say, no, he had many and they used to have sex with women. I’m sure that wouldn’t go over well.

I recently read one fellow talking about this. He believes the sons of God were the folks from the line of Seth, the Sethites. He says that they were faithful and followed God, they were the ones this refers to. But then shouldn’t they had sought after the daughters of God. Were they not doing that and this is why God shut down the number of years for their life?

The people who say no, they were just angels are quick to point out that they were fallen angels. Good angels don’t have sex, I guess.

Or it is simply a tale or legend to describe the origin of a group of people (the Nephilim) the Hebrews believed existed.

~ by bart on January 12, 2008.