When men began to multiply on the surface of the ground, and daughters were born to them, God’s sons saw that men’s daughters were beautiful, and they took any that they wanted for themselves as wives. Yahweh said, “My Spirit will not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; so his days will be one hundred twenty years.” The 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.
Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was continually only evil. Yahweh was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him in his heart. Yahweh said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the surface of the ground—man, along with animals, creeping things, and birds of the sky—for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in Yahweh’s eyes.
This is the history of the generations of Noah: Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time. Noah walked with God. Noah became the father of three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. The earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. God saw the earth, and saw that it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.
God said to Noah, “I will bring an end to all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them and the earth. Make a ship of gopher wood. You shall make rooms in the ship, and shall seal it inside and outside with pitch. This is how you shall make it. The length of the ship shall be three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. You shall make a roof in the ship, and you shall finish it to a cubit upward. You shall set the door of the ship in its side. You shall make it with lower, second, and third levels. I, even I, will bring the flood of waters on this earth, to destroy all flesh having the breath of life from under the sky. Everything that is in the earth will die. But I will establish my covenant with you. You shall come into the ship, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. Of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ship, to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female. Of the birds after their kind, of the livestock after their kind, of every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, two of every sort will come to you, to keep them alive. Take with you some of all food that is eaten, and gather it to yourself; and it will be for food for you, and for them.” Thus Noah did. He did all that God commanded him.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 18, 19, 22 1. And it came to pass, when men began…
1. And it came to pass, when men began to multiply. Moses, having enumerated in order, ten patriarchs, with whom the worship of God remained pure, now relates, that their families also were corrupted. But this narration must be traced to an earlier period than the five hundredth year of Noah. For, in order to make a transition to the history of the deluge, he prefaces it by declaring the whole world to have been so corrupt, that scarcely anything was left to God, out of the widely spread defection. That this may be the more apparent, the principle is to be kept in memory, that the world was then as if divided into two parts; because the family of Seth cherished the pure and lawful worship of Good, from which the rest had fallen. Now, although all mankind had been formed for the worship of God, and therefore sincere religion ought everywhere to have reigned; yet since the greater part had prostituted itself, either to an entire contempt of God, or to depraved superstitions; it was fitting that the small portion which God had adopted, by special privilege, to himself, should remain separate from others. It was, therefore, base ingratitude in the posterity of Seth, to mingle themselves with the children of Cain, and with other profane races; because they voluntarily deprived themselves of the inestimable grace of God. For it was an intolerable profanation, to pervert, and to confound, the order appointed by God. It seems at first sight frivolous, that the sons of God should be so severely condemned, for having chosen for themselves beautiful wives from the daughters of men. But we must know first, that it is not a light crime to violate a distinction established by the Lord; secondly, that for the worshippers of God to be separated from profane nations, was a sacred appointment which ought reverently to have been observed, in order that a Church of God might exist upon earth; thirdly, that the disease was desperate, seeing that men rejected the remedy divinely prescribed for them. In short, Moses points it out as the most extreme disorder; when the sons of the pious, whom God had separated to himself from others, as a peculiar and hidden treasure, became degenerate.
That ancient figment, concerning the intercourse of angels with women, is abundantly refuted by its own absurdity; and it is surprising that learned men should formerly have been fascinated by ravings so gross and prodigious. The opinion also of the Chaldean paraphrase is frigid; namely, that promiscuous marriages between the sons of nobles, and the daughters of plebeians, is condemned. Moses, then, does not distinguish the sons of God from the daughters of men, because they were of dissimilar nature, or of different origin; but because they were the sons of God by adoption, whom he had set apart for himself; while the rest remained in their original condition. Should any one object, that they who had shamefully departed from the faith, and the obedience which God required, were unworthy to be accounted the sons of God; the answer is easy, that the honor is not ascribed to them, but to the grace of God, which had hitherto been conspicuous in their families. For when Scripture speaks of the sons of God, sometimes it has respect to eternal election, which extends only to the lawful heirs; sometimes to external vocations according to which many wolves are within the fold; and thought in fact, they are strangers, yet they obtain the name of sons, until the Lord shall disown them. Yea, even by giving them a title so honorable, Moses reproves their ingratitude, because, leaving their heavenly Father, they prostituted themselves as deserters.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 22 Those that came of wicked parents, as of Cain.
Those that came of wicked parents, as of Cain.
The children of the godly, which began to degenerate.
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Having more respect to their beauty and to worldly considerations, than to their manners and godliness.
Or, had chosen.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22 Gen 6:1 And it came to pass, when men…
Gen 6:1 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
Ver. 1. When men began to multiply.] Not good men only, but bad men too; who therefore took them more wives than one, that they might multiply amain. A numerous offspring is no sure sign of God’s special favour. It is well observed, that when God promised children as a blessing, he said, “The wife should be as the vine, and the children as olive plants”; - two {Psa 128:3} of the best fruits, the one for cheering the heart, the other for clearing the face; {Psa 104:15 Jdg 9:9; Jdg 9:13} the one for sweetness, the other for fatness. “Blessed is the man that hath his quiver full of such, as are the arrows of a strong man.” {Psa 127:4-5} Hence it follows, that they must have more in them than nature; for arrows are not arrows by growth, but by art: so they must be such children, the knottiness of whose nature is refined and reformed, and made smooth by grace. This workmanship of God in the hearts and lives of children, is like the engraving of a king’s “palace,” or the “polished corners” of the temple. {Psa 144:12} This preserves “Jacob from confusion, and his face from waxing pale”: - this makes religious parents to “sanctify God’s name,” even to “sanctify the Holy One,” and with singular encouragement from “the God of Israel.” {Isa 29:22-23} It never goes well with the Church, but when the son marries the mother. {Isa 62:5}
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 Men, i.e. wicked men, the posterity of Cain, as…
Men, i.e. wicked men, the posterity of Cain, as appears from Gen 6:2; who are here called men, and the sons of men, by way of contempt, and of distinction; mere men, such as had only the natures and qualities of corrupt men, without the image of God.
Began to multiply, to wit, more than ordinarily; or more than the sons of God, because they practised polygamy, after the example of their predecessor, the ungodly Lamech, Gen 4:19.
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Daughters were born unto them; so doubtless were sons also; but their daughters are here mentioned as one principal occasion of the sin noted in Gen 6:2, and of the following deluge.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 11, 13, 22 For the glory of God's justice, and for warning…
For the glory of God's justice, and for warning to a wicked world, before the history of the ruin of the old world, we have a full account of its degeneracy, its apostasy from God and rebellion against him. The destroying of it was an act, not of an absolute sovereignty, but of necessary justice, for the maintaining of the honour of God's government. Now here we have an account of two things which occasioned the wickedness of the old world: - 1. The increase of mankind: Men began to multiply upon the face of the earth. This was the effect of the blessing (Gen 1:28), and yet man's corruption so abused and perverted this blessing that it was turned into a curse. Thus sin takes occasion by the mercies of God to be the more exceedingly sinful. Pro 29:16, When the wicked are multiplied, transgression increaseth. The more sinners the more sin; and the multitude of offenders emboldens men. Infectious diseases are most destructive in populous cities; and sin is a spreading leprosy. Thus in the New Testament church, when the number of the disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring (Act 6:1), and we read of a nation that was multiplied, not to the increase of their joy, Isa 9:3. Numerous families need to be well-governed, lest they become wicked families. 2. Mixed marriages (Gen 6:2): The sons of God (that is, the professors of religion, who were called by the name of the Lord, and called upon that name), married the daughters of men, that is, those that were profane, and strangers to God and godliness. The posterity of Seth did not keep by themselves, as they ought to have done, both for the preservation of their own purity and in detestation of the apostasy. They intermingled themselves with the excommunicated race of Cain: They took them wives of all that they chose. But what was amiss in these marriages? (1.) They chose only by the eye: They saw that they were fair, which was all they looked at. (2.) They followed the choice which their own corrupt affections made: they took all that they chose, without advice and consideration. But, (3.) That which proved of such bad consequence to them was that they married strange wives, were unequally yoked with unbelievers, Co2 6:14. This was forbidden to Israel, Deu 7:3, Deu 7:4. It was the unhappy occasion of Solomon's apostasy (Kg1 11:1-4), and was of bad consequence to the Jews after their return out of Babylon, Ezr 9:1, Ezr 9:2. Note, Professors of religion, in marrying both themselves and their children, should make conscience of keeping within the bounds of profession. The bad will sooner debauch the good than the good reform the bad. Those that profess themselves the children of God must not marry without his consent, which they have not if they join in affinity with his enemies.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–20 And it came to pass, when men began to…
And it came to pass, when men began to multiply upon the face of the earth,.... Either mankind in general, or rather the posterity of Cain, who were mere natural men, such as they were when born into the world, and as brought up in it, destitute of the grace of God, and of the knowledge and fear of him; and who in proportion much more multiplied than the posterity of Seth, because of the practice of polygamy, which by the example of Lamech, one of that race, might prevail among them:
and daughters were born unto them; not daughters only, but sons also, though it may be more daughters than sons, or it may denote remarkable ones, for their beauty or immodesty, or both; and chiefly this is observed for the sake of what follows.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18 In this chapter we have,
In this chapter we have,
I. The abounding iniquity of that wicked world, ver. 1-5. and ver. 11, 12.
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II. God's just resentment of that iniquity, and his holy resolution to punish it, ver. 6, 7.
III. The special favour of God to his servant Noah. (1.) In the character given of him, ver. 8, 9, 10. (2.) In the communication of God's purpose to him, ver. 13-17. (3.) In the directions he gave him to make an ark for his own safety, ver. 14, 15, 16. (4.) In the employing of him for the preservation of the rest of the creatures, ver. 18, 19, 20, 21. Lastly, Noah's obedience to the instructions given him, ver. 22.
Men began to multiply upon the face of the earth - This was the effect of the blessing, chap. i, 28, and yet man's corruption so abused this blessing, that it turned into a curse.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22 The children of God, among whom the true religion…
CHAPTER VI
The children of God, among whom the true religion was at first
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preserved, corrupt it by forming matrimonial connections with
irreligious women, 1, 2.
God, displeased with these connections and their consequences,
limits the continuance of the old world to one hundred and
twenty years, 3.
The issue of those improper connections termed giants, 4.
An affecting description of the depravity of the world, 5, 6.
God threatens the destruction of every living creature, 7.
Noah and his family find grace in his sight, 8.
The character and family of Noah, 9, 10.
And a farther description of the corruption of man, 11, 12.
Noah is forewarned of the approaching destruction of the
human race, 13;
and is ordered to build an ark for the safety of himself
and household, the form and dimensions of which are
particularly described, 14-16.
The deluge threatened, 17.
The covenant of God's mercy is to be established between him
and the family of Noah, 18.
A male and female of all kinds of animals that could not live
in the waters to be brought into the ark, 19, 20.
Noah is commanded to provide food for their sustenance, 21;
and punctually follows all these directions, 22.
NOTES ON CHAP. VI
Verse 1. When men began to multiply] It was not at this time that men began to multiply, but the inspired penman speaks now of a fact which had taken place long before. As there is a distinction made here between men and those called the sons of God, it is generally supposed that the immediate posterity of Cain and that of Seth are intended. The first were mere men, such as fallen nature may produce, degenerate sons of a degenerate father, governed by the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eye, and the pride of life. The others were sons of God, not angels, as some have dreamed, but such as were, according to our Lord's doctrine, born again, born from above, Joh 3:3; Joh 3:5-6, c., and made children of God by the influence of the Holy Spirit, Ga 5:6. The former were apostates from the true religion, the latter were those among whom it was preserved and cultivated.
Dr. Wall supposes the first verses of this chapter should be paraphrased thus: "When men began to multiply on the earth, the chief men took wives of all the handsome poor women they chose. There were tyrants in the earth in those days and also after the antediluvian days powerful men had unlawful connections with the inferior women, and the children which sprang from this illicit commerce were the renowned heroes of antiquity, of whom the heathens made their gods."
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 17, 22 Gen 6:1. For the glory of God’s justice, and…
Gen 6:1. For the glory of God’s justice, and for a warning to a wicked world, before the history of the ruin of the old world, we have a full account of its degeneracy, its apostacy from God, and rebellion against him. The destroying of it was an act, not of absolute sovereignty, but of necessary justice; for the maintaining of the honour of God’s government. When men began to multiply — This was the effect of the blessing, Gen 1:28, and yet man’s corruption so abused this blessing that it was turned into a curse.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1, 9 - The Growth of Sin
- The Growth of Sin
3. דון dı̂yn “be down, strive, subdue, judge.” בשׁגם bāshagām “inasmuch, as also.” The rendering “in their error” requires the pointing בשׁגם beshāgām, and the plural form of the following pronoun. It is also unknown to the Septuagint.
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4. נפילים nepı̂lı̂ym “assailants, fellers, men of violence, tyrants.”
Having traced the line of descent from Adam through Sheth, the seed of God, to Noah, the author proceeds to describe the general spread and growth of moral evil in the race of man, and the determination of the Lord to wipe it away from the face of the earth.
Gen 6:1-4
There are two stages of evil set forth in Gen 6:1-4 - the one contained in the present four verses, and the other in the following. The former refers to the apostasy of the descendants of Sheth, and the cause and consequences of it. When man began to multiply, the separate families of Cain and Sheth would come into contact. The daughters of the stirring Cainites, distinguished by the graces of nature, the embellishments of art, and the charms of music and song, even though destitute of the loftier qualities of likemindedness with God, would attract attention and prompt to unholy alliances. The phrase “sons of God,” means an order of intelligent beings who “retain the purity of moral character” originally communicated, or subsequently restored, by their Creator. They are called the sons of God, because they have his spirit or disposition. The sons of God mentioned in Job 38:7, are an order of rational beings existing before the creation of man, and joining in the symphony of the universe, when the earth and all things were called into being. Then all were holy, for all are styled the sons of God. Such, however, are not meant in the present passage. For they were not created as a race, have no distinction of sex, and therefore no sexual desire; they “neither marry nor are given in marriage” Mat 22:30. It is contrary to the law of nature for different species even on earth to cohabit in a carnal way; much more for those in the body, and those who have not a body of flesh. Moreover, we are here in the region of humanity, and not in the sphere of superhuman spirits; and the historian has not given the slightest intimation of the existence of spiritual beings different from man.
The sons of God, therefore, are those who are on the Lord’s side, who approach him with duly significant offerings, who call upon him by his proper name, and who walk with God in their daily conversation. The figurative use of the word “son” to denote a variety of relations incidental, and moral as well as natural, was not unfamiliar to the early speaker. Thus, Noah is called “the son of five hundred years” Gen 5:32. Abraham calls Eliezer בן־בותי ben-bēytı̂y, “son of my house” Gen 15:3. The dying Rachel names her son Ben-oni, “son of my sorrow,” while his father called him Benjamin, “son of thy right hand” Gen 35:18. An obvious parallel to the moral application is presented in the phrases “the seed of the woman” and “the seed of the serpent.” The word “generations” תולדות tôledot, Gen 5:1) exhibits a similar freedom and elasticity of meaning, being applied to the whole doings of a rational being, and even to the physical changes of the material world Gen 2:4. The occasion for the present designation is furnished in the remark of Eve on the birth of Sheth. God hath given me another seed instead of Habel. Her son Sheth she therefore regarded as the son of God. Accordingly, about the birth of his son Enosh, was begun the custom calling upon the name of the Lord, no doubt in the family circle of Adam, with whom Sheth continued to dwell. And Enok, the seventh from Adam in the same line, exhibited the first striking example of a true believer walking with God in all the intercourse of life. These descendants of Sheth, among whom were also Lamek who spoke of the Lord, and Noah who walked with God, are therefore by a natural transition called the sons of God, the godlike in a moral sense, being born of the Spirit, and walking not after the flesh, but after the Spirit Psa 82:6; Hos 2:1.
Some take “the daughters of man” to be the daughters of the Cainites only. But it is sufficient to understand by this phrase, the daughters of man in general, without any distinction of a moral or spiritual kind, and therefore including both Cainite and Shethite females. “And they took them wives of all whom they chose.” The evil here described is that of promiscuous intermarriage, without regard to spiritual character. The godly took them wives of all; that is, of the ungodly as well as the godly families, without any discrimination. “Whom they chose,” not for the godliness of their lives, but for the goodliness of their looks. Ungodly mothers will not train up children in the way they should go; and husbands who have taken the wrong step of marrying ungodly wives cannot prove to be very exemplary or authoritative fathers. Up to this time they may have been consistent as the sons of God in their outward conduct. But a laxity of choice proves a corresponding laxity of principle. The first inlet of sin prepares the way for the flood-gates of iniquity. It is easy to see that now the degeneracy of the whole race will go on at a rapid pace.
Gen 6:3
My Spirit - , in contradistinction to the spirit of disobedience which, by the fall, obtained entrance into the soul of man. “Shall not strive with man forever.” To strive דון dı̂yn is to keep down, rule, judge, or strive with a man by moral force. From this passage we learn that the Lord by his Spirit strives with man up to a certain point. In this little negative sentence streams out the bright light of God’s free and tender mercy to the apostate race of man. He sends his Spirit to irradiate the darkened mind, to expostulate with the conscience, to prompt and strengthen holy resolve, and to bring back the heart, the confidence, the affection to God. He effects the blessed result of repentance toward God in some, who are thus proved to be born of God. But it is a solemn thought that with others he will not strive perpetually. There is a certain point beyond which he will not go, for sufficient reasons known fully to himself, partly to us. Two of these we are to notice for our instruction: First, he will not touch the free agency of his rational creatures. He can put no force on the volitions of men. An involuntary or compulsory faith, hope, love, obedience, is a contradiction in terms; and anything that could bear the name can have no moral validity whatsoever. Secondly, after giving ample warning, instruction, and invitation, he will, as a just judgment on the unbelieving and the impenitent, withdraw his Spirit and let them alone. The antediluvian world was fast approaching to this point of final perversity and abandonment.
Inasmuch as he is also flesh - , in contradistinction to spirit, the breath of life which the Almighty breathed Into his nostrils. These two parts of man’s complex being were originally in true and happy adjustment, the corporeal being the fit organ and complement of the spiritual as it is in him. But now by the fall the flesh has gained the upper hand, and the spirit is in the bondage of corruption. The fact that he is flesh also as well as spirit, has therefore come out into sad prominence. The doctrine of the carnal mind in the Epistle to the Romans Rom. 8 is merely the outgrowth of the thought expressed in this passage.
His days shall be an hundred and twenty years. - “His days” are the days of man, not the individual, but the race, with whom the Lord still strives. Hence, they refer to the duration, not of the life of an individual, but of the existence of the race. From this we learn that the narrative here reverts to a point of time before the birth of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, recorded in the close of the preceding passage as there were only a hundred years from their birth to the deluge. This is according to the now well-known method of Scripture, when it has two lines of events to carry on. The former narrative refers to the godly portion of mankind; this to the ungodly remnant.
Not forever will the Lord strive with man; but his longsuffering will still continue for one hundred and twenty years. Meanwhile he does not leave himself or his clemency without a witness. He sent Noah with the message of warning, who preached by his voice, by his walking with God, and also by his long labor and perseverance in the building of the ark. The doomed race, however, filled up the measure of their iniquity, and when the set number of years was accomplished, the overwhelming flood came.
Gen 6:4
Two classes of men, with strong hand and strong will, are here described. “The giants,” the well-known men of great stature, physical force, and violent will, who were enabled by these qualities to claim and secure the supremacy over their fellow-men. “Had been in the land in those days.” In the days when those intermarriages were beginning to take place, the warriors were asserting the claim of might. Violence and rapine were becoming rampant in the land. “And after that.” The progeny of the mixed marriages were the second and subsequent class of leading men. “The sons of God” are here contradistinguished from the “nephilim, or giants,” who appear therefore to have belonged to the Cainites. The offspring of these unhallowed unions were the heroes, the gallants, the mighty men, the men of renown. They were probably more refined in manners and exalted in thought than their predecessors of pure Cainite descent. “Men of name,” whose names are often in men’s mouths, because they either deserved or required to be named frequently on account of their influential or representative character. Being distinguished from the common herd by prominent qualities or memorable exploits, they were also frequently marked out by a special name or surname, derived from such trait of character or deed of notoriety. “Of old” (מעולם mē'ôlām). This has been sometimes explained “of the world,” in the sense of αἰών aiōn; but the meaning is too late for the present passage. The phrase uniformly means “of old,” covering a more or less extensive length of time. This note of time implies a writer probably after the deluge, who could speak of antediluvian affairs, as happening of old.
It is remarkable that we have no hint of any kind of government in the antediluvian world. It is open to us to suppose that the patriarchal polity would make its appearance, as it is an order based upon natural relations. But it is possible that God himself, being still present and manifest, was recognized as the governor. To him offerings were brought, and he deals with Cain on his first and second transgression. In that case the lawless violence of the strong and willful is to be regarded as rebellion, not only against the patriarchal rule, but the divine supremacy. A notice of civil law and government would not of course affect the authority of the book. But the absence of such notice is in favor of its divine origin. It is obvious that higher things than these have the attention of the sacred writer.
Gen 6:5-8
In these verse we are to conceive the 120 years of respite to be at an end. The iniquity of the race is now full, and the determination of the Lord is therefore announced, with a statement of the grounds on which it rests, and a glance at the individual to be excepted from the general destruction.
Gen 6:5
And God saw. - The course of the primeval world was a great experiment going on before the eye of God, and of all intelligent observers, and manifesting the thorough depravity and full-grown degeneracy of the fallen race, when left to the bent of its perverted inclinations. “Every imagination” (יצר yētser). Here the object of thought is distinguished from the thought itself. This is a distinction not generally or constantly recognized by the mental philosopher, though of essential importance in the theory of the mind. The thought itself is a real phase or attitude of mind; the form, idea, species, object of thought may have matter, real content, or it may not. “Only evil every day.” This is an unlimited condemnation of the state and process of the carnal man. The reason is obvious. Homage to God, to truth, to right, to love, does not reign in his heart; and the imaginations or purposes that are not regulated by this, however excellent and praiseworthy in other respects, are destitute of the first the essential principle of moral good. This is now made palpable to the eye of observation by the almost universal predominance of the ungodly spirit. This accordingly forms the ground of the divine procedure.
Gen 6:6
And it repented the Lord - that he had made man. The Scripture is frank and unreserved; some people would say, imprudent or regardless of misconstruction, in its statements of truth. Repentance ascribed to the Lord seems to imply wavering or change of purpose in the Eternal Self-existent One. But the sublime dictate of the inspired word is, “God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken and shall he not make it good?” Num 23:19. In sooth, every act here recorded - the observation, the resolve, the exception - seems equally with the repentance to jar with the unchangeableness of God. To go to the root of the matter, every act of the divine will, of creative power, or of interference with the order of nature, seems at variance with inflexibility of purpose. But, in the first place, man has a finite mind and a limited sphere of observation, and therefore is not able to conceive or express thoughts or acts exactly as they are in God, but only as they are in himself. Secondly, God is a spirit, and therefore has the attributes of personality, freedom, and holiness; and the passage before us is designed to set forth these in all the reality of their action, and thereby to distinguish the freedom of the eternal mind from the fatalism of inert matter. Hence, thirdly, these statements represent real processes of the Divine Spirit, analogous at least to those of the human. And, lastly, to verify this representation, it is not necessary that we should be able to comprehend or construe to ourselves in all its practical detail that sublime harmony which subsists between the liberty and the immutability of God. That change of state which is essential to will, liberty, and activity, may be, for aught we know, and from what we know must be, in profound unison with the eternity of the divine purpose.
Gen 6:7
I will wipe away man from the face of the soil. - The resolve is made to sweep away the existing race of man. Heretofore, individuals had departed this life. Adam himself had long since paid the debt of nature. These solemn testimonies to the universal doom had not made any salutary or lasting impression on the survivors. But now a general and violent destruction is to overtake the whole race - a standing monument of the divine wrath against sin, to all future generations of the only family saved.
From man to cattle, creeper and fowl of the sky. - These classes of animated nature being mingled up with man are involved in the same ruin with him. This is of a piece with the curse laid upon the serpent, which was the unconscious organ of the tempter. It is an instance of a law which runs through the whole course of nature, as we observe that it is the method of the divine government to allow for the time the suffering inflicted on an inferior animal, or even on a fellow-creature, by selfish passion. It has an appearance to some minds of harshness and unfairness. But we must remember that these animated creatures are not moral, and, therefore, the violent termination of their organic life is not a punishment; that the pain incidental to this, being apart from guilt, is in itself a beneficial provision for the conservation of life; and that it was not intended that the life of animals should be perpetual. The return of the land to a state of desolation by the destruction of animal and vegetable life, however, has its lesson for man, for whom ultimately all of this beauty and fertility were designed, and from whom it is now withdrawn, along with all the glories it foreshadows, as part of the punishment of his guilt. The tenant has become unworthy of the tabernacle, and accordingly he is dispossessed, and it is taken down and removed.
Gen 6:8
And Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. - Noah and his family are the only exceptions to this sweeping destruction. Hitherto we have met with distant and indirect intimations of the divine favor, and significant deeds of regard and acceptance. Now for the first time grace itself finds a tongue to express its name. Grace has its fountain in the divine breast. The stream has been flowing forth to Adam, Eve, Habel, Henok, and others, we hope, unknown to fame. By the time it reaches Noah it has found a name, by which it is recognized among people to this day. It is opposed to works as a source of blessing. Whither grace comes there merit cannot be. Hence, we learn even from the case of Noah that original sin asserts its presence in the whole race of Adam. This completes the circle of saving doctrine in regard to God that comes down from the antediluvian times. He intimates that the seed of the woman, an individual pre-eminently so called, will bruise the serpent’s head. He clothes our first parents with coats of skin - an earnest and an emblem of the better, the moral clothing of the soul. He regards Habel and his offering. He accepts him that in faith does well. He translates Enok, who walked with him. His Spirit, we learn, has been striving with antediluvian man. Here are the Spirit of God and the seed of the woman. Here are clothing, regarding, accepting, translating. Here, then, is salvation provided and applied, begun, continued, and completed. And last, though not least, grace comes out to view, the eternal fountain of the whole. On the part of man, also, we have repenting, believing, confessing, offering, calling on the name of the Lord, and walking with God.
The two parts of the document which is now closed are as distinct from each other as it is from the following one. They combine, in fact, to form the needful preliminary to the fourth document. The genealogy brings us to the leading agent in the succeeding narrative; the description of the corruption of the human race furnishes the occasion for his agency. The third is therefore the prologue, as the fifth is the epilogue, to the fourth document, in which the main action lies.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19 Daughters. These had borne equal proportion with the males…
Daughters. These had borne equal proportion with the males from the beginning; but here they are particularized, because they were the chief instruments in corrupting the descendants of Seth. (Haydock) --- Even the sons of these libidinous people were so effeminate, as to deserve to be called women. (Menochius)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On vv1, 9 The Universal Corruption in consequence of the mingling of…
FOURTH SECTION
The Universal Corruption in consequence of the mingling of the two lines.—The anomism (or enormity) of sins before the flood.—Predominant unbelief.—Titanic pride.—After the flood prevailing superstition
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Gen_6:1-8
1And it came to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, 2That the sons of God saw the daughters of men [looked upon them] that they were fair, and they took them wives of all which they chose 3[after their sensual choice]. And the Lord said, my spirit1 shall not always strive2 with man, for that Hebrews 3 also is flesh; yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. 4There were giants4 in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bare children to them; the same became mighty men, which were of old, men of renown. 5And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6And it repented5 the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved6 him at his heart. 7And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man and beast, and the creeping thing, and 8the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. And Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
PRELIMINARY QUESTION, EXEGETICAL AND THEOLOGICAL, RESPECTING THE SONS OF GOD7
The question, what kind of beings are we to understand by the Sons of God, has been answered in different ways from the earliest times, and has lately, again, given occasion to lively theological discussions. We give here, in the first place, the statement of Kurtz, who has engaged in the question with peculiar earnestness (History of the Old Covenant, i. p. 30, 3d ed., 1864, and in a long Appendix to vol. i., under the title: Die Ehen der Söhne Gottes mit den Töchtern der Menschen, Berlin, 1857). “In respect to the Bne Elohim, we find three principal views: 1. they are filii magnatum puellas plebeias rapientes; 2. they are angels; 3. they are the pious, that is, the Sethites, in contrast with whom the “daughters of men” denote Cainitish women. The first view is found in the Samaritan, Jonathan (Targum), Onkelos (Targum), Symmachus, Aben Ezra, Rashi, Varenius, &c., and may now be regarded as exploded. The second view is most strongly represented in the old synagogue and church. It would seem to have its ground in the Septuagint. At least the manuscripts vary between υἱοὶ τοῦ θεοῦ and ἄγγελοι τοῦ θεοῦ. Very decidedly, however, it is presented (and mythically improved upon) in two old Apocryphal books, namely, the Book of Enoch, and the so-called Minor Genesis, of which Dillman in Ewald’s Year Books has given a German translation derived from the Ethiopic. It is, moreover, recognized in the Epistle of Jude (Gen_6:6-7 ?) and in the Second Epistle of Peter (Gen_2:4-5 ?). It was also presented by Philo, Josephus, and most of the Rabbinical writers (Eisenmenger’s “Judaism Revealed,” i. p. 380), as well as by the oldest church fathers: Justin, Clemens Alex., Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, and Lactantius. Since then it fell gradually into disfavor; Chrysostom, Augustine, and Theodoret contended zealously against it; Philastrius denounced it as downright heresy, and our old church theologians turned from it almost with abhorrence. It found also in the synagogue vehement opposers Rabbi Simeon Ben Jochai pronounced the ban against all who adhered to it. In more modern times it has been seized upon by all exegetes who regard the early history of Genesis as mythical, notwithstanding which a decided number of commentators who are believers in revelation have not allowed themselves to be deterred from deciding in its favor,—for example, Köppen (“The Bible a Work of Divine Wisdom,” i. p. 104), Fr. von Meyer (Blätter für höhere Wahrheit, xi. p. 61 ff.), Twesten (“Dogmatics,” ii. 1, p. 332), Nitzsch (“System,” p. 234 f.) Dreschler (Einheit der Genesis, p. 91), Hofmann (“Prophecy and Fulfilment,” i. p. 85, and “Scripture Proof,” i. p. 374 ff.), Baumgarten (“Commentary on the Pentateuch,” ad h. l.), Delitzsch (Comment. ad h. l.), Stier (“Epistle of Jude,” p. 42 ff.), Dietlein (“Comment. on the Second Epistle of Peter,” p. 149 ff.), Luther (“Comment. on the Epistles of Peter and Jude,” pp. 204, 341). The third view is found in Chrysostom, Cyril Alex, Theodoret, (on the special ground that Seth, on account of his piety, acquired the name θεός, and that, therefore, his descendants were named υἱοὶ τοῦ θεοῦ). It was held by almost all the later church theologians. In modern times it has been defended with special zeal by Hengstenberg (“Contributions,” ii. p. 328 ff.), Hävernik (“Introduction,” i. 2, p. 265), Dettinger (“Remarks on the Section, Gen_4:1–Gen_6:8,” in the Tübingen Journal of Theology, 1835, No. 1), Keil (“Luther. Periodical,” 1851, ii. p. 239), and many others.
The preceding statement has been made complete by Kurtz in his Book (“The Marriages of the Sons of God,”) Berlin, 1857, p. 12; as likewise by Keil (p. 80) by the citation of the treatise of Hengstenberg (“The Sons of God and the Daughters of Men,”) in the Evangelical Church Gazette, 1858, No. 29, and No. 35–37; in the exposition of Philippi (“Church Doctrine of the Faith,”) iii. p. 176 ff, and the controversial writings of Kurtz that have appeared against the treatises of Keil and Hengstenberg (“The Marriages of the Sons of God with the Daughters of Men),” Berlin 1857, and “The Sons of God,” in Gen_6:1-4, and the “Sinning Angels,” in 2Pe_2:4-5, and Jude, Gen_6:6-7. Mitau, 1858. Engelhardt also takes the side of Kurtz (“Lutheran Periodical,” 1856, p. 404). Delitzsch appears as the latest defender of the angel hypothesis of any considerable note (“Comment.” 3d Ed., 1860, p. 230 ff.). Its latest opponent of note since Keerl (“Questions on the Apocrypha,” p. 206), is Keil (“Comment,” 1861, p. 80 ff.)
It is shown by Keil (p. 80) that the relation of our passage to the Sethites had its defenders, both among Jews and Christians, before the time of Chrysostom; since Josephus knew of this interpretation, and the critical Julius Africanus maintained it in the first half of the third century. So also did Ephraim the Syrian, to which add, among the Apocryphal writings, the Clementine Recognitions, and the oriental Book of Adam.
We take first into view the section as it lies before us, with its connection and the analogies of the Old Testament, then the relations to our passage of the New Testament, farther on, the exegetical traditions, and finally, the religious-philosophical, dogmatic, and practical significance of the question.
The Place itself in question; its Connection, and the Analogies of the Old Testament. The Sons of God. Bne Elohim. According to the angel hypothesis, angels alone are here to be understood, not-withstanding that there is no mention of angels immediately before this, to stand as its antecedent, but only of the pious race of Sethites. Chap. 5 gives us an account of pious men, of chosen men, of a wonderfully glorified man of God; but of angels, on the contrary, there is not a word, even to this place, except the mysterious language respecting the cherubim, in which we cannot at all recognize any personal angel-forms. The single apparent ground for a supposition, at first view wild and abrupt, is found in the fact, that in the later books of the Old Testament, not the pious are called בְּנֵי תָאֱלֹהִים, but the angels. It is, however, simply incorrect to say that anywhere in the historical scriptures the angels are called sons of God without anything farther; only in a few poetical places, and in one nominally prophetic (Job_1:2; Job_38:7; Psa_29:1; Psa_89:7 : Dan_3:25) are they so called; and then, too, beside the poetical language, there comes into view the elucidating context. In Job 1 they form the council of God represented as administering government (therefore not bne Elohim, as nomen naturœ in distinction from Maleak, as nomen officii), and in fact in contrast to Satan. In the same way in chap. 2. In chap. Gen_38:7, they hail the laying the foundation of the earth and the creation of man. Psa_29:1, they are called upon to glorify the Lord in the thunder-storm, and in the restoration of his people. Psa_89:7, are they thus denoted by way of contrasting their dependent state with the glory of the Lord. Dan_3:25 hardly belongs here, but is, perhaps, to be interpreted according to chap. Gen_7:13. In respect to this, Hengstenberg has already shown that the name bne Elohim belongs to the poetic diction.
Whilst, therefore, in the pure historical pieces the angels are never styled sons of God, there does appear the indication of a filial relation, or of a sonship, in respect to the people of Israel, to the Old Testament kings, to the pious or dependent wards of God, and that, too, in various ways, even in the legal sphere. Delitzsch remarks, that the idea of a filial relation in the Old Testament had already begun to win for itself a universal ethical significance beyond the limitation to Israel (Exo_4:22; Deu_14:1)—as though this filial relation of the children of Israel, under the law, were a real step in progress in respect to Abraham and the Sethites. But the case is exactly the other way. In the Epistle to the Galatians, the patriarchal standpoint of belief in promise is a higher one than that of the Mosaic legality (Gal_3:16). It is to be specially remarked in regard to Kurtz, that he knew not how to distinguish the different economies of the Old Testament. When, for example, the Apostle Paul tells us, that the law was given through the mipistry of angels, he concludes that the angel of the Lord that appeared to Abraham must have been a creaturely angel (History of the Old Testament, p. 152). And yet Paul brings forward this character of the angelic mediation for the express purpose of showing that the revelation of the promise was a more essential, and, also, a higher form than that of the law-giving; it could not, therefore, have been in this sense (of Kurtz) that the law-giving is referred to the mediation of angels. The explanation consists in this, that the promise was a revelation for Abraham, and, generally, for the elect patriarchs, whilst the law-giving, on the other hand, was for a whole people mingled and coarse, or at all events, greatly needing an educating culture. But as the patriarchal economy, in respect to its relationship to the form of the Gospel, had a superiority to the form of the law-giving, and in so far appears like to the New Testament, so again had the economy of the Sethites a superiority to the Abrahamic. The specific distinction is the separation between the line of the pious, and the godless, curse-loaded line of Cain. Therefore it is that that peculiar designation of Enoch’s piety: “he walked with God,” never occurs again in the later law-times of the Old Testament. In a word, the Sethic economy is a ἅπαξ λεγόμενον in the Old Testament, which has been fundamentally mistaken by the contenders for the angel hypothesis. It has a prefiguration of the New Testament state, and acknowledges, therefore, the θεοῦ, or sons of God, as is done in the New Testament in our Lord’s sermon on the mount. If the objection is made, that the redemption is not yet perfectly introduced, it is to be remarked, that the faith in redemption, in the time after Christ, is not to be measured, in its degrees, by the chronological advance; as is shown in the examples of Enoch and Abraham. Luther, moreover, knew better how to estimate the worth of this singularity in the economy of the long living so greatly exalted through the blessing of Seth, and who reflected in their life the end of time: “They are the greatest heroes that, next to Christ and John the Baptist, ever appeared in this world, and at the last day we shall behold their majesty.” Since, therefore, even the law-period, notwithstanding Israel’s servant-relation, did not exclude the idea of Israel’s sonship generally, or of the believing especially, (as the places Deu_32:5; Hos_2:1 (therefore not poetical) and Psa_73:15 show to us, how much more clearly must this idea have appeared, in its typical significance and beauty, among the pious descendants of Seth. In that case it has been said, they ought to have been called bne Jehovah (instead of bne Elohim); but this is not to keep clearly in view, that the Sethites represented the universal relation of humanity to God, and that they, like Melchizedek at a later time, disappeared from the stage. That the angels, however, in a physical sense, as opposed to an ethical sense, could be called sons of God,—that is, could be referred to some generation of a physical kind, is a view that has been rightly denounced by Keil (p. 11). And in this way, for the unprejudiced, the matter might seem tolerably well disposed of. But further on it occurs as a thing to be considered, that the sons of God woo the daughters of men. How, it is asked, when it is said in its general sense (Gen_6:2) that men multiplied themselves, can we limit the expression daughters of men, Gen_6:2, to the daughters of the Cainites? We cannot here rest upon the usual mode of stating this. There is no reason why the sons of God should have found a tempting beauty only among the daughters of the Cainites. The daughters of men may, in the first place, be women in general. In that case, however, the first contrast would consist in regarding the ethically defined sons of God as opposed to the physically defined daughters of men,—among whom the Cainitic women might be primarily understood, especially since the Sethite women too belong to the children of God. Their first transgression, however, would consist in this, that in the choice of wives they let themselves be determined by the mere charm of sensual beauty. From this follows the second transgression, that they took them wives of all whom they chose, that is, of all that pleased them. On the word מִכֹּל, therefore, rests the emphasis of the expression (out of all). Instead of looking at the spiritual kinsmanship, they had an eye only to the pleasure of sense. That was the first thing. Then there is nothing said here of any moral satisfaction in beauty. This appears from the fact that they took them wives of all that pleased them, of all that they desired. Instead of holding pure the Sethic line, they took wives indiscriminately (מִכֹּל), and that was the second and decisive transgression. By this was the dam torn down which stood between the Cainites and the Sethites,—that is, the dam which kept back the universal corruption, and which hitherto had protected the race of the blessing. Therefore is it, Gen_6:3, that the corruption which now comes is charged upon men, and not at all upon the angels. If we look for a moment at the angel hypothesis, it is not easy to see how such amours with individual women could have had so decided an effect upon the destiny of the whole race, at a time, too, when more than now, men formed the deciding factor; and this may we say, without taking into view the fact, that in the historical style angels are never called bne Elohim, that angels do not seek nor are sought in marriage (Mat_22:30), and that the expression: “take themselves wives,” denotes marriage-ties, not by way of unnatural amours, or romantic loves, as Kurtz pictures it in his first treatise (p. 99). But indeed, out of those demoniacal, fleshly amours, it is said, must have proceeded the נְפִלִים and גִּבֹּרִים, and thus they would bring the whole matter to a decision. In the first place, however, must we remember, that the sentence of God respecting the desperate condition of the race (Gen_6:3) precedes this mention of the Nephilim, and it is clear that the נְפִלִים must already denote a special form of the evil, which, with its fleshly lust, stands at the same time in a position of reciprocity. According to almost all interpretations, and according to Num_13:33, “when the giant Anakim are reckoned among them,” the Nephilim were gigantic,—or, more accurately, the distinguished, the prominent or overpowering. According to such it is from נפל, a near form to פלא; other derivations see below. In their bodily appearance the Nephilim were not exactly what are called giants in the mythical sense, but prominent and powerful forms of men. In strength, in courage, or pride, they were Gibborim, that is, mighty men, heroes; in deeds, they were men of renown; but their deeds were especially deeds of violence חָמָם (Gen_6:11; Gen_6:13), unrighteousness, and oppression. The meaning is, that the fleshly nature of pride and cruelty ever associates itself with the fleshly disorder of lust. Lamech the Cainite and his song were now the general type of the human race. But as the tendency to violence came in cotemporaneously with the lust, and not as a generation for the first time descending from it, so were the Nephilim contemporaneous with these fleshly mesalliances, having been, in fact, from the days of Cain hitherto “men of renown.” The Hebrew is הָיוּ, not וַיִּהְיוּ; there were Nephilim, it is said, בימים ההם, in those same days, not there became or came to be, as Knobel translates it. Add to this the offspring of the sons of God and the daughters of men, that is, of the grossly sensual marriages of the pious, and their mingling with the Cainitic race. Thus flow together two origins of the Gibborim. In respect to the first were they men of renown, or men of old, מֵעוֹלָם—that is, the Cainites. Thus, too, in the easiest way does our section connect itself with both the preceding chapters. In the fourth chapter there is described the line of the Cainites as still divided from the line of Seth; in the fifth chapter we have the line of the Sethites in its devotedness and elevation; then, finally, in the section before us, the mingling of both lines, and the universality and flagitiousness of corruption, as, according to the programme of the Cainitic Lamech, it culminates in the two fundamental features of carnality and cruelty. Whoever reads Genesis, to the passage before us, without any prejudice derived from opinions alien to it, would never think of understanding by the bne Elohim anything else than the pious Sethites, and by their connection with the daughters of men anything else than a corruption of marriage and a mingling with the Cainites. This would especially appear from the fact, that in this section the sharp contrast between the two lines, which is so prominent in the previous chapter, wholly disappears. If we read further we find, too, that not the Cainites alone perished in the flood, but both lines together, with the exception of Noah and his house. Further on, Ishmael, who is a “wild man,” and whose “hand is against every man,” appears as the offspring of Abraham and “the maid,” a copy, as it were, giving us a clear idea of the Gibborim, and of the way in which they originated, although the connection of the patriarch was from a purer motive, and more excusable. Hence the traditional and legal abhorrence of untheocratic marriages in the theocratic race; as we find it in Gen_24:3; Gen_26:34-35; Gen_27:46; Gen_34:9; Deu_7:3; Jos_23:12; Jdg_3:6; 1Ki_11:1; Ezr_9:2; Neh_10:30. The falling away of the Israelites in the desert came not from any amour between angels and the daughters of men, but from an unlawful intercourse between the Israelites and the women of Midian (Numbers 25). So the apostasies of Israel in the time of the Judges were derived from the mingling of the Israelites with the daughters of the Canaanites (Jdg_3:6). The fall of Solomon, and the falling away of the people that followed it, came from Solomon’s connection with foreign wives (1Ki_11:1). So the ten tribes sunk into the worship of Baal in consequence of the connection of Ahab with the Sidonian Jezebel, whose horrible significance goes on even to the Apocalypse (1Ki_16:31; Rev_2:20); and so, too, Ezra and Nehemiah, after the great visitation, know no other way to secure their people against a new degeneracy, than by contending earnestly against foreign marriages. Thus again and again do the theocratic mesalliances of one section reflect themselves in the Israelitish history, without the angels playing any part therein. For the first time, in the apocryphal Tobit (Tob_6:15), does there meet us a demoniac interest in human females, and this is characteristic for the origin of the angel-hypothesis. Here, too, it must be remarked, that marriage with the heathen was not absolutely forbidden to the Israelites. When the principle was secured, that the believing party might make holy the unbelieving (1 Corinthians 7), such marriages appear sometimes even in a favorable light. It was only union with the Canaanites that was absolutely forbidden, since they, as well as the Cainites, were sunk in incurable corruption; and Hengstenberg has rightly supposed that our history here was given for the purpose of warning the Israelites against such marriages.
2. The relations of the New Testament to the passage before us. There is the passage of the Epistle of Jude, Gen_6:6, which, in fact, we regard as the original in its relation to the kindred passage, 2Pe_2:4. Here, too, Kurtz reasons from the mode of speaking, but not happily: “Both epistles designate the actors who are punished as simply ἄγγελοι. When we interrogate the biblical style of speech it shows us at once that this word is never thus nakedly used of spiritsἐν ἀρχῇ who have fallen. These are ever called δαίμονες, and their head διάβολος or σατανᾶς.” We will give presently the simple solution of this objected difficulty. Wherever there is mention of the actual existence of Satan’s kingdom it is naturally and generally of Satan, of the demons, etc., although variations occur, as Eph_6:12, et al. Here, however, when the original fall itself of the demons is mentioned, they must be denoted according to their original state as angels. Otherwise it would mean that the devil had sinned, and thereby became a devil. In that case our catechisms would have to be corrected where they speak of fallen angels. When it is said, however, that there is here no special mention of Satan, or that the sins of the angels cannot be particularly described, or that the fall of Satan is nowhere designated as a leaving his habitation, all such assertions we must hold as having no significance at all.
The Epistle of Jude is a prophetical word of warning against the beginning of antinomianism. Here the Israelites who fell in the wilderness are the first example. In respect to these it is confessed that they did not fall in the wilderness merely on account of sins of sensuality. Then are there named the angels who kept not their dominion (ἀρχή) but for-sook their own proper habitation—that is, their sphere of life. The contrast in the guilt of these angels is made clear by that which precedes. The Jews in the wilderness kept not their salvation, but gave themselves up to unbelief and fell. The angels kept not their dominion, but lost their station and fell. To this corresponds the third example: Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities are presented in a similar manner with these (τούτοις), that is, the angels and the Israelites, as an example of such as are exposed to the judgment of the eternal fire, and this on the special ground of their excessive sensuality, and their degenerate going after strange flesh. The words ὄμοιον τρόπον τούτοις stand in relation to πρόκεινται δεῖγμα, and the parenthetical ἐκπορνεύσασα has its special interpretation as referring to the Sodomites. The Israelites in the wilderness furnish an example of a lost condition, as μὴ πιστεύσαντες, the angels as μὴ τηρήσαντες, &c., Sodom and Gomorrah as ἐκπορνεύσασαι, &c. The forms of antinomianism are different, the judgment upon it is throughout the same. The distinction, however, in antinomianism is this, that the Israelites sinned through unbelief in the word of revelation; the angels sinned against the divine ordinance, assigning their position, and in striving, beyond their sphere, after a limitless dominion; the Sodomites sinned against the natural law of the sexual relations, established as a moral foundation of life itself. The antinomists, against whom Jude contended, resemble the before-named in this, that like the Sodomites they pollute the flesh; like the fallen angels they contemn authority; like the unbelieving Israelites they speak evil of δόξας, glories (rendered dignities—visible proofs of the revelation of God in Israel). So, too, in the second chapter of the second Epistle of Peter, the ground-idea is the inexorability of the divine judgment against an obdurate anomism, without giving the special form of that anomism. Of the angels it is merely said that they sinned. God spared them not although they were angels. And so he spared not the whole old world (Genesis 6), on whom there is here no other charge imputed than ἀσέβεια (impiety). So, too, Sodom and Gomorrah are here denoted as having incurred judgment solely under the same point of view. Clearly, however, has the second Epistle of Peter distinguished, in addition, the judgment of the fallen angels from the judgment upon the old world (Genesis 6). The judgment against the angels, the judgment against the old world, and the judgment upon Sodom, are three judgment periods. And these places, it is pretended, exactly confirm the angel-hypothesis! Compare also Fronmüller on the respective places, in the Bible-work.
3. The exegetical tradition. The first interpretation, in which the bne Elohim were sons of the magnates, or great ones, who wooed the daughters of the low-born, Keil denotes as the interpretation of orthodox Judaism. More correctly, however, may it be denoted as the interpretation of the Hebraistic or Palestinian Judaism, in its dry story-telling tendency as represented in the Talmud. The second interpretation Keil rightly describes as that of the ethnizing, cabbalistical Judaism; however zealous Kurtz may be on its behalf (Part i. p. 8). It is not without significance that the first trace of this interpretation appears in single codices of the Septuagint. It is sufficiently acknowledged that the Alexandrian Jews took pains in every way to throw a bridge between the Old Testament and the Greek tradition. Here now appears a fair probable occasion to introduce into the biblical text an analogous story of Sons of God and of divine begettings. Thereupon present themselves two apocryphal books as the first defenders of the angel-hypothesis: the Book of Enoch and the Lesser Genesis. Without doubt Philo found it already in existence, and it suited entirely well with his system; whilst it is acknowledged, too, by the more hebraistic Josephus. That Christian theologians of the Alexandrian school, like Clemens Alexandrinus, uncritical fathers like Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, should find the angel-hypothesis suited to their peculiar notions, is nothing to be wondered at. The fact that from the fourth even to the eighteenth century, with some isolated exceptions, the taste of the church discovered in the angel-hypothesis a suspicious theosophic savor, cannot be set aside.
4. The religious, philosophical, dogmatic, and practical significance of our question. In its relation to the philosophy of religion the angel-hypothesis would have the effect of confounding all the ground conceptions of revelation, and of obliterating its distinctions. It authenticates a fact which perfectly destroys all distinction between revelation and mythology, between a divine miracle and magic, between the biblical conception of nature, as conformity to law, and the wild apocryphal stories. “We stand here,” says Delitzsch, “at the fountain of heathen mythology with its legends, but this primitive golden age, to take it in the sense of heathenism, is divested of all its apotheosizing gaudiness.” Rather may it be said, if we take that view, that an evident myth was implanted in the garden of the primitive religious history; it is therefore not to be wondered at, that all theologians who maintain the mythical character of Genesis, like Knobel for example, should go in most earnestly for the angel-interpretation. “And no less,” adds Delitzsch, “do we stand here, at the fountain of a dark magic that carries us back, if not to a sexual, yet still to an unnatural intercourse with the demons.” We stand rather by the troubled waters of a paganistic apocryphal superstition, where the siren of an apparent theosophic profundity would allure us to plunge into the dark floods of “baseless paradox.” With what sort of superstition this angel-interpretation had already connected itself in early times we may learn from the twenty-second chapter of Tertullian’s Apologetic. When we regard it in its dogmatic relation we find the most wonderful things proceeding from the view in question when fully carried out. There would be a double fall into sin, one in the human, the other in the angelic, family.
The effects of the second fall must be destroyed by a flood, whilst those of the first remain through and after it. The gnosticizing darkening of this place has for a consequence that there should be gradually drawn from it series after series of similar deductions, according to the tenor of its biblical dogmatic process of idealless, anecdotical inventiveness; for example, what is said on the passage (1Pe_3:19-20) respecting Christ’s preaching to the spirits in prison.
Instead of this, we hold that the derivation of the angel-interpretation from an ethnizing, apocryphal, gnostico-cabbalistical tendency in Judaism (as we find it shown in Keil) is the correct one. We hold, too, that Hengstenberg had grounds for the affirmation, when he said: The next thing is, that in the maintaining of this supposed remarkable fact, men are led into uncouth theories, which violate the limits that separate the church’s theology from the chimerical ideas of Jews and Mohammedans, and that one such distortion of a sound theological comprehension may possibly have for its consequence an extensive process of disorder. In like manner does the objection appear well grounded, that the angel-interpretation robs our narrative of all significance and practical applicability. The same practical significance which is exhibited in the history of the Israelites in the wilderness (Numbers 25), and in the time of the Judges in the history of Solomon, in the history also of Ahab, in the history of Herod Antipas—that same significance, though in a more powerful and original way, is presented in the history that lies before us. We may, therefore, with Cyril of Alexandria, reckon the angel-interpretation among the ἀτοπώτατα, things most strange and absurd.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. Gen_6:1-3. When men began.—The increase of men under a physical point of view; especially, too, an increase of daughters.—The Sons of God, that is, the Sethites especially, as sons of Elohim, not of Jehovah, because their relation to God was more universal than that of the later theocracy, and because the Sethic religion had no contrast of the Elohistic, as the later Abrahamic had, since the opposing Cainitic line was not Elohistically pious, but lived an utterly lawless life.—The daughters of men.—Usually taken as the daughters of the other race, that is, the Cainites. But they are the daughters of men wholly in the physical sense, and therefore, too, according to the conception of the natural man, in contrast with the sons of God in the ethical sense, only that the thought is mainly upon the Cainites, in proportion to their greater multiplication.—Saw that they were fair [Lange’s translation: They looked upon them, how fair they were].—We must not reduce the force of the expression by rendering: “they saw that they were fair.” The sensual beauty captivated them.—Took them wives of all.—The phrase לָקַח אִשָּׁה means, everywhere in the Old Testament, to take in marriage, but never occurs in the sense of mere scortatory intermarryings (from which also we must distinguish the sense, to take as concubines).—Which they chose.—The emphasis is on מִכֹּל (of all). From this it follows that the sons of God let themselves be determined by the charm of sense to form connections also with the Cainite women, and so to rend asunder the protecting limits which hitherto had guarded their race from the corruptive contagion. Moreover, the prevalence of polygamy is clearly presented in the expression.—My Spirit shall not always strive with man.—We cannot understand רוּחַ here of the Spirit of God as the spirit of life, but of the Spirit of God in an ethical sense, as it belongs to its office to judge and to punish sinful men. Von Gerlach says, indeed: “the contrast of spirit and flesh in the moral understanding, as in the Epistles of Paul, does not occur in the Old Testament.” But, what is meant here by saying, my spirit shall not tarry in man as spirit of life, for he is flesh? The flesh as flesh does not hinder the life-spirit, but the flesh as corruption repels the Spirit of God (Psa_139:7; Psa_143:10). We take יָדוֹן here in its simplest and most obvious sense, not as the ruling of the life-spirit, nor as the continuance of the same in man (Septuagint), nor as its degradation or depression. In the sinner who is yet capable of salvation the Spirit of God exercises its judicial office. But, when man has become wholly obdurate, God withdraws from him his judging spirit, and thereby he falls into the condemnation of corruption. The circumstance is here incidentally introduced. This is shown by the addition, בְשַׁגָּם, in their erring (which, without any necessity, is turned into a conjunction: בִּאֲשֶׁר גַּם, eo quod; Knobel and Delitzsch), and the emphatic expression: he is flesh, that is, the whole species, like one man, is sunk in its flesh. Still, there is the expression: “My spirit shall not always strive in him;” which means that there is yet a respite appointed for the race, and this is explained by, and explains, what follows: And his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. According to Philo, Josephus, and others, along with Knobel, it means that henceforth the period of human life shall be reduced to one hundred and twenty years. (See in Knobel a series of quotations from the views of the ancients respecting the life-endurance of man, p. 83). According to the Targums, Luther, and many others, as well as Delitzsch and Keil, God appoints a reprieve of grace for one hundred and twenty years, which is yet to be granted to men. Beyond a doubt this is the correct view; since the age of the first patriarchs after the flood extends much beyond one hundred and twenty years. Another reason is, that the supposed shortening of life would be no countervailing rule bearing a proportion to the obduracy of the race, whilst the time-reckoning agrees with the other hypothesis, if we assume that Noah received this revelation twenty years before the time given, Gen_5:32, in order that he might announce it as a threatening of judgment to his contemporaries.
[Note on the Spirit and the Flesh: Gen_6:3.—The various interpretations of רוּחִי here must be tested by their harmony with words in the context. “The life that I have given shall not always rule (or abide) in man.” This does not seem to suit well with לעולם. Shall not long rule, &c., would have been consistent. The word forever makes it the same with the original sentence of death pronounced upon man: he shall not live forever—he shall die. “My spirit shall not strive with man” (morally) makes a good sense in itself, but has little congruity with the reason given: “because he is flesh,” or is inclined to the flesh, whether we take the old or the later interpretation of בשגם. That alone would seem to be a reason why it should continue to strive; since man had been flesh, or inclined to be flesh, ever since the fall. Unless we take it, as Pareus does, as denoting a feeling of hopelessness, ratio ab inutili:it is of no use; but this would be a form of the anthropopathism the least acceptable of all that are presented; unless it be that of some of the Jewish interpreters: “My own mind, or thought, shall no longer be occupied or troubled with him”—I will have no more care about him.
There is another view that may be offered, and which would seem to harmonize these difficulties. Some of the Jewish interpreters approach it, but do not come fully up to it. “My spirit,” meaning man’s spirit (the spirit that I have given him), but in the higher sense of πνεῦμα as distinguished from ψυχή, according to the trichotomic view. The reason, wherein appears the image of God, the spirit in man as something higher than the animal nature, the φρόνημα πνεύματος as distinguished from the φρόνημα σαρκός, may, with a high propriety, be called “my spirit,” as nearest to the divine, or, that in man through which, or in which, the Holy Spirit strives, or comes in connection with the human. It is not always easy, even in the New Testament, to determine whether πνεῦμα, in certain passages, means the rational spirit of man, or the Spirit of God, or both in one joint communion. Von Gerlach has no right to say that “the contrast of spirit and flesh in the moral understanding, as in the Epistles of Paul, does not occur in the Old Testament,” unless it can be shown that this is not a clear case of it.
When רוח is thus regarded as the spiritual, or rational, in man, in distinction from the carnal, the sentence becomes a prediction, instead of a declaration of judgment—a sorrowing prediction, we may say, if we keep in view the predominant aspect or feeling of the passage. The spirit, the reason, that which is most divine in man, will not always rule in him. It has, as yet, maintained a feeble power, and interposed a feeble resistance, but it is in danger of being wholly overpowered. It will not hold out forever; it will not always maintain its supremacy. And then the reason given suits exactly with such a prediction: He is becoming flesh, wholly carnal or animal. If allowed to continue he will become utterly dehumanized, or that worst of all creatures, an animal with a reason, but wholly fleshly in its ends and exercises, or with a reason which is but the servant of the flesh, making him worse than the most ferocious wild beast—a very demon—a brutal nature with a fiend’s subtlety only employed to gratify such brutality. Man has the supernatural, and this makes the awful peril of his state. By losing it, or rather by its becoming degraded to be a servant instead of a lord, he falls wholly into nature, where he cannot remain stationary, like the animal who does not “leave the habitation to which God first appointed him.” The higher being, thus utterly fallen, must sink into the demonic, where evil becomes his god, if not, as Milton says, his good. In this sense of the reason in man, or the φρόνημα πνεύματος, ruling over the flesh, there is a most appropriate significance in ידון, as denoting the judicial power of the conscience, or of the reason as the imperative, the commanding faculty. On these deeper aspects of humanity, consult that most profound psychologist, John Bunyan, in his Holy War, or his History of the Town of Mansoul, its revolt from King Shaddai, its surrender to Diabolus, and its recovery by Prince Immanuel. Bunyan was Bible-taught in these matters, and that is the reason why his knowledge of man goes so far beyond that of Locke, or Kant, or Cousin.
The whole aspect of the passage gives the impression of something like an apprehension that a great change was coming over the race—something so awful and so irreparable, if not speedily remedied, that it would be better that it should be blotted out of earthly existence, all but a remnant in whom the spiritual, or the divine in man, might yet be preserved. Thus regarded, too, as a prediction, it is the ground of the judgment rather than a sentence of judgment itself. It is in mercy to prevent a greater catastrophe; like the language used in reference to the tree of life (see page 241, and note). Men, left to themselves, might have realized upon earth the irrecoverable state of lost spirits, or that combination of the brutal with an utterly degraded reason that makes the demon. In this view, too, the divine sorrow appears heightened in such a way that we can better understand what is meant by God’s “grieving,” and being “pained in heart.” A generation of men is to be removed to prevent the utter dehumanizing of the race. It was this necessity that made the intensity of the sorrow.
Delitzsch has a similar view, but it is strange that he did not see how it is in conflict with his angel-hypothesis. According to that, the deangelizing, if we may use the term, and the consequent dehumanizing, was confined to these higher beings and some of the daughters of men. And yet they are not mentioned as having any part in the catastrophe, or in the immediate evil that occasioned it. Men alone are involved in it, and they because of an excessive sensuality that had made it inevitable. This, however, was purely human; it was man that was in danger of becoming wholly flesh, and it was man for whom God grieved with a divine sorrow. It was man who was in danger of descending into a lower grade of being, even as the ante-Adamic angels who kept not their first estate. The antediluvians were drowned for the salvation of a race, but for some of them, at least, 1Pe_3:19-20, gives us the glimpse of a hope that their condition was not wholly irrecoverable.—T. L.]
2. Gen_6:4. There were giants.—The נְפִלִים, from נָפִיל, used only in the plural, Num_13:33. All the old interpretations take the word as denoting giants, γίγαντες. If we put out of view the monstrous popular representations, there are simply meant by it stately and powerful men. In this sense Tuch explains the word as mentioned before, namely, the distinguished. Keil understands by the word, invaders, according to Aquila (ἐπιπίπτοντες), Symmachus (βιαῖοι), Luther (tyrants). Delitzsch, nevertheless, together with Hofmann, prefers to explain it as the fallen, namely, from heaven, because begotten by heavenly beings. Here from to falt, would he make to fall from, and from this again, to fall from heaven; then this is made to mean begotten of heavenly beings! The sense, cadentes, defectores, apostatœ (see Gesenius), would be more near the truth. “There were giants” (הָיוּ), not, there became giants, which would have required וַיִּהְיוּ for its expression (see Keil). These giants, or powerful men, are already in near cotemporaneity with the transgression of these mesalliances (in those very same days), and this warrants the conclusion of Luther, that these powerful men were doers of violent deeds.—And also after that [Lange renders: and especially after that].—Keil shows that Kurtz makes trial of three mutually inconsistent explanations of this verse, all of which, too, offend against the law of language (p. 89, note). We take גַּם as denoting a climax to the fact already stated. “There were giants in those days, and moreover,” etc. Here it comes nearly to the same thing, whether we render אחרי־כן אשר posteaquam (2Sa_24:10) or postea quum; the fact remains established that the Nephilim were already before the mesalliances.—Came in unto: an euphemistic phrase.—Mighty men [Lange renders it heroes].—A designation, not merely of offspring from the mismarriages, but referring also to the Nephilim who are earlier introduced, as it appears from the appended clause. The author reports things from his own standpoint, and so the expression: “they were of old, men of renown,” affirms their previous existence down to that time. Of these men of old, men of renown, Cain was the first. But now there are added to the Cainites the Cainitic degenerate off-spring of these sensual mesalliances. It was true then, as it has been in all other periods of the world’s history, the men of violent deeds were the men of renown, very much the same whether called famous or infamous. Knobel will have it that there are described here postdiluvian races of giants.
3. Gen_6:5-8. And God saw [Lange correctly: And Jehovah saw].—This increase and universal predominance of evil through the mismarriages gives occasion now for a more decided sentence of Jehovah upon the incurably lost race. The wickedness of man in deeds had not only become great, but the thinkings of the purposes (the phantasies or imaged deeds) of his heart, were wholly evil all the day. Judging from the singular לִבּוֹ, we hold here, as intended, a concentration of the sentence against man. For this reason is it singular.
[Note on the Doctrine of Total Depravity. Gen_6:5.—Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart, כָּל יֵצֶר מַחְשְׁבוֹת לִבּוֹ. The Scriptures, it is said, were not given to teach us mental philosophy, nor do they affect a philosophical language, but here is certainly a psychological scala going down as deeply into the human soul as was ever done by any scholastic treatise. Here are the three stages of the great original evil: the fashioned purpose, the thought out of which it is born, the feeling, or deep mother heart, the state of soul, lying below all, and giving moral character to all. Or, to reverse the order of the statement, there Isaiah , 1. the tohu vabohu, the formless abyss of evil, 2. the thought (the ἔννοια, see Heb_4:12), by which this rises into generic form, 3. the imaged or specific purpose (ἐνθύμησις), through which, again, this thought makes itself manifest in the objective sphere of the active life. In other words, as the thought is the form of the feeling, so is the shaped purpose, or what is here called the imagination, the form of the evil thought. Our Saviour gives the same gradations, Mat_15:19 : “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts” (διαλογισμοὶ πονηροὶ, evil thinkings, reasonings, subjective, not yet shaped into outward intent), and then follows the awful brood of the later born, φόνοι, μοιχεῖαι, κλοπαὶ, βλασφημίαι, “murders, adulteries, thefts, blasphemies.” They are all in the thought; they are all in the mother-heart, that deep seat of moral character that lies below the formative consciousness—that is, the conscious thought and still more conscious purpose. Take the worst one apparently of these hideous births; a man may not have formed the purpose of murder, fear may have kept him from this extreme stage; he may never have entertained the thought consciously, the habitual educating power of law, or other influences of a social or of a gracious kind, may have prevented even this objective form of evil from rising in his soul; but it may lie in his heart nevertheless, and even be active there, for this dark place is not a mere blank capacity, or receptacle, but has its processes, its choosings, its willings, and even its unconscious reasonings. Our Saviour declares neither more nor less than this when he makes it the procreative source of evil thoughts (διαλογισμοὶ), and so does the Apostle, 1Jn_3:15 : “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer.” This idea of the unconscious heart, as underlying all moral character, is deeply grounded in the Hebrew language. Hence the peculiar expression עלה על לב, to ascend, come up, in the heart, or above the heart. See Jer_3:16; 2Sa_11:20, with other places. One of the most striking is in Eze_11:5 : “Thus shall ye say to the house of Israel, מַעֲלוֹת רוּהֲכֶם אֲנִי יְדַעְתִּיהָ, the upgoings of your spirit, I know every one of them,”—implying how deeply unknown they might be in their source, even to those who were the subjects of them.
רַק רַע כָּל הַיּוֹם: Only evil, nothing but evil, all the day—every day, and every moment of every day. If this is not total depravity, how can language express it? There is an intense aversion to the phrase in some minds. It is shared by many who would admit that human depravity is taught in the Bible, and that it is great. This term, however, of our older and more exact theologians, shocks them. The feeling comes, in some measure, from a misapprehension of its true meaning. It is a term of extensity, rather than of intensity. It is opposed to partial, to the idea that man is sinful in one moment, and innocent, or sinless, in another, or sinful in some acts and pure in others. It affirms that he is all wrong, in all things, and all the time. It does not mean that man is as bad as the devils, or that every man is as bad as every other, or that any man is as bad as he possibly may be, or may become. That is, there are degrees of intensity, but no limit to the universality or extent of the evil in the soul. So say the Scriptures, and so says the awakened conscience.
There seems to be an allusion to the psychological division of Gen_6:5, in Heb_4:12. The extent and depth of human sinfulness are kept from the objective consciousness by the ignorance or denial of the threefold distinction here conveyed—the purposes, the thoughts, and the heart. According to the Apostle, it is the office of “the living word (ὁ λόγός ζῶν καὶ ἐνεργὴς, vivid and inworking), sharper than a two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing (the division line) of soul and spirit” (πνεῦμα and ψυχὴ) to make these distinctions, and bring them home to the human conscience. Hence it is called κριτικὸς ἐνθυμήσεων καὶ ἐννοιῶν καρδίας—“a critical discerner (and exposer) of the purposes and the thinkings of the heart.” In this language ἐνθύμησις corresponds locally to יֵצֶר, and ἔννοιαι to מַחְשְׁבוֹת. The terms are no mere redundant tautology, any more than those used above for soul and spirit. The bare dichotomic view fails to explain the language of the Scripture, whether as given in its Greek or Hebrew terms. The Greek words, however, are less precise than the Hebrew, since both ἔννοια and ἐνθύμησις may be used for the purpose or the thought.—T. L.]
And it repented the Lord.—Most truly, as Keil rightly remarks, is this sentence so pronounced on man alone, directly against the angel-interpretation. On that hypothesis the angels must have been the original authors of the corruption; and so in consistency with Genesis 3, where the serpent is first sentenced, ought the first doom here to have been pronounced upon the sinning angels.—It repented Jehovah.—A peculiarly strong anthropopathic expression, which, however, presents the truth that God, in consistency with his immutability, assumes a changed position in respect to changed man (Psa_18:27), and that, as against the impenitent man who identifies himself with the sin, he must assume the appearance of hating the sinner in the sin, even as he hates the sin in the sinner. But that Jehovah, notwithstanding, did not begin to hate man, is shown in the touching anthropomorphism that follows, “and it grieved him in his heart.” The first kind of language is explained in the flood, the second in the revelation of Peter, 1Pe_3:19-20, and Gen_4:6. Against the corruption of man, though extending even to the depths of his heart, there is placed in contrast God’s deep “grieving in his heart.” But as the repentance of God does not take away his unchangeableness and his counsel, but rightly establishes them, so neither does God’s grieving detract from his immutability in blessedness, but shows, rather, God’s deep feeling of the distance between the blessedness to which man was appointed and his painful perdition. Delitzsch does indeed maintain it, as most real or actual truth, that God feels repentance, and he does not equate this position with the doctrine of God’s unchangeableness, unless it be with the mere remark that the pain and purpose of the divine wrath are only moments in an everlasting plan of redemption, which cannot become outward in its efficacy without a movement in the Godhead. And yet movement is not change.—I will destroy man.—To man in the wider sense pertains the human sphere of life; therefore it is said that the beasts too shall be destroyed. Of any corruption that had entered into the animal there is no mention (see Gen_6:12). The perishing of the beasts, therefore, can only have meaning as a sharing in the atonement for human sins (Jer_12:4; Jer_14:5; Hos_4:3; Joe_1:18; Zep_1:3. Knobel). It is rather as a consequence of the dependence of the animal world upon man that it is joined with him in joy and sorrow. We are not to think of it as something personified together with man, but as the symbolic impersonal extension of his organism.—But Noah found grace.—“In these words there breaks forth from the dark cloud of wrath the mercy which gives security for the preservation and restoration of humanity.” Keil.
[Note on the Divine Repenting, Gen_6:6.—We do not gain much by attempts to explain philosophically such states or movements of the divine mind. They are strictly ά̓ῤῥητα—ineffable. So the Scripture itself represents them: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, saith the Lord; as the heavens are high above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts,”—that is, my thinking, my mode of thinking, above your thinking. And then these same Scriptures, so far transcending all philosophy in the abstract declaration of the ineffable difference, furnish us helps by means of finite conceptions, human representations, anthropopathisms, as we learnedly call them, condescensions, “accommodations.” Let us not vainly attempt to get above them, as though they were made for lower minds, whilst we, from some higher position, as it were, can look over them, or see through them, and are thus enabled to dispense with their aid. If they are accommodations, let us be accommodated by them; since here all human minds are very much on a par. Our right feeling is much more concerned in this than our right understanding. We cannot rise to God, and we should reverently adore the effort, if we may so call it, which he makes to come down to us, to enter into the sphere of the finite, to think our thinking, and thus to converse with us in our own language. Without this there can be no intercourse between the infinite and the finite mind. God’s putting himself in the place of man is the idea and the key of all revelation. In this sense, even nature itself has an anthropopathic language. We must put our feet upon the lower rounds of this ladder thus let down to us,—in other words, we must use these accommodations, use them reverently, honestly, thankfully, or have in the mind a total blank in respect to all those conceptions of God that most concern us as moral beings. Talk as we will of impassibility, we must think of God as having πάθη, affections, something connecting him with the human, and, therefore, human in some aspect or measure of agreement. We must either have in our thoughts a blank intellectuality making only an intellectual difference between good and evil (if that can be called any difference at all), or we are compelled to bring in something emotional, and that, too, with a measure of intensity corresponding to other differences by which the divine exceeds the human. Without this, the highest form of scientific or philosophic theism has no more of religion than the blankest atheism. We could as well worship a system of mathematics as such a theistic indifference. The emotional in view of the true and the right, the evil and the false, is a higher thing than the intellectual perception of them, even could we suppose such separable cognition. We do not rightly see the true, or truly see the right, unless we love it; we do not truly see the evil or the false, unless we have the opposite affection. It belongs to the very essence or being of the ideas. Such emotional is the highest thing in man, and is it rational to suppose that all this is a blank in the higher being of God? Reason may sometimes go safely in affirming what it cannot define, and reconcile with other and lower affirmations. Thus here, an intellectual and a moral necessity may compel us to say that the idea of the emotional in the divine has a veritable existence, though the conception utterly fails to reach it; just as reason truly affirms the infinite in mathematics, and with as clear a certainty as that of any finite ratio, though sense and imagination are both transcended by it. It may know that a thing is, that it must be, though not how it is. So here, a moral necessity compels us to hold that there is such a region of the divine emotional, most intensely real,—more real, if we may make degrees, than knowledge or intellectuality—the very ground, in fact, of the divine personal being.
If we would carefully examine, too, our own feelings, we would find that it is not alone a supposed repugnance to reason that is the ground of the difficulty. We do not raise the objection of anthropopathism when love is ascribed to God, and yet it is as strictly anthropopathic as the divine indignation, or the divine sorrow. An unemotional love is utterly inconceivable. It is inseparable, too, from the other elements. Love for the good has no meaning except as involving displeasure at the evil; and sorrow, to speak humanly, is but the blending of the two emotions in view of the loss or marring of the lovely, and the predominance of the unloved. And in this we have the thought so fearful, whilst so attractive and sublime: the intensity of the one must be the measure of the intensity of the other. Depart in the least from the idea of indifferentism, and we have no limit but infinity. God either cares nothing about what we call good and evil—or, as the heaven of heavens is high above the earth, so far do his love for the good, and his hatred of evil, exceed, in their intensity, any corresponding human affection.
The great business, therefore, of the interpreter of Scripture is to determine philologically the nature of the emotion expressed by these words, and then the theologian is to take them in their highest intensity, and in such a way as shall not be in contradiction with other divine attributes, whether given to us by clear reason, or revealed to us in the Scriptures. Thus it will be found that this word, נִחַם, rendered in Niphal to repent, has a dual relation, the first and primary to the feeling, the second to the purpose. The first connects itself with what may be called the onomatepic significance, to sigh, to draw the breath; hence ingemuit, doluit, as Gesenius gives it. Hence pœnituit eum, it repented him, in the sense of sorrow. The anthropopathism thus expressed is the more touching form, and the whole context shows that it is the one predominantly intended here. It is no change of purpose, no confession of mistake, but a most affecting representation of the divine pity and tenderness. The language following shows this: “and he was grieved at the heart,” when he saw how this fair world, which he had once pronounced “good, exceeding good,” had become marred and full of evil. In the course of its applications the word naturally gets also the other or more secondary, yet quite common sense of change of purpose. It is thus used, 1Sa_15:29 : “God will not lie, neither does he repent; he is not man that he should repent”—literally, “man to repent,”—that is, he does not repent like man with change of plan or purpose. The other, and more primary idea, comes also in this very passage relating to Saul, as appears Gen_6:35; unless, contrary to all rules of criticism, we would bring the writer in immediate and palpable contradiction with himself. See also Psa_110:4. The repenting of sorrow is the anthropopathism that is always to be supposed when the language is applied directly to Deity; as Psa_106:45, יַיְנָחֵם כּרֹב הַסְדּו, “and he repented according to the greatness of his mercy;” Psa_90:13, “Return Jehovah—how long!—and let it repent thee concerning thy servants.”
As an instance of the way in which words branch out into various meanings, till they sometimes get almost a reverse sense, it may be noted how this word, in this very conjugation, gets the meaning of revenging, or rather of avenging. It comes from the primary idea of breathing, finding relief from the letting out of pent-up indignation. When thus applied to Deity the anthropopathism is terrific, and yet the context always shows that no other term could so express the vehemency of the indignation; as in Isa_1:24אֶגּחֵם מִצָּרַי, well rendered, to the letter, “I will ease me of mine adversaries;” yet even here there is something touching in the anthropopathism, from the greatness of the long-suffering that appears in the verses preceding. Compare Eze_5:13; Eze_31:16; Eze_32:31. More nearly allied, however, both to the primary, and to the sense we have traced in Genesis 6 is the Piel idea of consolation. It is the sympathizing sorrow, as in Gen_50:21, where Joseph comforts his brethren by palliating their guilt. Its primary sense, as well as its tenderness, appears in what is immediately added, וַיְנַחֵם אוֹתָם וַיְדַבֵּר עַל לִבָּם, “and he soothed them, and spake to their heart.” Compare Isa_40:1, “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,” and especially Psa_23:4, where it expresses the soothing care of the shepherd for the wearied, panting sheep. It is this sense of sympathizing sorrow that makes the exquisite beauty of its tenderness.—T. L.]
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. The character of the Alexandrian Judaism, as inclined to the Gnostic and the apocryphal, needs to be recognized in order that we may estimate its influence upon the old and traditional exegesis of this passage, and on the passage itself as given in the codices of the Septuagint.
2. There is a difference between the biblical and apocryphal measure of the doctrine respecting the demons, analogous to the difference between faith and superstition, or the difference between the sensus communis of a sound theology and the hankering taste of a mere theosophy.
3. The Scripture distinguishes between corrupting mixed-marriages of the pious and the godless, which, according to their point of departure (that is, sensual satisfaction), draw down the nobler part into community with the base, and unlike marriages among those of different religious communions, which may draw up those of lower standing to the stand-point of the more elevated. It is because there lies originally at the ground of the latter a moral motive. To the first class belong, next to our history, the marriage of Esau, the Midianitic connections (Numbers 25, yet only in conditional measure, since, in this case, there is mention only of licentious amours), the marriages of the Israelites with the Canaanitish women (Judges 3), the Delilah of Samson, the foreign wives of Solomon, Jezebel in Israel, Athaliah in Judah (both having a fearful efficacy for the corruption of the people), the daughters of Sanballat (Neh_13:28), who gave occasion for the false worship on Gerizim. To these, if we regard the essence of the matter, we may add the case of Herodias in the New Testament, and connect with them analogous examples in the history of the church and of the world, even to our own day. To the other class belong such cases as that of Thamar, the marriage or the marriages of Moses, the case of Rahab, the marriages of the sons of Naomi (see Book of Ruth), the cases mentioned by Paul, 1Co_7:13, the case of Eunice, 2Ti_1:5, and many examples from old church history, where Christian princesses have been the means of converting heathen husbands, and, through them, of the conversion of whole nations. From this contrast it appears that a mere zeal in the abstract against mixed marriages is not grounded on the Bible, but that it depends on this whether the motive for the contraction of marriage is the instruction of the one who occupies the lower position, or a religious apostasy of the higher. And so, too, the political and civic conception of mesalliances is to be determined by fundamental positions of a moral and religious kind. In the universal treatment of this question, there comes also into consideration the moral predominance and the social priority of the man, as well as the great religious influence of the wife, especially of the zealous, or of the bigoted wife.
4. Between the moral and ennobling satisfaction in female beauty, as, for example, in the love of Jacob and Rachel, and the satisfaction of sensual desire, there is a specific difference. Beyond a doubt, a satisfaction of the latter kind is meant in our text, as plainly appears from the expression: “they took them wives of all (that is, without exception) that pleased them.” Such a wide choice is unknown to the moral love. The language appears, too, to hint at a Cainite polygamy. The expression טֹבוֹת, as used of the daughters of men, is to be thus determined.
5. The Bible conception of whoredom, as it becomes a symbolical designation of a falling away from God into idolatry, determines itself—not solely by the outward mark, that is, as lacking the ritual of marriage—but also by the inward evidence as to whether the spirit-life sinks into sensuality through the sensual connection. And such a sexual life is here evidently intended. As the true marriage becomes a symbol of the connection between Jehovah and his people, because in its looking to the eternal it coheres with it in the generic bridal idea, so does the impure sexual connection become a symbol of apostasy, because it has in common with it the characteristic feature of unspirituality and carnality. It lies, therefore, in the very nature of the thing, that the first kind of sexual intercourse conducts to lawful marriage (the marriage-law), and conforms to the true and faithful in the chastity of the spirit, whilst the latter hates chastity and loves change.
6. Lust and cruelty are psychologically twin-forms, like despotism and mesalliance, or the harem life in all its forms. Jezebel, Athaliah, Herodias, are world-historical types. Women like these have shown themselves to be murderesses of the prophets. So, too, the authoress of Nero’s persecutions had to be his wife Poppæa, a bigoted Jewish proselyte (see Lehman: “Studies in the History of Apostolic Times.” Greifswald, 1856). In this tendency of lust can we explain the common disobedience of degenerate sons towards their pious parents, the disowning of modest Sethite maidens in favor of Cainite beauties, the existence of polygamy and licentious disorder, and, everywhere, what is called “the emancipation of the flesh.” Therefore is it that this race is a prefiguring example of the antinomists of “the last time” (Matthew 24; Epistle of Jude; 2 Peter 2) From the violence of action, moreover, can we explain the oppression of the weak and miserable, and the spreading of infinite sorrow.
7. A physiologist might find it very conceivable, that the offspring of such unbridled lust, as exhibited in the intercourse of the hitherto unimpaired Sethites with the Cainite women, might be a race in whom bodily strength would present itself in an unusual degree, in connection with spiritual savageness. This, however, is doubted by Kurtz (Part 1, p. 82).
8. The first mention of the divine judicial office of the Spirit of God, Gen_6:3.
9. The first mention of worldly favor in instructive and warning significance, Gen_6:4.
10. In respect to God’s repentance, see above (comp. Num_23:19; 1Sa_15:29). A well-known school does not hesitate to bring into the idea of the divine being the conception of mutability, even in its relation to other questions (for example, the doctrine of Communicatio idiomatum). We should, however, always distinguish between symbolic and dogmatic anthropopathism. Besides, we must not confound the judgment of God, Gen_6:5, with the judgment of God, Gen_8:21.
11. Noah found grace. As innocent children died in the flood, and as, moreover, there may have been always individuals less guilty who nevertheless fell under the judgment, so does the grace in the exception of the pious Noah become still more conspicuous. But in Noah, moreover, the kernel, or root-stem of humanity, still remaining comparatively sound, was the subject of the divine mercy. The חֵן, the gracious, fair, and saving condescension, appears here for the first time in full distinctness. This showing grace to Noah in this world casts a ray of light upon the destiny of the innocent infant-world that sunk with the guilty, and of the race generally, as judged in the other world (see 1Pe_3:19; Gen_4:6).
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
The fall and perdition of the first human race in its detail: 1. Ungodly lust; 2. wanton deeds of violence; 3. the lawless commingling of the pious with the godless; 4. disdain of all warnings from the Holy Spirit, and impenitent obduracy in their sensual course.—How the warnings of God die away unheard in a sinking race.—The higher the stand-point the deeper the fall.—The sanctifying of the true feeling of beauty in contrast with the wanton disposition.—The sanctifying of the true hero-power in contrast with the wanton love of violence.—The deep connection between carnality and cruelty.—The sanctifying of marriage. The corrupting effects of unchastity. The contagious power of evil, especially of lust and injustice.—God’s beholding it at all times.—How the divine repenting reflects itself in the heart of the pious Noah.—The godly mourning of the pious over the corruption of these times; its high significance: 1. as an animating sign of the divine compassion; 2. as a terrifying sign of the divine judgment.—How man draws with him, in his doom, the surrounding nature—even in his corruption.—The sufferings of children on account of their parents.—The sufferings of the animal world on account of man.—Noah the chosen of God: 1. As the prophet of the divine spirit and of its judgment upon the earth; 2. as the priest of his house and of a new humanity; 3. as a kingly hero in his steadfastness against a whole race.—The grace of God, how it excepted one man, Noah, out of the common judgment.—Grace for the one, in its effect grace for the many, that is, for the whole coming human race.—The second ancestor a child of grace in the most special sense.—The grace in its first manifestation, how all-powerful, and how wondrously saving.—Noah found grace; therefore he must have sought it, as it sought and found him.—“In his eyes;” consciousness of the grace of the all-knowing God as ever beholding him; this through his communion with God.
Starke: Gen_6:2. Luther: It is a great mercy when the Holy Spirit through its word punishes, and strives with, men; on the contrary, the highest disfavor and punishment when it is withdrawn and leaves the world unpunished.
Gen_6:3 : After the time God gave also to the Amorites four hundred years (Gen_15:16), to the Jews also, after the death of Christ, forty years, to Nebuchadnezzar one year (Dan_4:29), and to Ninevah forty days, for repentance.
Gen_6:4 : The security and carnality of men is a sign of God’s judgments drawing nigh (Mat_24:33-38).—Evil examples (Book of Wis_4:12; Sir_13:1). Reckless and unlike marriages draw after them only clear perdition.—The contempt of the divine word is the most grievous sin, for from it all others have their origin. How great the patience and long-suffering of God! The oppression of the poor and wretched is a great sin, and draws God’s judgment after it.
Gen_6:7 : Though the little ones are comprehended in the calamity, we must not, on that account, charge God with unrighteousness (he might have foreseen that they would tread in the footsteps of their parents, or he may have taken them without prejudice to their soul’s blessedness).
Gen_6:8. Luther: This way of speaking excludes merit and extols faith.—Schröder: The fall first begins its course in the sphere of Adam and Eve’s single personality, then, by and with Cain it enters into the family life, thence showing itself in the members of a whole line, it now reaches its last stage of antediluvian development; it advances to the fall of a world.
Gen_6:1-2. Herder: The more intimate they are, the nearer they live together, the more do they infect each other with their breath, and defile each other with their disease; each becomes to the other the instrument of a more multiplied and subtle evil. All great kingdoms, states, and cities are still mournful evidences of this fact.—Calvin: By such a title of honor (sons of God) Moses upbraids them with their unthankfulness, in that, forsaking their heavenly father, they become outcasts, as it were, and expose themselves to ruin.—Luther: The flood comes not on this account merely, that the race of Cain was corrupt and evil, but because the race of the righteous, who had believed God, had fallen into idolatry. So God does not hasten the last day because heathen, Jews, and Turks are godless, but because, by means of the Pope, and the fanatics, the church itself has become full of errors.—From all, that is, whom they loved, took they to themselves wives. That would be the love of diversity. Or, before all, namely, that to them the female race (the sex without discrimination) had become everything. The worth or unworthiness of the person came not into consideration. Probably it was incest; it was certainly polygamy. Luther: They disdained the simplicity, seriousness, and modest deportment of their young women, which had attracted the holy patriarchs, not amorously, but chastely, and suffered themselves to be pleased with the fondlings, the adorning, and the wantoning that proceeded from the latter (that is, the Cainite) race.
Gen_6:3. Calvin: Moses represents God himself as speaking; thereby would it become more certain that that punishment was as righteous as it was fearful.—Luther: (The judging (or striving) of the spirit relates to a public office in the church, or the preaching of the truth, perhaps to a censure pronounced by Methuselah or Lamech). They are the words of an anxious heart; according to the language of Scripture, God is troubled, that is, the heart of the holy people which is full of love to every man. Such sorrow is properly the sorrow of the Holy Spirit (Eph_4:30).—The same: When the spirit of doctrine is gone there departs also the spirit of prayer.—Calvin: As long as God holds back punishment he contends, to a certain extent, with men, especially if he would draw them to repentance by threatenings, or with light chastenings by way of example. Now he declares, as though in weariness, that he desires no longer to contend.—Berlenburger Bible: Where the Spirit of God is, there it condemns sin. His presence and his discipline are inseparable (Book of Wisdom 12)—The same: Let no one believe that he can do without such a chastening of the Almighty. We see it in little children.—Calvin: This contempt of God gave birth to pride, and, pride full blown, they began to break every yoke. They glorified themselves in their deeds of shame, and became robbers of renown, so called.—The same: That was the first nobility in the world; so that no one might please himself with a longer or more renowned series of ancestors.—The same: There is nothing in itself to be condemned in the desire of celebrity, it is useful that rank should have place in the world; yet, as inordinate ambition ever deserves blame, so, when there is added to it the tyrannical cruelty of the more powerful, in their scorn of the weak, it becomes an intolerable evil.
Gen_6:5-7. Roos: Before, the flood of sins; after it, the sin-flood. Without a doubt has God impressed this feeling upon his saints, though no one in a human way is capable of it, according to its true divine nature. Wrath is proper for a king and a magistrate, but pain (for sin) is peculiar to the Creator, who has love for his creature, and before whose eyes that creature stands as one utterly corrupt, unthankful, and apostate.—The same: A destruction of man and beast must be their end. But, whether this destruction is to be through water or through fire, God has not yet in these words revealed.
Gerlach: The Sethites are here presented as a warning to the Israelites. God allows no one of his greater judgments to take place without giving a respite for repentance after its announcement. Luther’s interpretation takes the repentance and the grieving as the same with that which precedes in the genuine children of God. (Examples which Luther presents: Abraham’s prayer for Sodom; Samuel’s sorrow for Saul; Christ’s weeping over Jerusalem.)
Lisco: Flesh; that is, a people wholly sunk in sin. Despise not thy day of grace.
Calver (Manual): When members of the true church become degenerate, the judgments of God are not distant.—The Nephilim: Despising God above; exercising violence and oppression towards their brethren below. Now are these names unknown, like the names of many others who have sought for empty fame. In the heathen world there are such people as heroes, men honored as demigods; and truly there lie in these and other early indications of Moses, the fountains of many of the heathen legends concerning the gods. (The demigods of the heathen are, in fact, the heroes of humanity, such as Hercules, for example; but they have, doubtless, an original national origin for the most part which does not go back beyond the flood.)—Noah, the one righteous man in an entire corrupt world.—The eyes of the Lord are upon those who fear him.—Taube (p. 48): The judgment of God upon the first world a warning example for our time: 1. In respect to the first world being ripe for judgment; 2. in respect to the manner in which God executed this sentence.—Michow: This is the very climax of corruption, when men will not suffer themselves to be reproved by the spirit of God. The repenting of God (see Num_23:19). It denotes God’s dealing with men, which, though at all times just, must correspond to the behavior of men.
Footnotes:
[1][Gen_6:3.—רוּחִי. Of this there have been nearly as many interpretations as of ידון. It may mean the spirit of God generally, as the mind of God; it may mean the Holy Spirit as a power or influence, or, in the New Testament sense, as a person. It has been interpreted as the spirit or life of man, which God calls רוחי (my spirit), because given by him (as in Psalms 104 and Ecclesiastes 12, before referred to). This latter view may have two modifications: 1. as the life generally, or רוח taken for נפש or ψυχή; or, 2. in the higher sense of πνεῦμα, according to the trichotomy—the higher or rational power in man, and more nearly allied to the divine—the reason as distinguished from the sense, and from the mere inductive intellect judging by sense, and for the sense. The decision between these depends on the context, on the force of לְעוֹלָם, and the true meaning of בשגם הוא בשר; also, on the question whether, taken as a whole, it is the language of a judgment or of a prediction on which the judgment is grounded. On this see the Exegetical and Notes.—T. L.]
[2][Gen_6:3.—לאֹ יָדוֹן. This word has given rise to a great variety of interpretations. The most unsatisfactory, as well as the farthest from the Hebrew usage, is that of Gesenius, who renders it, non humiliabitur, my spirit shall not be humbled, or become vile, in man, regarding it as cognate with the Arabic )ֿזה( ַֿה. There is not a trace of such a sense anywhere else in the Hebrew Scriptures. It is directly opposed to the strong sense of power, superiority, as it appears in the frequent אָדוֹן, lord, master, מָדוֹן, judicial conflict, and the name of Deity, אֲדֹנָי, Dominus. Compare also דּוּן, Job_19:29, judicium. The other form דין, if it is not rather an abbreviated Hiphil of דון, has always this ruling judicial sense, and corresponds to the other Arabic verb )ֿםה( ַֿה. The Arabic verb ֿזה may have come from this by acquiring a modified passive sense. It may be said, too, that the view of Gesenius is out of harmony with the whole spirit of the Scriptures. There is no such thought in the Bible as God’s spirit being humbled by dwelling or striving with men. Its philosophy is all the other way: God’s “strength is made perfect in our weakness.” The LXX. have rendered it, οὐ μὴ καταμείνῃ, shall not remain; the Vulgate the same, non permanebit; the Syriac in like manner, ܐܐ ܬܠܘܠܝܼ, shall not dwell. The LXX. and the Syriac were probably influenced by some early Jewish Targum, since Onkelos gives it substantially the same sense, לֹא יתקים, though he paraphrases the passage. The interpretation of ידון has been much influenced by the interpreters’ view of רוחי following, as denoting the natural life, the spirit or soul which God had given men (see Psa_104:29-30; Ecc_12:7), and they have accordingly given ידון any general sense that, whilst harmonizing with such view, would not be opposed to the radical idea of ruling judicially. Hence we need not regard these old interpreters as having read ידום or ילון, as some have supposed. Another view which is found in some of the Jewish commentators would refer רוחי to the spirit, mind, or disposition of God generally, represented as occupied with the care of man, and, as it were, wearied with it. So Rashi: my spirit within me shall not be disturbed on account of man. Another very strange one mentioned by Aben Ezra connects ידון with the rare noun נדנה, meaning a sheath (1Ch_21:27), as though the body were the sheath of the spirit—shall not always be insheathed, or insheath itself—from the root נדן and they refer to the Aramaic of Dan_7:15, “my spirit was grieved, בְּגוֹ נִדְנֶה, within my body”—literally, within the sheath. But this interpretation, besides being etymologically false, is too far-fetched and inconsistent with the simplicity of the early language. The Arabic translation (Arabs Erpenii) renders itײٌ , to be wholly occupied with, according to the view of Rashi above.—T. L.]
[3][Gen_6:3.—בְּשַׁגַּם. All the old authorities, versions, commentaries, etc., take this, as it is rendered in E. V., as equivalent to בַּאֲשֶׁר גַּם, in that also, or because also. Thus the LXX., διὰ τὸ; Vulg., quia; Syriac, ܘܶܠܠܛܠܽ; Onkelos, בְּדִיל דְּ; Jonath. מִן בִּגְלַל. The Arabic of the Polyglotts, בַ׀וד ָֻׁ םׁ ה Arabs Erpenii, .ױה ַּב. So also the modern versions until very lately. The excellent Arabic version made by our American missionaries, and lately printed, has followed the most modern commentaries and lexicographers, (rashly, we think,) and rendered it בׂ םַ ׀ו ֿױז ָֻ׃, “because of his declination, or straying, he is flesh.” The objection made by Gesenius and Rosenmüller to the abbreviation שׁ for אשר, that it belongs to the later Hebrew, has little weight. There are examples in the oldest books, and the conformity of the writing to the pronunciation is rather a mark of earlier orthography, though it may be afterwards imitated, for brevity, in the later Rabbinical writings. There can hardly be a doubt that בְּשַׁגַּם or בַּשּׁגַּם, basshaggam, would give about the actual pronunciation (especially if rapid) of בַּאֲשֶׁר גּם if written in full—baashergam, basshargam—in which the semi-vowel sound of ר would become very feeble and disappear, as is the case with נ in other combinations, so that shargam would become shaggam; the duplication by the dagesh compensating for the lost ר. And this would answer the question why it is not more frequent in the early books. It is not the settled use of שׁ for אשר (which is a mere orthographical abbreviation of אשר becoming constant in later and Rabbinical writing), but only a following the pronunciation in a peculiarly harsh combination that seldom occurs. The patach in place of the segol (שֶׁ) is explained by the Jewish grammarians, who, as their rich phonetic system clearly shows, understood these matters as well as the modern philologists. The last syllable is lengthened by the tone, and the compensating dagesh requires the sharpening of the preceding one. An objection to the view of Gesenius and others is, that such a use of the infinitive of שׁגג (if it can be regarded as an infinitive) is unexampled in the Hebrew. Besides, this verb or noun, as employed elsewhere, is always used of the more venial errors, or trespasses, and is, therefore, unsuited to the greatness and malignity of the sins here denounced. It may be said, moreover, that הוא, with the plural third person pronoun immediately preceding, is an ungrammatical anomaly.—T. L.]
[4][Gen_6:4.—נְפִלִים, Nephilim. The derivation of this word from נפל, to fall, cannot be sustained, either in the sense of fallen (from heaven), or in that of invaders (ἐπιπίπτοντες, those who fall on—irruentes). It is evidently the ancient name they took to themselves, and that would not be, in the beginning, a name either of degeneracy or reproach. Its connection with פלא ,פלה, is much more clear and consistent. Compare the Niphal, Psa_139:14, נִפְלֶה, and נִפְלָאִים (contracted נִפְלִים); also Exo_33:16, וְנִפְלִינוּ אֲנִי וְעַמְּךָ מִכָּל הָעָם, “and I and thy people shall be distinguished above all people.” When it became a proper name, נִפְלָאִים or נִפְלִים (Niphlim) would easily be changed to נְפִלִים (Nephilim), the shewa becoming movable in the frequent use. Thus viewed, we may regard the expression at the end of the verse, אַנְשֵׁי הַשֵּׁם, as the intended exegesis of the word itself—נפלים, distinguished men; נפלאים, wonderful men—men of name—men of renown. That the same name should have been given afterwards to gigantic robbers, as in Num_13:33, is very natural, whether regarded as applied from a tradition of these wonderful men of old or from inherent fitness. וְגַם אַהֵרֵי כֵן, and also afterwards—clearly intimating that some of these Nephilim, or wondrous men of violence, had existed before this event, or from of old (a time comparatively ancient, going back to the days of old Cain), and that after these mesalliances, whatever they may be, there was an increase of such persons.—T. L.]
[5][Gen_6:6.—יַיִּנָּחֶם. LXX., ἐνεθυμήθη; Vulg., Pœnituit eum. The Syriac and Arabic make it the repentance of grief; the Samaritan version strangely renders it אתנפח, iratus fuit, he was fiercely enraged, making it the repentance of anger. Both the Targums say: וְתָב יְיָ, and Jehovah repented, but qualify it by בְּמֵימְרֵהּ following—that is, in his word, or by his word. What they meant by this is not very clear, but it is one of the methods they take of avoiding the seeming anthropopathisms of the Old Testament, of which the Jewish translators, paraphrasts, and commentators, seem to have been more afraid than the Christian. Farther, see Exegetical and Notes.—T. L.]
[6][Gen_6:6.—וַיִּתְעַצֵּב אֶל לִבּוֹ. The LXX. give no translation of this, or they have softened it into διενοήθη. The Targums also leave it out, and put in its place a mere paraphrastic repetition of what follows. Among the Jewish commentators Aben Ezra worthily calls attention to its contrast with the language Gen_1:31. It is the opposite, he says, of God’s rejoicing in his works, now that evil has so grossly come in and marred it all. See Exegetical and Notes.—T. L.]
[7]This Discussion has been somewhat abridged by the Translator.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 22 flesh--utterly, hopelessly debased.
flesh--utterly, hopelessly debased.
And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive--Christ, as God, had by His Spirit inspiring Enoch, Noah, and perhaps other prophets (Pe1 3:20; Pe2 2:5; Jde 1:14), preached repentance to the antediluvians; but they were incorrigible.
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yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years--It is probable that the corruption of the world, which had now reached its height, had been long and gradually increasing, and this idea receives support from the long respite granted.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22 After finishing the genealogical records of the Cainites and…
ANTEDILUVIAN WICKEDNESS, 1-8.
After finishing the genealogical records of the Cainites and Sethites, the narrative now, in the short section, Gen_6:1-8, returns to a general description of the antediluvian race. Having distinctly traced each family down to the time of Noah, the writer now describes the mingling of the two which resulted in the widespread corruption that immediately preceded the deluge. So this introduction to the history of the Deluge is properly connected with the “generations of Adam,” (Gen_5:1,) rather than with the “generations of Noah.” Comp. Introd., p. 50.
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The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–22 1. men] Heb. ha-adam, i.e. “the man.” It is…
1. men] Heb. ha-adam, i.e. “the man.” It is not the proper name “Adam”; nor is it “the man” as an individual as in Gen_3:24, Gen_4:1 : but “the man” collectively, in the sense of “the human race,” LXX οἱ ἄνθρωποι. This use of the word is different from anything in the Paradise Narrative: see Gen_5:1.
began to multiply] No account is taken of (a) the description of the growth of the population, and of (b) the genealogies of Cainites and Sethites, which have occupied chaps. Gen_4:17-25; Gen_4:5.
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Ch. Gen_6:1 to Gen_9:29. The Deluge
1–4. The sons of God and the daughters of men] This short strange passage serves as a kind of Preface to the Narrative of the Deluge. There is nothing to be found quite like it elsewhere in the O.T. It obviously is not a continuation of the previous chapter; and, except for a possible, though most disputable, allusion in the mention of the 120 years (Gen_6:3), its contents do not presuppose the catastrophe of the Flood. In all probability, we should be right in regarding these four verses as a fragment from some quite independent source of early Hebrew tradition, most certainly distinct from the regular materials represented in J and P.
The mention of the marriages between “the sons of God” and “the daughters of men” is clearly a survival of early Hebrew mythology. It accounted for the existence of an Israelite tradition respecting a primitive race of giants. There are traces, in the literature of other countries, of a similar belief in fabulous giants, or semi-divine heroes, who lived in a far-remote age of antiquity.
The tradition preserved in this brief fragment is condensed, and the language is not free from obscurity. There are, however, allusions in other parts of the O.T. (see note on Gen_6:4) to the race of giants which was believed not to have been extinct at the time of the occupation of Palestine by the Israelite tribes. Such a belief was incompatible with the tradition that all the primaeval dwellers in the world, except Noah and his family, perished in the waters of the Flood (Gen_7:21-23). If, therefore, the impious unions of angels with the daughters of men were considered to account for the existence of a giant human race surviving in later times, the tradition which recorded them must have been quite distinct from, and independent of, the tradition of a universal Flood.
As an isolated survival of Hebrew mythology, it furnishes an instructive reminder, that the popular ideas of Israel concerning primaeval times may be presumed, at least originally, to have resembled those of other nations. They were pervaded by fanciful and legendary elements. We must realize that the spiritual teaching of the religion of Jehovah was responsible for an extensive purgation of the traditions which described the beginnings of the world and of the Israelite people. Polytheistic and unedifying materials were most successfully excluded in the compilation of the Hebrew sacred books. The result is simple, dignified, and elevating. We have in these four verses a glimpse of the material which for the most part was rigorously discarded.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 (1) When men (the adam) began to multiply.—The multiplication…
VI.
(1) When men (the adam) began to multiply.—The multiplication of the race of Adam was probably comparatively slow, because of the great age to which each patriarch attained before his first-born was brought into the world: though, as the name given is not necessarily that of the eldest, but of the son who enjoyed the birthright, it does not follow that in every case the one named was absolutely the eldest son. There may have been other substitutions besides that of Seth for Cain; and Noah, born when his father was 182 years of age, seems a case in point. He was selected to be the restorer of mankind because of his piety, and may have had many brothers and sisters older than himself. Each patriarch, however, begat “sons and daughters,” and as we find Cain building a city, he must have seen, at all events, the possibility of a considerable population settling round him. It was probably, as we saw above, about the time of Enoch that the corruption of the family of Adam began to become general.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. H. Mackintosh 1880 · Public Domain On v1 Genesis 6
Genesis 6
We have, now, arrived at a deeply-important and strongly-marked division of our book. Enoch has passed off the scene. His walk, as a stranger on earth, has terminated in his translation to heaven. He was taken away before human evil had risen to a head, and, therefore, before the divine judgement had been poured out. How little influence his course and translation had upon the world, is manifest from the first two verses of chapter 6. "And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose."
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The mingling of that which is of God with that which is of man, is a special form of evil, and a very effectual engine, in Satan’s hand, for marring the testimony of Christ on the earth. This mingling may frequently wear the appearance of something very desirable; it may often look like a wider promulgation of that which is of God - a fuller and a more vigorous outgoing of a divine influence - a something to be rejoiced in rather than to be deplored: but our judgement as to this will depend entirely upon the point of view from which it is contemplated. If we look at it in the light of God’s presence, we cannot possibly imagine, that an advantage is gained when the people of God mingle themselves with the children of this world; or when the truth of God is corrupted by human admixture. Such is not the divine method of promulgating truth, advancing the interests of those, who ought to occupy the place of witnesses for Him on the earth. Separation from all evil is God’s principle; and this principle can never be infringed without serious damage to the truth.
In the narrative now before us, we see that the union of the sons of God with the daughters of men led to the most disastrous consequences. True, the fruit of that union seemed exceedingly fair, in man’s judgement, as we read, "the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown;" yet, God’s judgement was quite different. He seeth not as man seeth. His thoughts are not as ours. "God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." Such was man’s condition before God - "evil only" - "evil continually." So much for the mingling of the holy with the profane. Thus it must ever be. If the holy seed will not maintain its purity, all must be forfeited as regards testimony on the earth. Satan’s first effort was to frustrate God’s purpose by putting the holy seed to death, and when that failed; he sought to gain his end by corrupting it.
Now it is of the deepest moment, that my reader should clearly understand the aim, the character, and the result of this union between "the sons of God" and the daughters of men. There is great danger, at the present day of compromising truth for the sake of union. This should be carefully guarded against. There can be no union attained at the expense of truth. The true Christian’s motto should ever be - "maintain truth at all cost; if union can be promoted in this way, so much the better, but maintain the truth." The principle of expediency, on the contrary may be thus enunciated, - "promote union at all cost; if truth can be maintained as well, so much the better, but promote union." This latter principle can only be carried out at the expense of all that is divine in the way of testimony.* There can, evidently, be no true testimony where truth is forfeited; and hence, in the case of the antediluvian world, we see that the unhallowed union between the holy and the profane-between that which was divine and that which was human, only had the effect of bringing the evil to a head, and then God’s judgement was poured out.
{*We should ever bear in mind, that "the wisdom which is from above is first pure, then peaceable." (James 3: 17) The wisdom which is from beneath would put "peaceable" first, and, therefore, it can never be pure.}
"The Lord said, I will destroy man." Nothing less would do. There must be the entire destruction of that which had corrupted God’s way on the earth. "The mighty men, and men of renown," must all be swept away, without distinction. "all flesh" must be set aside, as utterly unfit for God. "The end of all flesh is come before me." It was not merely the end of some flesh; no, it was all corrupt, in the sight of Jehovah - all irrecoverably bad. It had been tried, and found wanting; and the Lord announces His remedy to Noah in these words, "Make thee an ark of gopher wood."
Thus was Noah put in possession of God’s thoughts about the scene around him. The effect of the word of God was to lay bare the roots of all that which man’s eye might rest upon with complacency and pride. The human heart might swell with pride, and the bosom heave with emotion, as the eye ran down along the brilliant ranks of men of art, men of skill, "men of might "men of renown." The sound of the harp and the organ might send a thrill through the whole soul, while at the same time, the ground was cultivated, and man’s necessities were provided for in such a way as to contradict every thought in reference to approaching judgement. But oh I those solemn words, "I will destroy"; What a heavy gloom they would necessarily cast over the glittering scene! Could not man’s genius invent some way of escape? Could not "the mighty man deliver himself by his much strength?" Alas! no: there was ONE way of escape, but it was revealed to faith, not to sight, not to reason, not to imagination.
By faith Noah, being warned of God, of things not seen as yet, moved with fear (eulabetheis) prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is of faith; (Heb 11: 7) The word of God brings His light to shine upon all that by which man’s heart is deceived. It removes completely the gilding with which the serpent covers a vain, deceitful, passing world over which hangs the sword of divine judgement. But it is only faith that will be "warned of God," when the things of which He speaks are "not seen as yet; Nature is governed by what it sees - it is governed by it’s senses, Faith is governed by the pure word of God; (inestimable treasure in this dark world!") This gives stability, let outward appearances be what they may. When God spoke to Noah of judgement impending, there was no sign of it. It was "not seen as yet;" but the word of God made it a present reality to the heart that was enabled to mix that word with faith. Faith does not wait to see a thing, ere it believes, for "faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God."
All that the man of faith needs, is to know that God has spoken; this imparts perfect certainty to his soul. "Thus saith the Lord," settles everything. A single line of Sacred Scripture is an abundant answer to all the reasonings and all the imaginations of the human mind; and when one has the word of God as the basis of his convictions, he may calmly stand against the full tide of human opinion and prejudice. It was the word of God which sustained the heart of Noah during his long course of service; and the same word has sustained the millions of God’s saints, from that day to this, in the face of the world’s contradiction. Hence, we cannot set too high a value upon the word of God. Without it, all is dark uncertainty; with it, all is light and peace. Where it shines, it marks out for the man of God a sure and blessed path; where it shines not, one is left to wander amid the bewildering mazes of human tradition. How could Noah have "preached righteousness," for 120 years, if he had not had the word of God as the ground of his preaching? How could he have withstood the scoffs and sneers of an infidel world? How could he have persevered in testifying of "judgement to come," when not a cloud appeared on the world’s horizon? Impossible. The word of God was the ground on which he stood, and "the Spirit of Christ" enabled him to occupy, with holy decision, that elevated and immovable ground.
And now, my beloved Christian reader, what else have we wherewith to stand, in service for Christ, in an evil day, like the present? Surely, nothing; nor do we want ought else. The word of God, and the Holy Ghost by whom, alone, that word can be understood, applied or used, are all we want to equip us perfectly-to furnish us thoroughly, "to all good works," under whatever head those works may range themselves. (2 Tim 3: 16, 17) What rest for the heart? What relief from all Satan’s imagery, and man’s imaginations! God’s pure, incorruptible, eternal word May our hearts adore Him for the inestimable treasure "Every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was only evil continually;" but God’s word as the simple resting-place of Noah’s heart.
"God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me......Make thee an ark of gopher wood. Here was man’s ruin, and God’s remedy. Man had been allowed to pursue his career to the utmost limit, to bring his principles and ways to maturity. The leaven had worked and filled the mass. The evil had reached its climax. "All flesh" had become so bad that it could not be worse; wherefore nothing remained but for God to destroy it totally; and, at the same time, to save all those who should be found, according to His eternal counsels, linked with "the eighth person" - the only righteous man then existing. This brings out the doctrine of the cross, in a very vivid manner. There we find, at once, God’s judgement of nature with all its evil; and, at the same time, the revelation of His saving grace, in all its fullness, and in all its perfect adaptation to those who have really reached the lowest point of their moral condition, as judged by Himself. (The day-spring from on high hath visited us." (Luke 1: 78) Where? Just where we are, as sinners. God has come down to the very deepest depths of our ruin. There is not a point in all the sinner’s state to which the light of that blessed day-spring has not penetrated; but, if it has thus penetrated, it must, by virtue of what it is, reveal our true character. The light must judge everything contrary to itself; but, while it does so, it also "gives the knowledge of salvation through the remission of sins." The cross, while it reveals God’s judgement upon" all flesh," reveals His salvation for the lost and guilty sinner. Sin is perfectly judged - the sinner perfectly saved - God perfectly revealed, and perfectly glorified, in the cross.
If my reader will turn, for a moment, to the First Epistle of Peter, he will find much light thrown upon this entire subject. At the third chapter, verse 18, we read, "for Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: by which (Spirit) he went and preached (through Noah) to the spirits (now) in prison; which once were disobedient, when the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, wherein few, that is eight souls, were saved through water (di udatos); to which the anti type (antitupon) baptism doth also now save us, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, (as by water,)* but the answer of a good conscience toward God, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who, having gone into heaven, is at the right hand of God, angels, and authorities, and powers, being made subject to him."
{*It is impossible to over-estimate the wisdom of the Holy Ghost, as seen in the way in which He treats the ordinance of baptism, in the above remarkable passage. We know the evil use which bas been made of baptism, - we know the false place it has gotten in the thoughts of many, - we know how that the efficacy, which belongs only to the blood of Christ, has been attributed to the water of baptism, - we know how the regenerating grace of the Holy Ghost has been transferred to water baptism; and, with the with the knowledge of all this, we cannot but be struck with the way in which the Spirit of God guards the subject, by stating, that it is not the mere washing away of the filth of the flesh, as by water, But the answer of a good conscience toward God," which "answer" we get, not by baptism, how important soever it may be, as an ordinance of the kingdom, but "by the resurrection of Jesus Christ Who was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification."
Baptism, I need hardly say, as an ordinance of divine institution, and in its divinely-appointed place, is most important and deeply significant; but when we find men, in one way or another, putting the figure in place of the substance, we are bound to expose the work of Satan by the light of the word of God.}
This is a most important passage. It sets the doctrine of the ark and its connection with the death of Christ very distinctly before us. As in the deluge, so in the death Christ, all the billows and waves of divine judgement passed over that which, in itself, was without sin. The creation was buried beneath the flood of Jehovah’s righteous wrath; and the Spirit of Christ exclaims, "All thy billows and thy waves have gone over me." (Ps. 42: 7) Here is a profound truth for the heart and conscience of a believer. "All God’s billows and waves" passed over the spotless Person of the Lord Jesus, when He hung upon the cross; and, as a most blessed consequence, not one of them remains to pass over the person of the believer. At Calvary we see, in good truth, "the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven opened." "Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts." Christ drank the cup, and endured the wrath perfectly. He put Himself, judicially, under the full weight of all His people’s liabilities, and gloriously discharged them. The belief of this gives settled peace to the soul. If the Lord Jesus has met all that could be against us, if He has removed out of the way every hindrance, if He has put away sin, if He has exhausted the cup of wrath and judgement on our behalf, if He has cleared the prospect of every cloud, should we not enjoy settled peace? Unquestionably. Peace is our unalienable portion. To us belong the deep and untold blessedness, and holy security, which redeeming love can bestow on the righteous ground of Christ’s absolutely accomplished work.
C. H. Mackintosh, Notes on the Pentateuch — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22 Vers. 1, 2. And it came to pass. Literally,…
Vers. 1, 2. And it came to pass. Literally, it was; not in immediate sequence to the preceding chapter, but at some earlier point in the antediluvian period; perhaps about the time of Enoch (corresponding to that of Lamech the Cainite), if not in the days of Enos. Havernick joins the passage with Gen_4:26. When menha"adham, i.e. the human race in general, and not the posterity of Cain in particular (Ainsworth, Rosenm Bush) began to multiply in virtue of the Divine blessing (Gen_1:28) on (or over) the face of the earth. "Alluding to the population spreading itself out as well as increasing" (Bonar). And daughters were born unto them. Not referring to any special increase of the female sex (Lange), but simply indicating the quarter whence the danger to the pious Sethites rose: who became snares to the race of Seth" (Wordsworth). That the sons of God. Bene-ha Elohim.
1. Not young men of the upper ranks, as distinguished from maidens of humble birth (Onk., Jon., Sym., Aben Ezra); an opinion which "may now be regarded as exploded" (Lange).
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2. Still less the angels (LXX, some MSS. having aggeloi tou qeou,Philo, Josephus, Justin Martyr, Clement, Tertullian, Luther, Gesenius, Rosenm Von Bohlen, Ewald, Baumgarten, Delitzsch, Kurtz, Hengstenberg, Alford); for
(1) they are either good angels, in which case they might be rightly styled sons of God (Psa_29:1 Psa_89:7; Job_1:6 Job_2:1 Job_38:7; Dan_3:25) though it is doubtful if this expression does not denote their official rather than natural relationship to God, but it is certain they would not be guilty of the sin here referred to; or they are bad angels, in which ease they might readily enough commit the sin, if it were possible, but certainly they would not be called "the sons of God.
(2) The statement of Jude (vers. 6, 7), though seemingly in favor of this interpretation, does not necessarily require it; since
(a) it is uncertain Whether the phrase "totoiv tropon ejkporneusasai kaisw sarkorav" refers to the angels or to "aiJ peri aujtaleiv," in which case the antecedent of toutoiv will not be the ajggeloi of ver. 6, but Sodoma kaimorjrJa of ver. 7;
(b) if even it refers to the angels it does not follow that the parallel betweenthe cities and the angels consisted in the "going after strange flesh," and not rather in the fact that both departed from God, the sin of the apostate angels being in God s view a sin of like kind spiritually with Sodom"s going away from God"s order of nature after strange flesh" (Fausset);
(c) again, granting that Jude"s language describes the sin of the angels as one of carnal fornication with the daughters of men, the sin of which the sons of Elohim are represented as guilty is not porneia, but the forming of unhallowed matrimonial alliances. Hence
(3) the assertion of our Lord in Luk_20:35 is inconsistent with the hypothesis that by the sons of God are meant the angels; and
(4) consistent exegesis requires that only extreme urgency, in fact absolute necessity (neither of which can be alleged here), should cause the sons of God to be looked for elsewhere than among the members of the human race.
3. The third interpretation, therefore, which regards the sons of God as the pious Sethites (Cyril of Alexandria, Theodoret, Augustine, Jerome, Calvin, Keil, Havernick, Lange, Murphy, Wordsworth, Quarry, "Speaker"s Commentary"), though not without its difficulties, has the most to recommend it.
(1) It is natural, and not monstrous.
(2) It is Scriptural, and not mythical. (cf. Nu 25 Jud_1:3 1Ki 11 1Ki 16 Re 2., for sins of a similar description)
(3) It accords with the designation subsequently given to the pious followers of God (cf. Deu_14:1 Deu_32:5; Psa_73:15; Pro_14:26; Luk_3:38; Rom_8:14; Gal_3:26)
(4) It has a historical basis in the fact that Seth was regarded by his mother as a son from God, (Gen_4:25) and in the circumstance that already the Sethites had begun to call themselves by the name of Jehovah. (Gen_4:26) Dathius translates, "qui de nomine Dei vocabantur.
(5) It is sufficient as a hypothesis, and therefore is entitled to the preference. Saw the daughters of men (not of the Cainitic race exclusively, but of men generally) that they were fair, and had regard to this alone in contracting marriages. "Instead of looking at the spiritual kinsmanship, they had an eye only to the pleasure of sense" (Lange). "What the historian condemns is not that regard was had to beauty, but that mera libido regnaverit in the choice of wives" (Calvin). And they took them wives. Lakachisha," a standing expression throughout the Old Testament for the marriage relationship established by God at the creation, is never applied to porneia, or the simple act of physical connection, which is sufficient of itself to exclude any reference to angels" (Keil; cf. Gen_4:19 Gen_12:19 Gen_19:14; Exo_6:25; 1Sa_25:43) Of all whom they chose. The emphasis on lKofi (of all) signifies that, guided by a love of merely sensual attractions, they did not confine themselves to the beautiful daughters of the Sethite race, but selected their brides from the fair women of the Cainites, and perhaps with a preference for these. The opinion that they selected both virgins and wives, they cared, not, whom," and "took them by violence (Willet), is not warranted by the language of the historian. The sons of God were neither the Nephilim nor the Gibborim afterwards described, but the parents of the latter. The evil indicated is simply that of promiscuous marriages without regard to spiritual character.
Vers. 1-8.
The days that were before the flood (Mat_24:38)
I SIN INCREASING.
1. Licentiousness raging. The special form it assumed was that of sensuous gratification, leading to a violation of the law of marriage. In the seventh age Lamech the Cainite became a polygamist. By and by the sons of God, captivated by the charms of beauty, cast aside the bonds of self-restraint, and took them wives of all whom they chose.
(1) They married with ungodly women, beautiful, perhaps talented and accomplished, like the Adahs, Naamahs, and Zillahs of the race of Cain, but unbelieving and ungodly, which, as the professing followers of Jehovah, they should not have done. Holy Scripture forbids the union of believers with unbelievers. (2Co_6:14)
(2) They married to please their fancies, leaving altogether out of reckoning, as necessary qualifications in their partners, spiritual affinity, intellectual compatibility, and even general suitability, and fixing their eyes only on what charmed the senses, physical loveliness.
(3) They married as many wives as they desired. Lamech, the first polygamist, was satisfied with two; the degenerate sons of Seth, having yielded to self-indulgence, only limited their wives by the demands of their passion.
1. Violence prevailing. Those who begin by breaking the laws of God are not likely to end by keeping those of man. From the beginning a characteristic of the wicked line (witness Cain and Lamech), lawlessness at length passed over to the holy seed. What with the Nephilim. on the one hand (probably belonging to the line of Cain) and the Gibborim on the other (the offspring of the degenerate Sethites), the world was overrun with tyrants. Sheer brute force was the ruler, and the only code of morals was "Be strong." Moral purity alone has a God-given right to occupy the supreme seat of influence and power upon the earth. After that, intellectual ability. Mere physical strength, colossal stature, immense bulk, were designed for subjection and subordination. The subversion of this Divinely-appointed order results in tyranny; and, of all tyrannies, that of strong, coarse, passion-driven animalism is the worst. And this was the condition of mankind in these antediluvian ages. And what was even a worse symptom of the times, the people loved to have it so. Those lawless robbers and tyrants and these reckless, roving gallants were men of name and fame, in everybody"s mouth, as the popular heroes of the day. As mere physical beauty was woman"s pathway to marriage, so was sheer brute force, displaying itself in feats of daring and of blood, man"s road to renown.
2. Corruption deepening. Most appalling is the picture sketched by the historian of the condition of the Adam whom God at first created in his own image, implying
(1) Complete extinction of the higher nature. Through persistence in the downward path of sin it had at length become lost, swallowed up, in the low, carnal portion of his being called the flesh.
(2) Complete supremacy of evil evil in the imaginations, evil in the thoughts, evil in the heart, nothing but evil; and that not temporarily, but always; nor in the case of one or two individuals merely, but in the case of all, with one solitary exception.
(3) Complete insensibility to Divine influences. Hence the withdrawal of God"s Spirit. There was no use for further striving to restrain or improve them; they were past feeling". (Eph_4:19)
II GOD REPENTNG.
1. A mysterious fact. "We do not gain much by attempting to explain philosophically such states or movements of the Divine mind. They are
2. strictly arjrJhta ineffable. So the Scripture itself represents them Isa 4 (Taylor Lewis). What is here asserted of the Divine thoughts is likewise true of the Divine emotions; like the Deity himself, they are past finding out.
3. A real fact. The language describes something real on the part of God. If it is figurative, then there must be something of which it is the figure; and that something is the Divine grief and repentance. These, however, are realities that belong to a realm which the human intellect cannot traverse. As of the Divine personality man"s personality is but an image or reflection, so of the Divine affections and emotions are man"s affections and emotions only shadows. Man repents when he changes his mind, or his attitude, or his actions. God repents when his thoughts are changed, when his feelings are turned, when his acts are reversed. But God is "of one mind, and who can turn him?" He is "without variableness and shadow of turning;" "the same yesterday, today, and for ever." Hence we rather try to picture to ourselves the Divine penitence as expressive of the changed attitude which the immutable Deity maintains towards things that are opposite, such as holiness and sin.
1. An instructive fact, telling us
1. that the Divine nature is not impassible;
2. that sin is not the end of man"s creation; and
3. that a sinful man is a disappointment to God.
4. An ominous fact. As thus explained, the grief and penitence of God describe the effect which human sin ever have upon the Divine nature. It fills him with heart-felt grief and pity. It excites all the fathomless ocean of sympathy for sinning men with which his infinite bosom is filled. But at the same time, and notwithstanding this, it moves him to inflict judicial retribution. "And the Lord said, I will destroy man.
III GRACE OPERATING.
1. In restraining sinners. It was impossible that God could leave men to rush headlong to their own destruction without interposing obstacles in their path. In the way of these apostates of the human race he erected quite a series of barriers to keep them back from perdition. He gave them
(1) a gospel of mercy in the promise of the woman"s seed;
(2) a ministry of mercy, raising up and maintaining a succession of pious men to preach the gospel, and warn them against the ways of sin;
(3) a Spirit of mercy to strive within them;
(4) a providence of mercy,
(a) measuring out to them a long term of years, yet
(b) solemnly reminding them of their mortality, and finally
(c) giving them a reprieve, even after they were sentenced to destruction. 2. In sarong believers.
(1) Accepting them as he accepted Noah;
(2) preserving them amid the general defection of the times, as he did Noah, who without Divine assistance must have been inevitably swept away in the general current of ungodliness;
(3) providing for their safety against the coming judgment. They were all removed by death before the flood came, and Noah was delivered by the ark.
Lessons:
1. The terrible degeneracy of human nature.
2. The danger of mixed marriages.
3. God may pity, but he must likewise punish, the evil-doer.
4. The day of grace has its limits.
5. If a soul will go to perdition, it must do so over many mercies.
6. God never leaves himself without a witness, even in the worst of times.
HOMILIES BY R.A. REDFORD Vers. 1-8.
The work of sin.
The moral chaos out of which the new order is about to be evolved. We find these features in the corrupt state depicted.
I ILL-ASSORTED MARRIAGES. The sons of Godi.e. the seed of the righteous, such men as the patriarchs described in Genesis 5., men who walked with God, and were his prophets fell away from their allegiance to the Divine order, and went after the daughters of the Cainites, The selfwill and mere carnal affections are denoted by the expression "all whom they chose.
II VIOLENCE AND MILITARY AMBITION. The giants were the "nephilim," those who assaulted and fell upon their neighbors. The increase of such men is distinctly traced to the corrupt alliances.
III THE WITHDRAWAL by judgment of THE DIVINE SPIRIT from marl, by which may be meant not only the individual degeneracy which we see exemplified in such a case as Cain, driven out from the presence of the Lord, given up to a reprobate mind, and afterwards in Pharaoh; but the withdrawal of prophecy and such special spiritual communications as had been given by such men as Enoch.
IV THE SHORTENING OF HUMAN LIFE. Since the higher moral influence of Christianity has been felt in society during the last three centuries, it is calculated that the average length of human life has been increased twofold. The anthropomorphism of these verses is in perfect accordance with the tone of the whole Book of Genesis, and is not in the least a perversion of truth. It is rather a revelation of truth, as anticipating the great central fact of revelation, God manifest in the flesh. But why is God said to have determined to destroy the face of the earth, the animal creation with the sinful man? Because the life of man involved that of the creatures round him. "The earth is filled with violence." To a large extent the beasts, creeping things, and fowls of the air participate in the disorder of the human race, being rendered unnaturally savage and degenerate in their condition by man"s disorderly ways. Moreover, any destruction which should sweep away a whole race of men must involve the lower creation. The defeat of a king is the defeat of his subjects. In all this corruption and misery there is yet, by the grace of God, one oasis of spiritual life, the family of Noah. He found grace not because he earned it, but because he kept what had been given him, both through his ancestors and by the work of the Spirit in his own heart. R.
HOMILIES BY W. ROBERTS Vers. 1-5.
The demoralization of the race.
This was due to
I THE LONG LIVES OF THE ANTEDILUVIANS. Long life, if helpful to the good, is much more injurious to the wicked. Giants in health and life are often giants in wickedness.
II THE UNHOLY ALLIANCES OF THE SETHITES AND CAINITES. Nothing so demoralizing as marriage with an evil woman. Its bad effects are commonly transmitted to, and intensified in, posterity.
III THE DEPRAVITY INDUCED BY THE FALL, which was universal in its extent, and gradually deepening in its intensity.
Lessons:
1. The inherent evil of our natures.
2. The curse clinging to ungodliness.
3. The true function of worldly sorrows and of frequent and early death. W.R.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 18, 22 The sons of God saw the daughters of men…
Gen_6:1-2
The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose
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Sons of God different from the daughters of men
1.
In disposition.
2. In profession.
3. In moral character.
4. In eternal destiny. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Sons of Elohim and daughters of men
Opinions have differed greatly as to the meaning of the name Sons of God, or rather of Elohim. The rabbis, as was natural, from their love of the marvellous, took for granted that the fallen angels are meant; since nephilim is derived from the verb to fall. Hence Apocryphal Jewish literature assumes this constantly, while not a few writers of the most opposite schools still support this explanation, which, nevertheless, seems fanciful and ungrounded. The giants are not said to have been the sons of Elohim, and their name may as fitly be explained as referring to their falling upon their fellow men as by any mysterious connection with the rebel angels. Nor does the name sons of Elohim necessarily refer to angels at all; for the word Elohim is used elsewhere in Scripture of men. Thus, in Psa_82:1, we read that God judges in the midst of the Elohim, who are shown in the next verse to be those who judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked. The name is evidently given them from their office, in which they represented, in Israel, the supreme judge of the nation--Jehovah. Jewish interpreters generally adopt this meaning of the passage, believing that the great or mighty sons of Cain are contrasted with the lowlier daughters of Seth. It is, moreover, very doubtful if the word be ever applied in the Old Testament to angels. On the other hand, it is continually used of heathen idols, and hence it may well point in this particular case to intermarriages between the adherents of idolatry and the daughters of the race of Seth, and a consequent spread of heathenism, far and near, with its attendant violence and moral debasement. If, however, by the sons of Elohim we understand the worshippers of Jehovah, the daughters of men would mean those of the race of Cain. This interpretation, indeed, is now very generally adopted, and seems the most natural. We should, then, read the sons of the godly race took wives of the daughters of men. The children of such marriages sadly increased the prevailing corruption. They became gibborim, or fierce and cruel chiefs, filling the world with blood and tumult. It was to prevent the final triumph of evil, Scripture tells us, that the deluge was sent from God. (C. Geikie, D. D.)
Marriage to be sought of God by prayer
It came to pass, when men began to multiply upon the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God (men well qualified) saw the daughters of men (very lewd ones) that they were fair (that is all they aimed at), and, therefore, they took them wives (hand over head) of all which they chose; but, being not of Gods providing, they had better been without them. Thus, when men send out lusts to seek them wives, and unclean spirits to woo for them; when men send out ambition to make their houses great, and covetousness to join house to house and land to land; when men send out flattery, lying and deceitful speeches, and do not send out prayers and loud cries unto Almighty God to direct them in their choice, they may thank themselves if they meet with wives, but not such helpmeets as God otherwise intended for them. (J. Spencer.)
Unequal marriages abhorrent to God
We see how grievous a thing unequal marriages be, when the godly with the ungodly, the believing with the infidels, the religious with the superstitious, are unequally yoked--surely even so grievous to God, that for this cause especially the whole world was destroyed by the flood. The Lord is no changeling; He disliked it ever, and disliketh it still. It is a secret poison that destroyeth virtue more speedily than anything. Solomon was overthrown by the daughters of men, for all his wisdom. Jehoshaphat matched his son to Ahabs daughter, and it was his destruction. He forsook the way of the Lord, and wrought all wickedness in a full measure. Why? Because, saith the text, The daughter of Ahab was his wife. Ahab was wicked, but a wicked wife made him far worse, for she provoked him, saith the text. Be not unequally yoked with infidels, saith the apostle, for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath the believer with the infidel? It is a law of marriage that should not be broken, that it be in the Lord--that is, with His liking and in His fear--with such as be godly and hold the truth. Our children we allow not to marry against our wills, but our right we challenge to give a consent. And shall the children of God seek no consent of their Father in heaven to their marriages? But His consent He will never give to marry His enemy, and therefore do it not. It is not lawful; it is not expedient if it were lawful. The flood came to punish such disobedience, and forget it never. (Bishop Babington.)
Beauty a snare
Beauty is a dangerous bait, and lust is sharp-sighted. It is not safe gazing on a fair woman. How many have died of the wound in the eye! No one means hath so enriched hell as beautiful faces, Take heed our eyes be not windows of wickedness and loopholes of lust. (J. Trapp.)
Wrong unions
The mingling of that which is of God with that which is of man is a special form of evil, and a very effectual engine in Satans hand for marring the testimony of Christ on earth. This mingling may frequently wear the appearance of something very desirable; it may often look like a wider promulgation of that which is of God. Such is not the Divine method of promulgating with or of advancing the interests of those who ought to occupy the place of witnesses for Him on the earth. Separation from all evil is Gods principle; and this principle can never be infringed without serious damage to the truth. (C. H. M.)
The Cainites and the Sethites
You will remember that at this time there were two distinct races upon the earth--the descendants of Cain and the descendants of Seth; or, as we will call them, the Cainites and the Sethites. The latter were godly people; they worshipped and served the Lord; they kept up the observance of family prayer; they recognized, in fact, an unseen and spiritual kingdom; and they fashioned their lives, or endeavoured to fashion them, in accordance with their belief. The Cainites, on the contrary, cared for none of these things; they flung off the restraints of religion; they were the secularists and materialists of the antediluvian world. Whether there was an unseen kingdom, and a King to rule over it; whether there was such a thing as truth, or such a thing as righteousness, or even such a Being as God Himself, they did not care at all to inquire. These things might be, or might not be; but, at all events, there was the present visible, tangible, enjoyable condition of existence in which they found themselves placed; and of that they determined to make the best, without troubling themselves about difficult and abstruse questions which could probably never be solved. There is another observable thing, too, about these Cainites. Female names occur in their genealogies; and these female names are of such a character as indicates that especial attention had been given to attractiveness of personal appearance, and especial value set upon it by the women of this branch of the human family. Adah is one name: it means ornament--beauty. Zillah is another: it means shade, and seems to refer to the womans thick and clustering tresses, Naamah is a third: it means pleasing, and alludes, in all probability, to the fascination and winning attractiveness of manner possessed by the person who bore it. All this seems significant. We gather from it that the women of the Cainite race came into greater prominence, exercised a greater influence of a certain kind than the women of the Sethite race; were more obtrusive and less modest; wore more costly dresses, spent more time in adorning their persons, and gave themselves up to the cultivation and practice of feminine allurements. The recollection of this fact will enable us to understand better the statement of the text. Now, for some considerable time the two races kept completely apart; the Cainites went their way, the Sethites went theirs, and there was no intercourse to speak of between them. But after awhile the separation was removed. We are not informed how the change took place; it may have been through what we may call accidental circumstances, bringing the two races into contact; but it was more probably owing to a relaxation of religious principle on the part of the Sethites, a lowering of the spiritual tone, a departure from the ancient severity of their religious character, which threw them open to the assaults of temptation on the part of their worldly neighbours. And it was through the women of the Cainite race that the danger came in: the sons of God (that is, the worshippers of God--the Sethites) saw the daughters of men that they were fair. Their beauty attracted and ensnared them; their dress was exquisite; their manners were fascinating, if a trifle bold--unlike, they would say, the shy and retiring ways of the women of their own race; and they first fluttered round, and then fell into the net that was spread for them. And they took them wives of all which they chose. There is indicated in this language a simple following of their own will; there is no reference to God or to duty in the matter. The result was an intermingling of the two races, and a very rapid increase of the corruption of mankind. Possibly some of the Sethites, the sons of God, may have deceived themselves with fancying that they, by the infusion of their goodness, were going to raise from its spiritual degradation the Cainite family, and instruct them in the knowledge and the love of God. Ah, the snow as it falls upon the street may cherish the hope that it is going to cover the pathway with a robe of unsullied whiteness! The pure bright stream may fancy when it mingles its waters with those of some turbulent and turbid companion, that it is going to absorb the others foulness into its own immaculate purity! But what a miserable mistake this is! Good is indeed more potent than evil when it stands on the defensive and occupies its own ground; but it is feeble, it is powerless, it is soon overcome, when it allows itself to be drawn into the enemys territory, and to meet him as a friend. This seems to be the true explanation of the narrative to which our text belongs. And now the question arises, Has it any practical bearing upon ourselves, and upon the circumstances in which we are placed? We believe it has. In what did the criminality of these Sethites consist? In that perversion of the moral sense which led them to prefer external advantages, external attractions, to goodness. Yet how often we are tempted to prefer other things to this sterling quality, or at least to think that the absence of it is more than atoned for by the presence of exterior fascinations! Take, for instance, some favourite writer. He is profane, perhaps; he scoffs at religion, or at least sneers in a covert way. True, we say, apologetically; but how full of intellect he is! What a masterly hand he lays upon his subject! How magnificent are his descriptions, and how his thoughts roll forth in a grand overwhelming tide from the depths of his mind, sweeping all before them! Or that companion of ours, whom we have lately been warned against. Perhaps he is irreligious; perhaps he is a little loose, both in his habits and his notions. But how clever he is! No one ever feels dull in his company! Instances and proofs might easily be multiplied. Now, all this exactly corresponds to the fault, the sin of the sons of God, spoken of in our text. It is a criminal preference of external fascinations to the goodness which consists in recognition of God and in consecration to His service. It is natural, perhaps you will say. Granted; but the Christian ought to carry that about him which enables him to discriminate between the seeming and the real, and to know things, to a certain extent at least, as they really are. Our subject applies to companionship generally, and suggests the extreme importance of a right choice of associates. Many of us, of course, are thrown into unavoidable juxtaposition with those with whom we have no manner of sympathy, and whom we would gladly avoid if we could. The exigencies of business bring into the same office, or into the same pursuit, the pure and the impure, the godly and the ungodly; and nothing is more common than to hear right-minded young people complaining of the words which they are compelled to hear, or of the things which they are compelled to witness, in the place in which their lot is cast. But, after all, a man is safe if he is in the path of duty. It is the voluntary and not the enforced association which exercises a deleterious influence upon mind and character. But the subject suggests more particularly the effect of companionship between the sexes, and, more particularly still, it puts men on their guard against the fascinations of attractive and accomplished, but irreligious and unspiritual, women. (G. Calthrop, M. A.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv1, 9, 14 Gen_6:2. Sons of God.]—That these were angels is a…
CRITICAL NOTES.—
Gen_6:2. Sons of God.]—That these were angels is a view which, it is well-known, has been held from ancient times, both by Jews and Christians. Of the latter class may be named Justin and Tertullian among the ancients, and Luther, Stier, Baumgarten, Kurtz and Delitzsch among the moderns. Notwithstanding the weight of these names, we must, in preference, stand with those who decidedly oppose this interpretation; and this, for the following, among other reasons.
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(1.) We need not leave the human family to find these “sons of God,” having already a basis for this noble title in the spiritual nearness of the Sethites to God (cf. Deu_14:1; Deu_32:5; Psa_73:15; Pro_14:26; Luk_3:38.)
(2.) We interrupt the “genesis” of the book, if we go farther than man: it is, physically, a pure human development so far.
(3.) We set aside the natural generators of the race, the fathers—to make way for angels and women!
(4.) We destroy the representative nature of this apostacy, putting it out of relation to those named in Numbers 25, Jud_1:3, 1 Kings 11, 16, Revelation 2.
(5.) The story no longer serves for “our admonition” 1Co_10:6.) It gratuitously imports what, with our present light, we must call a monstrosity (Mat_22:30). That, in certain places (Job 1, 38) angels are termed “sons of God,” simply shows how extended the divine family is (cf. Eph_3:15, πᾶσα πατριὰ, “every family,” or better perhaps, “an entire family”).
Gen_6:3. Strive with.] Or, “judge in;” or “plead with:” “rule over” (Fürst, Davies); “be humbled in” (Gesenius); “remain, dwell in” (Sept., Vulg., Arabic, etc.)—They also are flesh.] Some render: “In their erring: they are flesh.”—
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Gen_6:1-8
A DEGENERATE WORLD
Sin does not take long to spread. A few ages ago and it only existed in one or two hearts; but now it is almost universal in its prevalence. A little while ago the world was new and pure, dwelling in joy; now it is old in sin, contaminated by wickedness, and frowning with woe. There is a terrible contagion in moral evil. It soon spreads from the individual to the community, from the centre to the circumference of social life.
1. The organic unity of society is favourable to the spread of moral evil. The domestic life of man affords great opportunity for the progress of either good or evil. If an evil disposition, or a wicked habit gains possession of one member of the family, it is very likely to influence the rest. This intimate community of daily life renders the inmates of the household potent in influences which shall form the character and destiny of each other. The family bond is intimate, and sensitive, and one touch of good or evil passes forcefully through it into the human soul. And in common society itself there are many and varied connections which are fraught with potent influences to the mind and heart of man. The master influences his servant; the manager influences those under his control; and the casual intercourse of daily life is influential in determining the moral character of multitudes. Hence a message flashed on the wires of our domestic and social being, reaches to known and unknown destinies. The words we speak to-day, may to-morrow determine the mental and spiritual condition of many people. Hence the conditions of our social existence are favourable to the dire contagion of evil.
2. The native willingness of the human soul to do evil is favourable to the contagion of moral wrong. Seldom do men need to be reasoned into the evil pursuits of conduct, and if they do, a fallacious argument is sufficient to convince them. They do not even require to be solicited or invited to the wrong, they are willing, nay, eager, to find companions who will join them in their carnal pleasures. The unregenerate soul goes in quest of evil, and will work it greedily. It has a native tendency to sin. Hence we are not surprised to find the world rioting in moral wrong, when it is utterly destitute of that love to God, which alone can keep it right. We have here the sad picture of a degenerate world:—
I. It is a world in which marriage is abused. “And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.” Thus we find that the longevity of men in those ages was productive of evil. Then one sinful life would extend much longer than at present, and consequently gave a greater encouragement and a more misleading example to wrong doers. The fear of death was largely removed, and men pursued their wicked pleasures without dread of the grave.
1. We find that marriage was commenced on a wrong principle. There has been a very long discussion as to the meaning of the phrases here used “the sons of God” and “the daughters of men.” The former have been regarded as the sons of princes, of angels, and of Sethites or godly men; and the latter as people of the lower orders of mankind generally, and of the Cainites, or of the rest of mankind as contrasted with the godly. It is clear that angels cannot be intended by “the sons of God” in this context, as they do not marry, nor are they given in marriage. It is evident that men were punished for the crime, as the earth and not heaven was deluged by water; we may therefore conclude, that man was the guilty party. Besides, the angels fell long before these ages, probably prior to the creation of the terrestrial globe. Also men, and not angels, were subject to the strivings of the Holy Spirit, hence we conclude that they were alone in their guilt. It is altogether wrong for the sons of God to marry the daughters of men. True, in the first instance, the useful arts, and the embellishments of social life, began to flourish in the house of Cain. Agriculture, commerce, music, and poetry, were cultivated among his descendants. Were the children of Seth to forego the benefit of participating in these advantages thus introduced into the social system? Certainly not. As the children of God they were at liberty to prosecute any laudable undertakings in this direction, but could they not have done this without unholy alliances? It is better to give up the refinements of the world than to abandon good moral character in the effort to attain them. There can be no valid excuse for an alliance in marriage between the church and the world. The church should never ally itself in matrimony with the world. What sympathy can the morally pure and good have with the morally unholy. Summer cannot ally itself to winter. Genius cannot ally itself to ignorance. Life cannot ally itself to death. Neither ought the morally light in the Lord to ally themselves with the morally dark in Satan. Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers, is an injunction the church needs to remember. We find also that physical beauty was made the basis of the matrimonial selection. “The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair.” Thus passion was the basis of the matrimonial life of the age. A man cannot be actuated by a meaner motive than this in seeking a wife. He needs mental intercourse and moral elevation and sympathy from her who is to be the companion of his life, and these are not always associated with physical beauty, nor will physical beauty compensate for their absence. The beauty of the face will soon fade. The moral beauty of the soul is untarnished by time, is rendered more lovely by the flight of years. It will be sought by the true-man, who will care more for womanly excellence than for artistic beauty. Much of the moral pollution of the age in which we live is due to unhallowed and injudicious marriages. Many people are united in wedlock before they reach manhood and womanhood, and often have to struggle through life with a poverty sadly conducive to crime. They sink beneath the social wave, and perhaps never rise to true enjoyment. If the young people of the land would make more thoughtful and hallowed marriages, seeking partners of pious conviction, of genial spirit, of cultivated thought, and of thrifty habit, the pauperism, the business of our criminal law courts, and the debasing influences of society would be almost entirely swept away. The conjugal alliances of men largely determine the moral character of a community.
2. We find that the marriage bond was violated by impurity. Here is the evil of promiscuous intermarriage without regard to spiritual character. The first inlet of sin prepares the way for the flood-gates of iniquity. It would seem that the men of those days had as many wives as their passion desired; they took them wives of all which they chose. When a nation loses the purity of its domestic life, its national glory will soon depart. The divorce court is a true but sad index to the worth of our national character. Under these conditions of home life it is easy to imagine the speedy prevalence of sin recorded in these verses. Parents and not legislators are the true guardians of the world’s moral purity.
II. It is a world in which violence prevails.—“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when 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.”
1. Men of physical strength became the rulers of the people. These giants were men of great physical energy, they were probably Cainites, and were much more violent than the Sons of God, and their descendants. Hence the warrior was the ruler of the age. Mere brute force, rather than legal right, or moral fitness, was the qualification for rulership. We have but little insight given in the inspired record, into the principles and method of government which prevailed in these early ages of the world, but it is probable that God himself was recognized as the true Governor of men; to Him offerings were brought, and to Him obedience ought to have been rendered. Hence we find that the strong men of the times in their self-imposed authority, were in direct rebellion to Jehovah. Surely we cannot imagine a more degenerate and lamentable condition of things than this, when all the foremost men of the day were in antagonism to the Supreme Ruler of the universe. But the people who seek to dethrone the Divine authority will speedily work their own ruin; nor was this an exception to the rule, and the destructive deluge shows how utterly impotent physical strength is in any contention with God.
2. Men of physical strength were the popular favourites of the day. They were men of fame. Fame was not during these ages achieved by rectorial equity and moral purity of character, but by deeds of daring and of blood. These giants were proud and haughty. They were impious. The offspring of these unholy marriages were the rulers of the advancing age, and their wicked training would well prepare them to perpetuate the violence and villainy of their fathers.
3. Men of physical strength were the terror of the day. They had no regard to the rights of the poor; the weak were despised and injured; the good, if any were to be found, were persecuted; legal rectitude was unheeded by them. Force was the supreme law of the age. It was indeed a reign of terror. Multitudes would wish it at an end. Force is the very essence of sin. Sin always brings nations into anarchy. A violent government is a sure guarantee for the spread of moral defilement.
III. It is a world in which spiritual influences are rejected. “And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.”
1. This degenerate world had not been entirely left to its own inclination. The world had not been entirely given up to the impurity of its domestic life, to the brutality of its violent measures, without the deep convictions of heaven being given, which were calculated to restrain its sin. It is not the economy of heaven to leave wickedness to itself until it plunges itself into its own hell. God mercifully endeavours to cleanse the impurity, and to subdue the violence of evil by the conviction and restraining influences of His Holy Spirit. Hence the augmented guilt and doom of the persistent wrong-doer. What would be the moral condition of the world without this corrective ministry, no human mind could conceive. God was indeed merciful to the apostate race in thus sending His Spirit to irradiate the darkened mind, to expostulate with the conscience of the violent, to prompt and strengthen holy resolve, and to bring back the heart of the world to Himself. But, alas! this glad result was not attained. The flesh prevailed. Life is a constant struggle between these two forces, the flesh of man and the Spirit of God, and but too often the issue is that of the degenerate times of which we write.
2. The degenerate world rejected the holy influences of heaven. The domestic impurity of the age did not yield to His holy touch. The giants of the age resisted the proper control he would put upon their violent energies. The age rejected the Spirit of God. Its individuals sought Him not. This is an awful possibility. Man is a free agent. He cannot be forced into compliance with rectitude. He must be a consenting party. The age that rejects the Spirit of God is truly in a degenerate and hopeless condition. It has no light to relieve its darkness. How many historic ages since these primitive times have been characterized by an utter absence of spiritual impulse and energy. They have been Godless. They have witnessed a strange growth of moral evil in the nations.
3. The degenerate world was in danger of losing the holy and correcting influences of heaven. “And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man.” Heaven can afford to let the impure and violent men alone, because such will speedily achieve their own ruin. The violence of earth cannot injure the inhabitants of the heavens. It is only restrained for the good of man. If it is finally unrestrained, the Holy Spirit will leave the rebellious age to itself, until its impurity and violence shall be washed out and subdued by a great flood of waters. Irreparable punishment certainly follows the withdrawal of holy influences from the soul of man. It is a token of human obstinacy, and of the Divine displeasure. Our constant prayer should be, “Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.”
IV. It is a world under the immediate inspection of God. “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”
1. Thus God saw the wickedness of this ancient world. All the impurity and evil of this ancient world was passing day by day under the eye of God. And not merely did He behold its outward phases, but also its inward; He not merely saw the violence with which the earth was filled, but also the moral evil with which the heart was polluted. He saw the imagination of the thought of the heart. He sees the fountain of sin. What a sight it must have been for the infinite purity to behold! God seeth the heart of man. If purity does not reign in the thought and soul of man, however excellent he may be otherwise, he is destitute of the first principle of good. Men only read the world’s newspaper. God reads the world’s heart. A solemn thought. Should calm the passion of the world.
2. Thus God repented that He had made man. The scripture is frank and unreserved, some men would say, imprudent or regardless of misconstruction in its statements of truth. Repentance ascribed to the Lord, seems to imply wavering or change of purpose in the eternal self-existent. But the sublime dictate of the inspired word is “God is not a man,” &c. (Num_23:19). In sooth, every act here recorded, the observation, the resolve, the exception, seems equally with the repentance to jar with the unchangeableness of God. To go to the root of the matter, every act of the divine will, of creative power, or of interference with the order of nature, seems at variance with inflexibility of purpose. But, in the first place, man has a finite mind and a limited sphere of observation, and therefore is not able to conceive or express thoughts or acts exactly as they are in God, but only as they are in himself. Secondly, God is a spirit, and therefore has the attributes of personality, freedom, and holiness; and the passage before us is designed to set forth these in all the reality of their action, and therefore to distinguish the freedom of the eternal mind from the fatalism of inert matter. Hence, thirdly, these statements represent real processes of the Divine Spirit, analogous at least to those of the human. And, lastly, to verify this representation, it is not necessary that we should be able to comprehend or construe to ourselves in all its practical detail that sublime harmony which subsists between the liberty and the immutability of God. That change of state, which is essential to will, liberty, and activity, may be, for aught we know, and from what we know must be, in profound unison with the eternity of the Divine purpose. (Dr. Murphy.) This expression clearly shews the abhorrence with which God regarded the sins of the primitive but degenerate world, and was the prelude of impending doom.
3. Thus God was grieved that he had made man.
V. It is a world threatened with destruction by God. The resolve is now formed to sweep away man from the face of the earth. Hitherto men had died; now they are to be drowned. This will be a standing monument of the wrath of God against sin to all future ages.
1. This threat was retributive.
2. This threat was comprehensive. It included “man and beast and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air.” Man is the head of creation, and hence all below him is included in his doom. If the head is stricken from the human body all the members become dead. So in creation. These inferior creatures of the universe are not moral, and therefore the violent termination of their life is not penal.
3. This threat was mingled with mercy. Many years were to elapse before its occurrence, hence every opportunity would be given to prepare for it. We do not read that the degenerate world sought its removal; it would rather seem that they did not believe it would be executed. Such is the unbelief, folly, and hardihood of the sinner. Lessons:—
1. To sanctify a long life by true piety lest it become a means of impurity.
2. To avoid unhallowed alliances.
3. To coincide with the convictions of the Spirit of God.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Gen_6:1-2. The worst of women may be characterized by outward beauty.
Large increase of population is often associated with moral corruption.
Corrupt women are great snares to the church.
Sons of God different to the daughters of men:—
1. In disposition.
2. In profession.
3. In moral character.
4. In eternal destiny.
Eminent Sons of God by profession may be influenced by the lust of the eye, then they become:—
1. Corrupt.
2. Debased.
3. Violent.
4. Rebellious.
The lust of the eye disposeth to all sensuality and adultery.
A numerous offspring is no sure sign of God’s special favour.
Beauty is a dangerous bait, and lust is sharp sighted. It is not safe gazing on a fair woman. How many have died of the wound in the eye! No one means hath so enriched hell as beautiful faces. Take heed our eyes be not windows of wickedness and loopholes of lust [Trapp].
Let the church be aware of being entangled with the world. The society of the men of the world may have many advantages to hold out. Their daughters may be fair, they may have the power and policy of earth at their disposal, and they may excel in the arts of life, and in its busy commerce; and on all these grounds may be built many a specious reason for cultivating intercourse with them. There are these three modes of alliance with the ungodly, in family intercourse, in self defence and opposition to a common foe, and in the transaction of the common business of life, to which, in that early time, the family of Seth might be tempted; and they are the very snares into which God’s people are ever apt to fall. In these three ways they are continually led to make concessions tending to worldly conformity, and to compromise their high standing and their holy testimony, on the side of the Lord and of His truth [Dr. Candlish.]
The mingling of that which is of God with that which is of man, is a special form of evil, and a very effectual engine, in Satan’s hand, for marring the testimony of Christ on earth. This mingling may frequently wear the appearance of something very desirable; it may often look like a wider promulgation of that which is of God. Such is not the divine method of promulgating with, or of advancing the interests of those, who ought to occupy the place of witnesses for Him on the earth. Separation from all evil is God’s principle; and this principle can never be infringed without serious damage to the truth [C.H.M.]
Gen_6:3.
I. That the Spirit of God does exert an influence on man for the purpose of securing his best interest. Notice—
1. That this spiritual influence is universal. No doubt respecting its possibility. He who made man can influence him.
2. That this spiritual influence is essential to the production of good. Human nature is depraved, and therefore incapable of itself of producing anything good. As every drop of rain which falls from the clouds, and every spring that issues from the rocky mountains, comes from the mighty oceans; as the light which makes every planet and satellite gleam in the dark void of space comes from the sun; so does all good in man proceed from the Spirit of God.
3. That this spiritual influence is, in every case, limited by the conditions of man’s free agency. Nothing compulsory in its nature. If religion be virtue, man in becoming religious must act from choice and not from necessity.
4. That this spiritual influence is effective in proportion to the adaptation of the means by which it acts upon men’s minds. Nature. Providence. Chiefly the gospel.
II. That the Spirit of God may cease to influence men for good. This proved by facts. Saul (1Sa_28:15); Belshazzar (Daniel 5); Jews in time of Jeremiah (Jer_15:1).
III. That the Spirit of God ceases to influence man for good because of man’s continued rebellion. “For that he also is flesh.” The word “flesh” is often used in Scripture to denote the sinfulness of man. This ceasing to strive may not be the result of a positive act of withdrawal of heavenly influences, so much as that of the law of nature which determines that the momentum of any moving body is diminished by constant resistance. In the moral universe, as well as in the physical, this law operates.
IV. That the benevolence of God is manifested in the manner in which spiritual influences are withdrawn from man. “Yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.”
1. The withdrawal never happens till after a long period of existence.
2. It never happens suddenly, but gradually.
3. It never happens without sufficient warning.—(Evan Lewis in Homilist.)
I. A wonderful fact implied. The Holy Spirit shines with man.
1. Remarkable Power. Man can refuse to obey the Creator.
2. Amazing divine condescension.
3. Astonishing human obduracy.
4. A merciful reason. Why not abandon man. Love of God.
5. The benevolent purpose. That man may forsake sin.
6. The mysterious method.
II. An alarming fact stated.
1. A calamity of awful magnitude.
2. Most melancholy.—(Homilist).
God may hold His peace at the lustful uncleanness of sinners for a long time, but He will finally speak with terror.
It is God’s word of threatening which is through revelation, which is declared by His preachers.
God’s Spirit strives for, with, and in men by the ministry for their salvation.
God may prohibit his Spirit any more to labour with rebellious souls.
Divine forbearance:—
1. Long manifested.
2. Fearfully abused.
3. Finally withdrawn.
4. Must end in salvation or ruin.
Gen_6:4. Giants in natural might and power may be also giants in sin.
God’s earth is made the habitation of all impiety and wickedness by mighty sinners.
The greatest might of sinners is but earthly.
Giants in sin are most violent with God when He strives to save them.
Unholy alliances between the Church and the world bring forth these giants.
Sin taketh a mighty power to itself:—
1. Renown.
2. Antiquity.
3. Valour.
4. Dominion.
It is but a contemptible name and power with God which the mightiest of sinners have.
The names of sinners are recorded in God’s word that they may be abhorred.
EXTENT OF MAN’S WICKEDNESS
Gen_6:5. The extent of man’s wickedness is far greater than the generality of mankind have any conception of. Not merely words blameworthy, but also his heart. God looks chiefly at the heart. The heart of every man naturally wicked. In this verse God assigns His reason for destroying the whole world by a universal deluge.
I. The testimony of God respecting man. He speaks more immediately respecting the antediluvian world. In general, the wickedness of man was great in the earth. Every species of wickedness was committed in the most shameless manner. But more particularly, “the hearts” of men were evil; “the thoughts” of their hearts were evil; “the imaginations” of the thoughts were evil, and this too without exception, without mixture, without intermission; for every imagination was evil, and “only” evil, and that continually. What an awful statement. But how could this be ascertained? Only by God (Pro_16:2). This is His testimony, after a thorough inspection of every human being. The same must be spoken of man at this day. Proved by observation. What has been the state of your hearts? Pride, anger, impure thoughts have sprung up in them. If occasionally a transient thought of good has arisen how coldly has it been entertained, how feebly has it operated, how soon has it been lost. Compared with what the law requires, and what God and His Christ deserve at your hands, do we not fall short of our duty?
II. What effect it should produce upon you.
1. Humiliation. On review of our words and actions we have all reason to be ashamed. Who amongst us could bear to have all his thoughts disclosed? Yet God beholds all; and has a perfect recollection of all that has passed through our minds from infancy. We ought to be humble. Our religious thoughts, when compared with what they ought to have been in number and intensity, are no less a ground of humiliation than those which have sprung from a more impure source; since they prove how defective are our conceptions of God’s excellency, and how faint our sense of the Redeemer’s love.
2. Gratitude. God sent His Son that through Him all our iniquities might be forgiven. Is not gratitude due to Him in return?
3. Fear. Though your hearts are renewed by divine grace, it is only in part; you have still the flesh within you, as well as the spirit. I need not tell you what precautions people take, when they carry a light in the midst of combustibles, which, if ignited, will spread destruction all around. Know, that ye carry such combustibles about you, and you know not how soon you may come in contact with somewhat that may cause an explosion. David, “Be ye, then, not high-minded; but fear.”—(Simeon.)
God sees otherwise than man, such as are men of name here are men of shame with God.
Increase of sin after warning from God is full of provocation.
Moral evil:—
1. Universal.
2. Bitter.
3. Multiplied.
4. Aggravated.
5. Outspreading.
6. Condemned.
God’s eye beholds man’s inward as well as outward wickedness. None is hid.
God’s knowledge of man’s inward life:—
1. Thorough.
2. Certain.
3. Solemn.
4. Cannot be averted.
5. Cannot be mistaken.
Gen_6:6. God’s fury on account of man’s sin:—
1. Because man as a sinner does not embody the ideal of moral life which God originally intended to manifest in him.
2. Because man as a sinner does not accomplish the purpose for which he was created.
3. Because man as a sinner is continually debasing his faculties and powers.
4. Because man as a sinner is missing the sublime destiny intended for him.
Sin will always awaken fury within the hearts of men who are in moral sympathy with God.
The fact that the sinner is God’s workmanship will not exempt him from destruction.
God will not suffer the earth to give comfort to sinners.
Gen_6:7. Bitter and utter destruction is determined upon an ungodly world.
The whole creation subject to vengeance for the sin of man.
God’s creating goodness is a deep aggravation of the sin of such as rise against Him.
Sin is a destructive influence:—
1. Destructive of human life.
2. Destructive of the life of the brute.
3. Destructive of the beauty of the earth.
4. Destructive of the immediate purposes of God.
LONELY MORAL GOODNESS
Gen_6:8. We have just had pictured the sad condition of the primitive world; and now in beautiful but lonely contrast we are favoured with the mention of a man whose life was pure and Godly.
I. The Christian man is sometimes solitary in his companionships. It was so with Noah. Though the world was crowded with aged and renowned men, he was alone in it; there were none around whose characters would fit them to be his daily companions. He could not find companionship in the violent men of the age in which he lived. The star of his piety shed a solitary light in the great moral firmament of the times. There were no satellites to join him in his light-giving mission. The darkness was all around him. His was not fancied loneliness. At one time Elijah thought himself the only worshipper of the true God, he was ignorant of the thousands who had not bowed the knee unto Baal. God asserts the moral loneliness of Noah, and he could not be deceived in this matter. His eye would only too gladly have beheld another pure life amidst that mass of corruption. His loneliness was not the result of an exclusive spirit. He did not of set intention stand aloof from the social life of the world; he did not look down upon ordinary life with sublime contempt as a thing for men of lower spirit to engage in. He was not above the world. He was in the crowded world. He was lonely.
II. The Christian man is sometimes solitary in his character. The world was universally wicked. Noah was the only man who found grace in the eyes of the Lord. He was lonely in his moral goodness. He was animated by different motives, inspired by nobler ambitions, and engaged in grander pursuits than those by whom he was daily surrounded. He was calm and pure amidst the passion of the age. He was the real king of the age. His sceptre was his holy life. Heaven acknowledged him to be such. These royal spirits are generally lonely in this world. They will not be so in the next. There they will have congenial companionships. The sublime experiences of moral goodness must make a man more or less lonely in his inner life.
III. The Christian man is sometimes solitary in his work. Noah was lonely in his work. He had to build an ark. He was a lonely Christian. He was in the future to be a lonely hero. God gives to Christian men a work to perform, the doing of which may render them lonely, but loneliness is not always solitude, as God is always with the spirit of the lonely good. Sometimes a member of the family circle has a lonely task to accomplish in his home; the teacher in the class; and the minister in the sanctuary. Let us be brave in its execution.
The states and nature of gracious ones stand in opposition to the ungodly world.
It is the grace of God that makes good men what they are.
God’s gracious eye singles out souls, whom he delivereth from the world’s destruction.
Faith must be the finder of grace with God, and no work nor price of man.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 I. What is implied in the assertion, "My Spirit…
Gen 6:3
I. What is implied in the assertion, "My Spirit shall not always strive with man?" It is implied: (1) that the Spirit does sometimes strive with men; (2) that men resist the Spirit.
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II. What is not intended by the Spirit striving? It is no form of physical struggling or effort whatever. It is not any force applied to our bodies.
III. What, then, is the striving of the Spirit? It is an energy of God applied to the mind of man, setting truth before his mind, reasoning, convincing, and persuading.
IV. How may it be known when the Spirit of God strives with an individual? (1) When a man finds his attention arrested to the great concerns of his soul; (2) when a man finds himself convinced of sin; (3) when the mind is convicted of the great guilt and ill-desert of sin; (4) when men see the folly of seeking salvation in any other way than through Christ alone.
V. What is intended by the Spirit’s not striving always? Not that He will at some period withdraw from among mankind, but that He will withdraw from the individual in question. There is a limit to the Spirit’s efforts in the case of each sinner; at some uncertain, awful point he will reach and pass it.
VI. Why will God’s Spirit not strive always? (1) Because longer striving will do the sinner no good; (2) because sinners sin wilfully when they resist the Holy Ghost; (3) because there is a point beyond which forbearance is no virtue.
VII. Consequences of the Spirit’s ceasing to strive with men: (1) a confirmed hardness of heart; (2) a seared conscience; (3) certain damnation.
C. G. Finney, Sermons on Gospel Themes, p. 264.
God strives with man in many ways by the working of His blessed Spirit within him: by the working of our own conscience, by various warnings from without, constantly strewn in our paths; but if we grieve and resist the Holy Spirit of God, then He will not always strive with us, but will give us over to a reprobate mind.
I. Consider the great mercy of God in consenting to strive with man at all.
II. The striving of the Spirit is a means of resisting the flesh.
III. The Spirit of God strives in many ways. His strivings have a meaning, a message, and a warning to us all.
Bishop Atlay, Penny Pulpit, No. 556.
References: Gen 6:2.—G. Calthrop, Words Spoken to my Friends, p. 149. Gen 6:3.—C. Kingsley, National Sermons, p. 362; J. Wells, Bible Echoes, p. 217; J. Natt, Posthumous Sermons, p. 328; J. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year, vol. iii., p. 161; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. vii., p. 43, and vol. xvi., p. 23. Gen 6:5.—J. Laidlaw, Bible Doctrine of Man, p. 138.
Gen 6:5-6, Gen 6:7
I. "In these verses," it will be said, "we see the results of the fall. God made man innocent, and man fell when he lost this independent virtue, this innocency of his own; as the first father lost it, all his descendants, by the decree of God or by some necessity of their relationship, lost it too; hence arose the need for Divine grace, and for men being made partakers of a righteouness which is not their own."
Now, if we follow the Scripture narrative closely, we shall find that it directly negatives this statement. It tells us that God said, "Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness." Such words absolutely exclude the idea that man, according to his original constitution, possessed anything of his own. They affirm him to be good Only in so far as he reflects that which exists perfect in another, so far only as he confesses Him to be the Good. God pronounced His creation very good, because no creature was standing in itself—because the highest creature, to which all the others looked up, himself looked up to his Maker and saw his perfection in Him.
II. The principle that man was made in the image of God is not a principle which was true for Adam and false for us. It is the principle upon which the race was constituted and can never cease to be constituted. Adam’s sin consisted in disbelieving that law and acting as if he were not under it. The Divine order has not been interrupted because a man refused obedience to it; it is only made more evident by that violation. Man has set up a self-will, has fallen under the dominion of the nature which God had given him. This very act is a step in his education, a means by which God will teach him more fully what he is, what he is not; how he may thwart the purposes of his Creator, how he may conspire with them.
III. The story of the flood, as told in Scripture, is a most memorable part of the history of man, expounding the course of God’s dealings with him. He is grieved that He made man, because men were living wholly at variance with the law under which they were created. He uses the powers of nature to destroy those who had made themselves the slaves of nature. The righteous government which physical things obey is thus indicated. God’s repentance is reconciled with His divine, unchangeable will. There is a true and holy repentance in God, otherwise there could be no repentance in us.
F. D. Maurice, The Patriarchs and Lawgivers of the Old Testament, p. 50.
References: Gen 6:6.—Weekly Pulpit, vol. i. (1887), p. 235. Gen 6:7.—Parker, vol. i., p. 164. Gen 6:6-8.—J. Van Oosterzee, Year of Salvation, vol. ii., p. 334. Gen 6:8.—R. S. Candlish, Book of Genesis, vol. i., p. 108.
Gen 6:9
I. Noah, we read, "was a just man and perfect in his generations"; and why? (1) Because he was a faithful man—faithful to God, as it is written, "The just shall live by faith." Noah and Abraham believed God, and so became heirs of the righteousness which is by faith; not their own righteousness, not growing out of their own character, but given them by God, who puts His righteous Spirit into those who trust in Him. (2) Noah was perfect in all the relations and duties of life—a good son, a good husband, a good father: these were the fruits of his faith. He believed that the unseen God had given him these ties, had given him his parents and his children, and that to love them was to love God, to do his duty to them was to do his duty to God.
II. The Bible gives us a picture of the old world before the flood—a world of men mighty in body and mind, fierce and busy, conquering the world round them, in continual war and turmoil; with all the wild passions of youth, and yet all the cunning and experience of enormous old age; every one guided only by self-will, having cast off God and conscience, and doing every man that which was right in the sight of his own eyes. And amidst all this Noah was steadfast; he at least knew his way; he "walked with God, a just man and perfect in his generations."
III. There was something wonderful and divine in Noah’s patience. He knew that a flood was to come; he set to work in faith to build his ark, and that ark was in building for one hundred and twenty years. During all that time Noah never lost faith, and he never lost love either, for we read that he preached righteousness to the very men who mocked him, and preached in vain. One hundred and twenty years he warned those sinners of God’s wrath, of righteousness and judgment to come, and no man listened to him. That must have been the hardest of his trials.
C. Kingsley, Village Sermons, p. 74.
References: Gen 6:9.—R. S. Candlish, The Book of Genesis, vol. i., p. 127; E. Garbett, Experiences of the Inner Life, p. 234.
Gen 6:12
(with Luk 17:26-27)
I. The statement in Genesis of the corruption of the world before the flood is expressed in very strong language: "The wickedness of man was great in the earth." Only one particular feature of this general corruption is given: "that the earth was filled with violence." Yet this is mentioned as forming rather a part of the general corruption than as being the whole of it. Another, and as it may seem, a more prevailing part, is given by our Lord: "They were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage."
Our Lord here names not occasional crimes which disturb society, but society’s most ordinary and most necessary practices; things which are neither crimes nor sins in themselves; things which men may do and must do. He means us to understand that there is a natural danger in the things of which He was speaking, which, if left to itself and not earnestly struggled against, would certainly lead to the following judgment.
II. The great truth is, that no one, old or young, can save his soul by following the course of life quietly and letting it drift him whither it will.. It is not in our life here, as we now live, with all its wisdom and all its labour and all its pleasures, to attain to life eternal. Round the tree of life there is a fiery guard, which allows not fallen man in his own natural course to reach unto it. It is not like a tree standing by the wayside, so that we have only to put forth our hand as we go by, and eat and live for ever. Christ came to take us out of our common nature, to tear us away from the path which we were naturally treading; to give us another nature not our own, to set us in a new way, of which the end is not death but life.
T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. v., p. 82.
Reference: Gen 6:13.—Parker, vol. i., p. 159.
Gen 6:16
I. When Noah was building his ark, God gave him a command, "A window shalt thou make to the ark," and this window was to be made in the roof. Its purpose was (1) to let in the light and air; (2) that Noah might look out of it, sometimes, to heaven. He could see nothing of earth through it, only heaven. Sometimes he may have felt inclined to doubt during the forty days of rain; but at that window he lifted his face to the light and held communion with God.
II. We have got a voyage over the water-flood also. We have to pass through many storms and troubles. These will swallow us up, unless we systematically keep a window in the roof open, and go to it, to look through it to God. When Daniel was in the land of captivity, he opened his window seven times a day towards Jerusalem, and prayed to God through it. Our Jerusalem is above—the heavenly Jerusalem; and we must, like him, turn our faces thither and pray.
S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, 2nd series, vol. ii., p. 159.
References: Gen 6:22.—M. G. Pearse, Sermons for Children, p. 34; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 383; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. viii., p. 79.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain On v1 Subdivision 3. (Gen 6:1-22; Gen 7:1-24; Gen 8:1-22; Gen…
Subdivision 3. (Gen 6:1-22; Gen 7:1-24; Gen 8:1-22; Gen 9:1-29; Gen 10:1-32; Gen 11:1-9.) NOAH.
The resurrection of a world, and the threefold division of mankind after the flood. Typically, the saint raised up with Christ (the ark).
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In Noah, we have a plain figure of resurrection, the whole world passing away also in the judgment of the flood, and a new world emerging from the baptismal waters. The apostle Peter teaches us to see in this a type of salvation (1Pe 3:20-21), and to the man in Christ, risen with Him, old things are passed away, and all things become new. The figure is here very plain, although many a detail may be hidden from us.
1.
God’s purpose and provision are the subject of the first section. There are two subsections, in the first of which we find the whole world one in evil, and all the fashion of man’s thoughts but that; on the other hand, God’s election of grace in Noah. In the second, we have the ark as His means of salvation, -plainly Christ, in whom we have already met and passed through the judgment, dead without dying, in His precious death for us. Indeed, the type speaks more fully than this of what atonement is, the gopher-wood not only giving us the tree cut down, but the "copher" also with which the seams are pitched, the very word for "atonement," probably the resin from the tree, (whether or not the cypress, as the ancients thought,) at least shows the need of more than death for this.
2.
In the second section, what seems marked is, the solemn contrast between those within and those outside the ark of salvation. God calls the one to enter, and Jehovah -the covenant God -shuts them in. On the one hand the call of God, on the other the obedience of Noah, are certainly the marked features of the first subsection.
The second, shows the death which comes through disobedience, the increase of the flood, the ark going on the face of the waters, until the earth is covered.
3.
The third section gives typically the resurrection part, and is naturally much larger and more various. It speaks of the ground of resurrection (the resurrection of Christ) upon which faith now builds, beyond all possible floods -high ground and "holy ground," which "Ararat" is said to mean. Nothing is so holy and so productive of holiness as the rest of the gospel. And here we find also the sanctification proper to it detailed. There are five subsections: —
1. The new beginning is in rest: the ark grounds upon Ararat, and the new earth begins to be visible.
2. The raven shows us the flesh still in the believer, at home in a scene desolated by judgment, and using the very cross itself only as a means of enjoying the world better. The dove is plainly the figure of the Spirit in a world such as this, -the type, at once, of love and sorrow. The Spirit and flesh are here seen in essential opposition. In a world upon which the waters of judgment rest, the dove can find no rest. The second time, she brings back the olive-leaf -the assurance of fruitfulness, and judgment past. The third time, she leads them in taking possession of the new earth, returning to the ark no more.
3. Liberty for these voyagers to the new land is now accordingly at hand, although Noah waits for the word of God to sanction its enjoyment, and when he goes forth, consecrates it and the earth with his altar (the first time we read of one) and his sacrifice, Christ typically, in person and work, the material of worship. In the sweet savor of this, is the pledge of abiding blessing, spite of what man has been seen to be. As on the third day of the creation-series, the dry ground is to bring forth fruit.
4. But there are still conditions of fruitfulness, and we come now to consider them: the order in which we reach it suggests the conditions under which it is to be attained. (Notice that, as in the last subsection we have "Jehovah," the covenant-name, it is now "God" blessed and "God" spake.) And first, we need to know that fruitfulness is a gift in grace, and to be received, therefore, as such in faith: He blessed, and said, "Be fruitful." Then sovereignty is restored; they are to be masters in their new position; even as all things work together for good to those that love God. Death too serves: it becomes now, as not before, the food of life, -a type, thank God, most easy to realize. Thus are we sustained, and energy is given to us. And now the deeds of the flesh are to be judged, the image of God in man is to be maintained and honored. Finally, all hindrances thus removed, the fruit is reached.
5. And now, as the token of God’s covenant between Himself and the earth, the bow is ordained in the heavens. It bands the clouds which might seem to threaten the renewal of a judgment which can return no more. The light (and God is light) is seen and displayed in its glory upon the storm-cloud, as it was in the cross. And so also to the soul exercised thereby, the blessing is sealed to us in the glory of the cloud. Tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope. God is seen and realized in it. The God who brings the cloud is the God with whom we are in covenant; and all things serve Him.
4.
The trial of the new world is next seen, and weakness and failure are soon apparent. Typically, it is the history of the Church, the company gathered on the ground of that resurrection of Christ which is the assurance of the work done for us having been accepted. The division into diverse families of that one family brought through the flood is soon accomplished. Failure begins with the head of newly constituted government -with Noah. Noah’s snare is the abundance of the new-blessed earth; and it is here the earth-side of the heavenly life that we have to do with. But this earth-side is Nazariteship; and the Nazarite must drink no wine: falling by this, the stimulus of nature, the nakedness of nature is discovered to our shame. Such failure in the Church brings out the character of those who in exposing it reveal their own profanity. Ham is the "black" -the "sun-burnt" -one darkened by the light; and the light, if not received, becomes a source of darkness to the soul. And Ham -it is noted -is the father of Canaan, the "trader," as his name means. Canaan is, in the professing church, its fruit -the trader in divine things: a sad history sketched in the fewest possible words.
Noah’s prophecy, on awaking from his wine, passes over Ham -the indefinite multitude of mere natural men, -to fix upon Canaan its denunciation. Shem and Japheth seem to give us in their various blessing two tendencies which are apt to be sundered and should not be. Shem’s is the recipient contemplative life, whose danger is, to run into the mystical: Japheth’s is the energetic, practical life, which, in its one-sidedness, tends to divorce itself from faith. In the blessing of Shem, it is Shem’s God, Jehovah, who is blessed, as it is indeed the highest blessedness of faith that it has God for its portion and its praise; while Japheth’s blessing is in enlargement and dwelling in the tents of Shem, for the practical life finds its true home in faith alone, and true service is but worship in its outflow among men.
5.
That the genealogies come under the number which speaks of God’s governmental ways will hardly be strange to any. We have here the distribution of the nations in their lands. 1. Japheth, the type of energy and independence, gains at present little notice, passing away very much from the central point of sight to the outlying border-lands. 2. In Ham’s family, we have the earliest development of the world-empires, and the most open opposition to God. 3. Shem, (the "name") to whom Jehovah is revealed, has fittingly the third place: he is marked as the father of all the children of Eber, (“passage,") the pilgrim race.
6.
Lastly, here we have the history of Babel, without doubt the picture of Babylon the Great, though not in the full development of the book of Revelation. The account is remarkable for its clearness and simplicity. The process by which the professing church settled down in the world, and then built up for itself a worldly name and power, could scarcely be described in plainer terms. How with one consent they turned their backs upon the sunrise (2Pe 1:19), and, leaving the rugged and difficult places in which they were first nurtured -too painful for flesh and blood, -descended to the easier if lower level of the world; -how, settling there, ease and abundance wrought in them desire to possess themselves, in security, of the earth, and make themselves a name in it; how Babylon thus was built, a city after Cain’s pattern, whose builder and maker God was not, and a tower of strength, human, and not divine: all this, he who runs may read. Let us notice, further, that this is a carnal imitation and anticipation of God’s thoughts, and that thus the earthly city usurps the titles and prerogatives of the heavenly one. But Babylon cannot be built of the "living stone," which is the God-made material for building; they have moved from the quarries of the hills, and must be content to manufacture less durable "brick" out of the mere clay which the plain affords: they have brick for stone, and slime (or bitumen) for mortar -i.e., not the cementing of the Spirit, the true Unifier, but the worldly and selfish motives which compact men together, and are but fuel for the fire, in the day that the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.
This is just the Catholic church of antiquity, not many generations after the apostolic. The unity whereof it boasted was not God’s, and if God came down to see what man was building, it was not to strengthen, but to destroy -not to compact, but scatter. The many tongues of Protestantism are but His judgment upon the builders of Babel; its multitudinous sects but the alternative of the oppressive tyranny with which when united she laid her yoke upon the minds and consciences of men, and under which the blood of the saints ran like water. They are but a temporary hindrance, moreover, for at last we find her saying, "I sit as a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow." Then, however, her doom shall be at hand: "in one day shall her plagues come upon her."
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v9 Gen 6:9 - Gen 6:22.
Genesis
THE SAINT AMONG SINNERS
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Gen 6:9 - Gen 6:22.
1. Notice here, first, the solitary saint. Noah stands alone ‘in his generations’ like some single tree, green and erect, in a forest of blasted and fallen pines. ‘Among the faithless, faithful only he.’ His character is described, so to speak, from the outside inwards. He is ‘righteous,’ or discharging all the obligations of law and of his various relationships. He is ‘perfect.’ His whole nature is developed, and all in due symmetry and proportion; no beauty wanting, no grace cultivated at the expense of others. He is a full man; not a one-sided and therefore a distorted one. Of course we do not take these words to imply sinlessness. They express a relative, not an absolute, completeness. Hence we may learn both a lesson of stimulus and of hope. We are not to rest satisfied with partial goodness, but to seek to attain an all-round perfectness, even in regard to the graces least natural to our dispositions. And we can rejoice to believe that God is generous in His acceptance and praise. He does not grudge commendation, but takes account of the deepest desires and main tendencies of a life, and sees the germ as a full-blown flower, and the bud as a fruit.
Learn, too, that solitary goodness is possible. Noah stood uninfected by the universal contagion; and, as is always the case, the evil around, which he did not share, drove him to a more rigid abstinence from it. A Christian who is alone ‘in his generations,’ like a lily among nettles, has to be, and usually is, a more earnest Christian than if he were among like-minded men. The saints in ‘Caesar’s household’ needed to be very unmistakable saints, if they were not to be swept away by the torrent of godlessness. It is hard, but it is possible, for a boy at school, or a young man in an office, or a soldier in a barrack, to stand alone, and be Christlike; but only on condition that he yields to no temptation to drop his conduct to the level around him, and is never guilty of compromise. Once yield, and all is over. Flowers grow on a dunghill, and the very reeking rottenness may make the bloom finer.
Learn, too, that the true place for the saint is ‘in his generations.’ If the mass is corrupt, so much the more need to rub the salt well in. Disgust and cowardice, and the love of congenial society, keep Christian people from mixing with the world, which they must do if they are to do Christ’s work in it. There is a great deal too much union with the world, and a great deal too much separation from it, nowadays, and both are of the wrong sort. We cannot keep too far away from it, by abstinence from living by its maxims, and tampering with its pleasures. We cannot mix too much with it if we take our Christianity with us, and remember our vocation to be its light.
Notice, again, the companion of the solitary saint. What beauty there is in that description of the isolated man, passing lonely amid his contemporaries, like a stream of pure water flowing through some foul liquid, and untouched by it, and yet not alone in his loneliness, because ‘he walked with God!’ The less he found congenial companionship on earth, the more he realised God as by his side. The remarkable phrase, used only of Enoch and of Noah, implies a closer relation than the other expression, ‘To walk before God.’ Communion, the habitual occupation of mind and heart with God, the happy sense of His presence making every wilderness and solitary place glad because of Him. the child’s clasping the father’s hand with his tiny fingers, and so being held up and lifted over many a rough place, are all implied. Are we lonely in outward reality? Here is our unfailing companion. Have we to stand single among companions, who laugh at us and our religion? One man, with God to back him, is always in the majority. Though surrounded by friends, have we found that, after all, we live and suffer, and must die alone? Here is the all-sufficient Friend, if we have fellowship with whom our hearts will be lonely no more.
Observe that this communion is the foundation of all righteousness in conduct. Because Noah walked with God, he was ‘just’ and ‘perfect.’ If we live habitually in the holy of holies, our faces will shine when we come forth. If we desire to be good and pure, we must dwell with God, and His Spirit will pass into our hearts, and we shall bear the fragrance of his presence wherever we go. Learn, also, that communion with God is not possible unless we are fighting against our sin, and have some measure of holiness. We begin communion with Him, indeed, not by holiness, but by faith. But it is not kept up without the cultivation of purity. Sin makes fellowship with God impossible. ‘Can two walk together, except they be agreed?’ ‘What communion hath light with darkness?’ The delicate bond which unites us in happy communion with God shrivels up, as if scorched, at the touch of sin. ‘If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie.’
2. Notice the universal apostasy. Two points are brought out in the sombre description. The first is moral corruption; the second, violence. Bad men are cruel men. When the bonds which knit society to God are relaxed, selfishness soon becomes furious, and forcibly seizes what it lusts after, regardless of others’ rights. Sin saps the very foundations of social life, and makes men into tigers, more destructive to each other than wild beasts. All our grand modern schemes for the reformation of society will fail unless they begin with the reformation of the individual. To walk with God is the true way to make men gentle and pitying.
Learn from this dark outline that God gazes in silence on the evil. That is a grand, solemn expression, ‘Corrupt before God.’ All this mad riot of pollution and violence is holding its carnival of lust and blood under the very eye of God, and He says never a word. So is it ever. Like some band of conspirators in a dark corner, bad men do deeds of darkness, and fancy they are unseen, and that God forgets them, because they forget God; and all the while His eye is fixed on them, and the darkness is light about them. Then comes a further expression of the same thought: ‘God looked upon the earth.’ As a sudden beam of sunshine out of a thunder-cloud, His eye flashes down, not as if He then began to know, but that His knowledge then began, as it were, to act.
3. What does the stern sentence on the rotten world teach us? A very profound truth, not only of the certain divine retribution, but of the indissoluble connection of sin with destruction. The same word is thrice employed in Gen 6:11 - Gen 6:12 to express ‘corruption’ and in Gen 6:13 to express ‘destruction.’ A similar usage is found in 1Co 3:17, where the same Greek word is translated ‘defile’ and ‘destroy.’ This teaches us that, in deepest reality, corruption is destruction, that sin is death, that every sinner is a suicide. God’s act in punishment corresponds to, and is the inevitable outcome of, our act in transgression. So fatal is all evil, that one word serves to describe both the poison-secreting root and the poisoned fruit. Sin is death in the making; death is sin finished.
The promise of deliverance, which comes side by side with the stern sentence, illustrates the blessed truth that God’s darkest threatenings are accompanied with a revelation of the way of escape. The ark is always shown along with the flood. Zoar is pointed out when God foretells Sodom’s ruin. We are no sooner warned of the penalties of sin, than we are bid to hear the message of mercy in Christ. The brazen serpent is ever reared where the venomous snakes bite and burn.
4. We pass by the details of the construction of the ark to draw the final lesson from the exact obedience of Noah. We have the statement twice over, He did ‘according to all that God commanded him.’ It was no easy thing for him to build the ark, amidst the scoffing of his generations. Smart witticisms fell around him like hail. All the ‘practical men’ thought him a dreamy fool, wasting his time, while they prospered and made something of life. The Epistle to the Hebrews tells us the secret of his obedience: ‘By faith, Noah,’ etc. He realised the distant unseen, because he believed Him who warned him of it. The immediate object of his faith was ‘the things not seen as yet’; but the real, deepest object was God, whose word showed him these. So faith is always trust in a divine Person, whether it lays hold of the past sacrifice, the present indwelling Spirit, or the future heaven.
Noah’s example teaches us the practical effects of faith. ‘Moved with godly fear,’ says Hebrews; by which is meant, not a mere dread of personal evil, for Noah was assured of safety-but that godly reverence and happy fear which dwells with faith, and secures precise obedience. Learn that a faith which does not work on the feelings is a very poor thing. Some Christian people have a great horror of emotional religion. Unemotional religion is a great deal worse. The road by which faith gets at the hands is through the heart. And he who believes but feels nothing, will do exactly as much as he feels, and probably does not really believe much more.
So after Noah’s emotion followed his action. He was bid to prepare his ark, we have only to take refuge in the ark which God has prepared in Christ; but the principle of Noah’s obedience applies to us all. He realised so perfectly that future, with its double prospect of destruction and deliverance, that his whole life was moulded by the conduct which should lead to his escape. The far-off flood was more real to him than the shows of life around him. Therefore he could stand all the gibes, and gave himself to a course of life which was sheer folly unless that future was real. Perhaps a hundred and twenty years passed between the warning and the flood; and for all that time he held on his way, nor faltered in his faith. Does our faith realise that which lies before us with anything like similar clearness? Do we see that future shining through all the trivial, fleeting present? Does it possess weight and solidity enough to shape our lives? Noah’s creed was much shorter than ours; but I fear his faith was as much stronger.
5. We may think, finally, of the vindication of his faith. For a hundred and twenty years the wits laughed, and the ‘common-sense’ people wondered, and the patient saint went on hammering and pitching at his ark. But one morning it began to rain; and by degrees, somehow, Noah did not seem quite such a fool. The jests would look rather different when the water was up to the knees of the jesters; and their sarcasms would stick in their throats as they drowned. So is it always. So it will be at the last great day. The men who lived for the future, by faith in Christ, will be found out to have been the wise men when the future has become the present, and the present has become the past, and is gone for ever; while they who had no aims beyond the things of time, which are now sunk beneath the dreary horizon, will awake too late to the conviction that they are outside the ark of safety, and that their truest epitaph is ‘Thou fool!’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On vv1, 5 The Sons of God and the Daughters of Men
The Sons of God and the Daughters of Men
1-4. This fragment seems to have been placed here as an instance of the wickedness which necessitated the Flood. Stories of unions between deities and the women of earth, which resulted in gigantic and corrupt races, were common to many nations of antiquity; and it is now generally held that we have here traces of a similar tradition among the Hebrews, which had survived to the writer's day. But though the passage retains signs of these primitive ideas, it is free from the polytheistic and impure features which are found in the pages of heathen mythology. Probably such passages as 2Pe_2:4; Jdg_1:6., which speak of the fall of the angels, are based on these verses.
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2. The sons of God] This expression occurs in other passages, e.g. Job_1:6; Job_38:7; Dan_3:25 RV, where it is evident that the angels are meant, and this seems the only possible explanation here. It used to be supposed that the 'sons of God' meant the Sethites, who became corrupted by marriage with the Cainites. But the phrase is nowhere else used to describe them, and, as Bishop Ryle remarks, 'the popular assumption that Cain's descendants were pre-eminently wicked has no foundation either in Genesis 4 or Genesis 6.' Nor could such unions have produced the race of giants mentioned in Gen_6:4. The religious idea suggested is that the wickedness that prevailed was too great to be entirely of mere human origin.
3. The general meaning is that God now sets a limit (an hundred and twenty years) to human life, which up to this time had been indefinitely long. My spirit] refers to the spirit of life with which the fleshly nature of man had been endowed. It will not sustain man for ever (RV) in this world.
4. There were giants] RV 'the Nephilim were.' The Nephilim, a race of giants, famous in popular legend, are represented as being men of renown at the same time as these angels formed unions with the daughters of men. They are alluded to by the spies (Num_13:33 RV) as ancestors of the giant races of Canaan: and this is probably what is referred to by the words and also after that.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv4, 5, 6, 9, 14, 19 sons of God
sons of God
Some hold that these "sons of God" were the "angels which kept not their first estate" Jud 1:6. It is asserted that the title is in the O.T. exclusively used of angels. But this is an error Isa 43:6. Angels are spoken of in a sexless way. No female angels are mentioned in Scripture, and we are expressly told that marriage is unknown among angels. Mat 22:30.
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The uniform Hebrew and Christian interpretation has been that verse Gen 6:2 marks the breaking down of the separation between the godly line of Seth and the godless line of Cain, and so the failure of the testimony to Jehovah committed to the line of Seth Gen 4:26. For apostasy there is no remedy but judgment; Isa 1:2-7; Isa 1:24; Isa 1:25; Heb 6:4-8; Heb 10:26-31. Noah, "a preacher of righteousness," is given 120 years, but he won no convert, and the judgment predicted by his great- grandfather fell; Jud 1:14; Jud 1:15; Gen 7:11.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On vv1, 9 The Increasing Corruption
CHAPTER 6:1-8
The Increasing Corruption
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1. The sons of God and the daughters of men (Gen 6:1-2)
2. The warning of Jehovah (Gen 6:3)
3. Increased wickedness (Gen 6:4-6)
4. Judgment announced (Gen 6:7)
5. Noah found grace (Gen 6:8)
The question is who are the sons of God who took the daughters of men. The general view is that the sons of God were the pious descendants of Seth and the daughters of men, the Cainitish offspring. However, there are strong arguments against it.
1. There is no proof in the text that the daughters of men were only the descendants of the Cainites. The text supports the view that in “daughters of men” the natural increase of the whole human family is meant, and not a special class.
2. The theory that “sons of God” must mean pious people can likewise not be sustained. The term sons of God is never applied in the Old Testament to believers. Isa 43:6 refers to the future gathering of the godly remnant of Israel. That the believer is a son of God, predestined to the son-place, with the spirit of sonship in him, crying, “Abba, Father,” is exclusively a New Testament revelation.
3. The result of the marriage of the sons of God with the daughters of men were children, who were heroes, men of the Name. If the sons of God were simply the pious Sethites, who mixed with the Cainites, it is hard to understand why the offspring should be a special race, heroes, men of the Name. The giants were Nephilim, which means “the fallen ones.”
“Sons of God” is the term applied in the Old Testament to supernatural beings, both good and evil. Angels good and fallen are termed sons of God in the Old Testament. Satan himself is reckoned among the sons of God in Job 1:6; Job 2:1. The term sons of God must mean here supernatural evil beings. These evil beings came down out of the air and began to take possession of such of the daughters of men as they chose.
“For if God spared not the angels which sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them unto chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; and spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly” (2Pe 2:4-5).
Here we have a New Testament hint on Gen 6:1-5. The Scripture declares that the fallen angels are still loose; here, however, are angels, which sinned and God did not spare them. Another passage in Jude’s Epistle is still more significant: “And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, He hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.” This statement in Jude is linked with the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah.
We stand not alone in this exposition. “The sons of God, in my judgment, mean the same beings in Genesis as they do in Job. This point will suffice to indicate their chief guilt in thus traversing the boundaries which God appointed for His creatures. No wonder that total ruin speedily ensues. It is really the basis of fact for not a few tales of mythology which men have made up.” (W. Kelly, Lectures on the Pentateuch.) God has veiled the awful corruption and we dare not intrude into the secret things.
May we remember that our Lord has told us, “As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be when the Son of Man cometh.”
The Spirit of God was then pleading with men. His work as the hindering one is indicated in Gen 6:3.
Read, 1Pe 3:20, “For Christ indeed once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God; being put to death in flesh but made alive in the Spirit, in which also going He preached to the spirits, which are in prison, heretofore disobedient, when the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noe, while the ark was preparing.” This passage does not teach that Christ after His death, went into Hades to preach, but the meaning is that His Spirit through Noah preached to the spirits of men living at that time, and who were then disobedient and are now in prison.
God in His longsuffering waited yet 120 years, during which His Spirit preached through the preacher of righteousness, calling to repentance.
The withdrawing of the Spirit of God is clearly taught in 2Th 2:7. This age will end in the same manner as the age before the flood, “the Spirit not always pleading with man.”
Jehovah, beholding the earth, saw that the wickedness of man was great, and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart only evil continually. Before we read Jehovah’s verdict, “for he indeed is flesh.” And again, “The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is full of violence through them, and behold, I will destroy them with the earth.”
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv1, 5, 8, 14, 17 The Wickedness of Men
The Wickedness of Men
v. 1. And it came to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
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v. 2. that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. The Cainites had long since forsaken the Lord and His worship and lived according to the lusts of their mind. But in the course of time this corruption spread also to the families of the pious, to the sons of God, to the believers, showing itself first of all in a laxity of morals. In fifteen centuries a most remarkable increase of the human family took place, and it became increasingly difficult to maintain the discipline which the Lord desired. The men belonging to the tribe of Seth permitted carnal considerations to influence them in the choice of their wives. The daughters of men, those that lived only for this world and made the enjoyment of all that this world offers their end and goal, very naturally made the development of mere physical beauty their aim. This beauty proved the snare which captivated the sons of God, the men from the generation of believers. They took wives to themselves of all that they chose, no longer as pious helpmates in a marriage in chastity and honor, but for the mere gratification of their sensual desires. Thus the corruption of the Cainites was brought into the Church of God before the Flood.
v. 3. And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh; yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. The Spirit of the Lord had been present in the midst of men, in the Word which was preached to them. But this could not remain thus very much longer on account of the willful defection of men, on account of their deliberate erring. They refused to heed His warnings and reprimands, for they had turned to their carnal desires. So God concluded to give them a final one hundred and twenty years as respite. Noah, as the preacher of righteousness 2Pe 2:5, was to lift up his voice once more, and if men would not listen to his words, the punishment should come upon them.
v. 4. There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when 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. The conditions before the Flood are further characterized. Wild, lawless men, tyrants there were on the earth in those days, offspring of marriages that did not meet with God’s approval, children of wild passion, men that defied order and authority and became mighty men, whose names were mentioned with bated breath as those of unparalleled champions and heroes. The whole earth was full of outrage and violence. Cf Mat 24:38-39. This is a picture of our own days, of the period immediately preceding the final Judgment, full of the most impressive warning for all that will heed the signs of the times.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 16, 18, 20 It came about
It came about
This phrase is used here to mark the beginning of a new part of the story. If your language has a way for doing this, you could consider using it here.
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daughters were born to them
This can be active. AT: "the women bore daughters" (See: Active or Passive)
sons of God
Translators could add a footnote saying: "It is not clear whether this refers to heavenly beings or human beings. In either case, they were beings that God created." Some believe these words refer to angels who rebelled against God, that is, evil spirits or demons. Others think this may refer to powerful political rulers, and others think this may refer to the descendants of Seth.
My spirit
Here Yahweh is talking about himself and his spirit, which is the Spirit of God.
flesh
This means that they have physical bodies that will one day die.
They will live 120 years
"They will live one hundred and twenty years." Possible meanings are 1) the normal lifespan of people would decrease to 120 years. AT: "They will not live more than 120 years" or 2) in 120 years everyone would die. AT: "They will live only 120 years" (See: Numbers)
translationWords
sons of God
flesh
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 6:1-8 Human wickedness reached a climax, prompting God to…
6:1-8 Human wickedness reached a climax, prompting God to send the flood to destroy all living things. A glimmer of hope appears in God’s favor toward Noah (6:8).
6:1-2 The sons of God have generally been understood as fallen angels (cp. the same Hebrew phrase in Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7; Pss 29:1; 89:7). This interpretation is prominent in ancient Jewish and Christian literature (e.g., 1 Enoch 6:1–7:6; Justin Martyr, Apology 2.5) and is apparently supported by the New Testament (see 1 Pet 3:18-20; 2 Pet 2:4; Jude 1:6-7). Some interpreters do not believe that God would permit angels to procreate with humans and doubt that the above New Testament texts should be read in this way. Another possibility is that sons of God refers to the righteous descendants of Seth, while the beautiful women were female descendants of Cain’s wicked line. This interpretation is in harmony with Gen 4:17–5:32 but is weakened by the language of 6:1-2, which seems to refer to the daughters of humanity in general, not the daughters of Cain specifically. Others believe that sons of God refers to tyrannical human kings (possibly demon-possessed) who took Lamech’s polygamy (4:19) to a new height of wickedness by seizing the daughters of the righteous. Language reminiscent of 3:6 (saw . . . took) shows the rebellious nature of this act.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.