Genesis 6:2-4 and Jude 6-7 describe angelic beings (the 'sons of God') having sex with human women and producing Nephilim. Genesis 19 has the Sodomites attempting to rape two angelic visitors. Mark 12:25 then has Jesus saying angels in heaven neither marry nor are given in marriage. The Bible's angelic sexuality is inconsistent — actively horny in Genesis and Jude, genderless in the Synoptics.
Proposed answers
People have answered this in several ways; GEBible presents them as equal peers.
Yes, angels (sons of God) love to have sex with the daughters of men
The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they
took them wives of all which they chose. ... The sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and
they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. --
Genesis 6:2, 4
And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation ...
giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh....
Jude 6-7
2God’s sons saw that men’s daughters were beautiful, and they took any that they wanted for themselves as wives.4The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when God’s sons came in to men’s daughters and had children with them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.
This passage isn’t available in the reading corpus yet.
And some men find angels sexually irresistible.
And there came two angels to Sodom. ... And they turned in unto him, and entered
into his house. ... The men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young,
all the people from every quarter: And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men
which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them. --
Genesis 19:1-4
1The two angels came to Sodom at evening. Lot sat in the gate of Sodom. Lot saw them, and rose up to meet them. He bowed himself with his face to the earth,2and he said, “See now, my lords, please come into your servant’s house, stay all night, wash your feet, and you can rise up early, and go on your way.” They said, “No, but we will stay in the street all night.”3He urged them greatly, and they came in with him, and entered into his house. He made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.4But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house, both young and old, all the people from every quarter.
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement— a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Widely regarded as a genuine contradiction
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
The entry juxtaposes three data points. Genesis 6:1-4 and Jude 6-7 describe divine beings ('sons of God,' angels) producing offspring with human women; Genesis 19 has the men of Sodom seeking to 'know' (Hebrew yada) two angelic visitors; and Mark 12:25 has Jesus declare that the resurrected 'neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels in heaven.' The question at issue is whether angelic beings are sexual creatures, and the texts pull in opposite directions.
Apologists pursue two non-angelic harmonizations of Genesis 6, and a steel-man must engage the strongest forms of each. The weaker is the Sethite reading: the bene ha-elohim of Genesis 6:2 are the godly line of Seth and the 'daughters of men' are wicked Cainite women, making 6:1-4 a story of compromised intermarriage between covenant and pagan lines. Gleason Archer and, with qualifications, Victor Hamilton entertain versions of this. A stronger contemporary alternative is the dynastic or divine-king interpretation, defended in detail by Meredith Kline ('Divine Kingship and Genesis 6:1-4,' WTJ 24 [1962]: 187-204), which takes bene ha-elohim as royal figures — ancient Near Eastern kings styled 'sons of the god' — exercising the despotic polygamy and droit du seigneur the narrative implicitly condemns. This reading draws genuine support from the immediate context: Genesis 6:3, wedged between the union and the Nephilim notice, restricts the lifespan of man ('his days shall be an hundred and twenty years'), focusing the divine response on human flesh and human transgression rather than on a celestial revolt. On this view the offspring are gibborim, 'mighty men,' heroic human despots, not hybrids. The second harmonization concerns the scope of Mark 12:25: Jesus speaks of angels 'in heaven,' arguably leaving open that fallen angels who 'kept not their first estate' (Jude 6) might behave otherwise.
These are the strongest forms of the case, and the contextual argument from 6:3 has real purchase. Yet the angelic reading better fits both the phrase and, decisively, its reception. Bene ha-elohim elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible denotes divine-council members (Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7; the cognate bene elim in Ps 29:1; 89:6), never a human lineage as such; Michael Heiser's treatment of the divine council marshals this lexical evidence. More telling is the unanimous early reception. The Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 6-16) develops the episode at length — angels under Shemihazah and Asael descend, take wives, and beget the giant Nephilim — and Jubilees 5, the Damascus Document (CD 2:17-19), Josephus (Antiquities 1.73, where the 'angels of God' beget sons), and Philo all assume the angelic reading. Loren Stuckenbruck's The Myth of Rebellious Angels and James VanderKam's Enoch document this as the dominant Second Temple interpretation; Archie Wright's The Origin of Evil Spirits traces the reception in granular detail. The New Testament authors stand squarely inside that tradition: Jude 6-7 brackets the angels 'who kept not their first estate' with Sodom and Gomorrah, which 'in like manner' gave themselves to fornication and went after 'strange flesh' (Greek sarkos heteras, 'other/different flesh') — language presupposing the angel-human crossing — and Jude 14-15 quotes 1 Enoch 1:9 directly as prophecy; 2 Peter 2:4 echoes the same tradition, casting the offending angels into tartaros. Richard Bauckham's commentary on Jude makes the dependence explicit. The Sethite reading proper surfaces only in the third and fourth centuries (Julius Africanus floats it; Augustine, City of God 15.23, promotes it), largely from theological discomfort with copulating angels once a more transcendent angelology had taken hold.
That history undercuts the harmonization for the texts that matter most. The biblical writers behind Genesis 6 and behind Jude/2 Peter held that a class of divine beings interacted sexually with humans. Genesis 19 is a weaker leg of the contradiction: the visitors are malakim (messengers/angels), but the Sodomites' intent presumably targets beings they take for human men, so the episode speaks more to human predation than to angelic sexuality per se. Genesis 6 and Jude carry the weight. Against them, the Synoptic Jesus deploys angelic asexuality as the very premise that defeats the Sadducees' levirate puzzle (Mark 12:25); the 'in heaven' qualifier does not rescue the harmonization, because the rhetorical force of the argument requires that angels by kind do not reproduce. The dynastic reading, even at its strongest, must overturn the Second Temple consensus that the biblical authors themselves shared.
Where the critical reading lands: genuine contradiction — the angelic sexuality of Genesis 6 and Jude reflects the Watchers tradition the biblical writers held, against which the Synoptic Jesus treats angels as categorically asexual; both the Sethite and the stronger dynastic harmonizations require setting aside the reading the New Testament authors themselves endorsed.
Sources for this reading
Loren T. Stuckenbruck, The Myth of Rebellious Angels: Studies in Second Temple Judaism and New Testament Texts (WUNT 335; Mohr Siebeck, 2014) pp. 1-61on Gen 6 and the WatchersGenesis 6
James C. VanderKam, Enoch: A Man for All Generations (University of South Carolina Press, 1995) on 1 Enoch 6-11 and the Watchers tradition
Archie T. Wright, The Origin of Evil Spirits: The Reception of Genesis 6.1-4 in Early Jewish Literature (WUNT 2/198; Mohr Siebeck, 2005) pp. 79-138on Gen 6:1-4 receptionGenesis 6:1-4
Richard J. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter (Word Biblical Commentary 50; Word, 1983) pp. 50-55on Jude 6-7 and 'strange flesh.'Jude 6-7
Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible (Lexham, 2015) pp. 92-109on the sons of God as divine beings
Meredith G. Kline, "Divine Kingship and Genesis 6:1-4," Westminster Theological Journal 24 (1962) : 187-204, on the royal interpretation
Examining the tension
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement — a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Widely regarded as a genuine contradiction
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
The entry juxtaposes three data points. Genesis 6:1-4 and Jude 6-7 describe divine beings ('sons of God,' angels) producing offspring with human women; Genesis 19 has the men of Sodom seeking to 'know' (Hebrew yada) two angelic visitors; and Mark 12:25 has Jesus declare that the resurrected 'neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels in heaven.' The question at issue is whether angelic beings are sexual creatures, and the texts pull in opposite directions.
Apologists pursue two non-angelic harmonizations of Genesis 6, and a steel-man must engage the strongest forms of each. The weaker is the Sethite reading: the bene ha-elohim of Genesis 6:2 are the godly line of Seth and the 'daughters of men' are wicked Cainite women, making 6:1-4 a story of compromised intermarriage between covenant and pagan lines. Gleason Archer and, with qualifications, Victor Hamilton entertain versions of this. A stronger contemporary alternative is the dynastic or divine-king interpretation, defended in detail by Meredith Kline ('Divine Kingship and Genesis 6:1-4,' WTJ 24 [1962]: 187-204), which takes bene ha-elohim as royal figures — ancient Near Eastern kings styled 'sons of the god' — exercising the despotic polygamy and droit du seigneur the narrative implicitly condemns. This reading draws genuine support from the immediate context: Genesis 6:3, wedged between the union and the Nephilim notice, restricts the lifespan of man ('his days shall be an hundred and twenty years'), focusing the divine response on human flesh and human transgression rather than on a celestial revolt. On this view the offspring are gibborim, 'mighty men,' heroic human despots, not hybrids. The second harmonization concerns the scope of Mark 12:25: Jesus speaks of angels 'in heaven,' arguably leaving open that fallen angels who 'kept not their first estate' (Jude 6) might behave otherwise.
These are the strongest forms of the case, and the contextual argument from 6:3 has real purchase. Yet the angelic reading better fits both the phrase and, decisively, its reception. Bene ha-elohim elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible denotes divine-council members (Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7; the cognate bene elim in Ps 29:1; 89:6), never a human lineage as such; Michael Heiser's treatment of the divine council marshals this lexical evidence. More telling is the unanimous early reception. The Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 6-16) develops the episode at length — angels under Shemihazah and Asael descend, take wives, and beget the giant Nephilim — and Jubilees 5, the Damascus Document (CD 2:17-19), Josephus (Antiquities 1.73, where the 'angels of God' beget sons), and Philo all assume the angelic reading. Loren Stuckenbruck's The Myth of Rebellious Angels and James VanderKam's Enoch document this as the dominant Second Temple interpretation; Archie Wright's The Origin of Evil Spirits traces the reception in granular detail. The New Testament authors stand squarely inside that tradition: Jude 6-7 brackets the angels 'who kept not their first estate' with Sodom and Gomorrah, which 'in like manner' gave themselves to fornication and went after 'strange flesh' (Greek sarkos heteras, 'other/different flesh') — language presupposing the angel-human crossing — and Jude 14-15 quotes 1 Enoch 1:9 directly as prophecy; 2 Peter 2:4 echoes the same tradition, casting the offending angels into tartaros. Richard Bauckham's commentary on Jude makes the dependence explicit. The Sethite reading proper surfaces only in the third and fourth centuries (Julius Africanus floats it; Augustine, City of God 15.23, promotes it), largely from theological discomfort with copulating angels once a more transcendent angelology had taken hold.
That history undercuts the harmonization for the texts that matter most. The biblical writers behind Genesis 6 and behind Jude/2 Peter held that a class of divine beings interacted sexually with humans. Genesis 19 is a weaker leg of the contradiction: the visitors are malakim (messengers/angels), but the Sodomites' intent presumably targets beings they take for human men, so the episode speaks more to human predation than to angelic sexuality per se. Genesis 6 and Jude carry the weight. Against them, the Synoptic Jesus deploys angelic asexuality as the very premise that defeats the Sadducees' levirate puzzle (Mark 12:25); the 'in heaven' qualifier does not rescue the harmonization, because the rhetorical force of the argument requires that angels by kind do not reproduce. The dynastic reading, even at its strongest, must overturn the Second Temple consensus that the biblical authors themselves shared.
Where the critical reading lands: genuine contradiction — the angelic sexuality of Genesis 6 and Jude reflects the Watchers tradition the biblical writers held, against which the Synoptic Jesus treats angels as categorically asexual; both the Sethite and the stronger dynastic harmonizations require setting aside the reading the New Testament authors themselves endorsed.
Sources for this reading