Are the sons of God angels in Genesis 6?

Hello, welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. This is a daily conversation about scripture, culture and media from a Reformed perspective. Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to engage today's topic.

Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.

Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist, I'm Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist. As most of our listeners know, along with being the host of this program, I am also the pastor of Sovereign Grace Family Church of Jacksonville, Florida.

On today's program, I'm going to feature a portion of a recent sermon from SGFC. If this portion of the sermon is of interest to you and you decide you'd like to hear the full message or others like it, please go to our website and you will find a library of over 1 ,000 sermons on a variety of topics.

These include messages from me, our other elders, and from special guests who have visited our church over the years. Now, without further delay, here is a clip from a recent message. I hope you enjoy.

The Identity of the Sons of God in Genesis 6

Number one, who are the sons of God and the daughters of men? Because that's who gets intermarried. That's what says the sons of God married the daughters of men and there's a big debate as to who that's talking about.

Number two, who are the Nephilim and who are the mighty men of renown? Number three, which days are limited to 120 years? Number four, how do we understand God being sorry or, in some translations, it says He regretted that He made man?

How do we understand that, especially in light of His sovereignty and His omniscience and His immutability? Those are all big theological questions. And number five, what made Noah an object of God's grace?

I wanted to end on a positive. So the fifth question is, what made Noah an object of God's grace? Of all the five questions, the answer to that one is relatively simple when we get there. The electing grace of God is by His choice.

So that one I can go ahead and answer, but I wanted to end on a positive. We know God chooses according to His mercy and grace, not according to Noah's goodness, but according to the goodness of God. But let's go back up to number one and let's, as it were, begin to deal with each of these questions as they come.

Number one, who are the sons of God and the daughters of men? Let's look at the text again. It says, When man began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive, and they took as their wives any they chose.

Three Interpretations of the Sons of God

Now, if you have commentaries on your shelf, like I'm sure some of you do, or study Bibles, and you go to those study Bibles or to those commentaries, you will find several interpretations for this particular text as to who is the identity of the sons of God and who is the identity of the daughters of men.

I do not have time today, neither the inclination, to give you all of the various interpretations, but I will give you the three that are most common. The first interpretation is that the sons of God in this passage refer to angels, fallen angels or demons, who have left their abode and have come to earth to intermarry with human women.

Therefore, this is an angel-human relationship that would be an abomination and would be a violation of God's order, God's natural order. God didn't make angels and humans to be together. So that is a very common interpretation, and if you have a MacArthur Study Bible, he takes a variation of that.

He says the sons of God are angels that possess men, and those men marry women, but it is still angels. The sons of God refers to angels. And there are some passages that are used often to support that.

The book of Job refers to angels as sons of God. That's where the term sons of God is pointed to. They say, well, Job calls angels sons of God, so that must be who Moses is referring to here by the sons of God.

In the book of Jude and in the book of 2 Peter, we have a reference to angels who violated their natural order, and so some people point to Jude and to 2 Peter, and they say there's two passages which is talking about this.

So, this position is held by many, and even some rabbis, some prior to Christ, were known to have held this position, and some early church fathers were known to have held that position. So, I'm going to tell you from the outset, that ain't my position.

But I also want to say this, for the sake of grace today, if you leave today disagreeing with me on some of these things, I've already told you this is hard stuff. But I don't think that interpretation holds water.

But that is the interpretation of many, including the illustrious Dr. MacArthur, so I have to give it at least its due. There are people who hold that position. That the sons of God are fallen angels, and the daughters of men are regular human women, and they intermarry.

Sons of God as Kings and Daughters of Men as Harems

The second interpretation is that the sons of God refers to kings. The title, sons of God, is a term which is used not only in the Bible, but also outside of the Bible to refer to men who were kings. He was a deity, a son of God, especially in Egypt and other places like that, the pharaohs were considered to be divine.

And so the term sons of God, in that regard, would refer to kings. And the daughters of men would refer to, the key is plural, daughters, that they took for themselves multiple wives and created harems.

And out of those harems created essentially like a sexual slavery situation. And therefore the men in power were abusing the women who were in a lower caste system from them and were mistreating them and out of that produced all kinds of wanted debauchery.

Now that is the position I believe that was held by Meredith Klein and other theologians. It is not the position I hold, but I wanted to share it with you. I think at least it's interesting to consider that the sons of God could be talking about kings and the daughters of men in some form of harem situation.

Interesting thought. Not the position that I take. But still, one that is found in several commentaries. Now the third position, and tip of my hand, this is the position that I would espouse, is that the sons of God, in this context, refers to the descendants of Seth.

The Sethite View and the Seed of the Serpent

You see the term, maybe I am wrong. The term sons of God could be referring to the faithful line of Seth and the daughters of men referring to the ungodly descendants of Cain. And the sin that is being referenced here is the sin of intermarrying believers and unbelievers.

Now I admit that is the least spectacular of the three. The first one, angels coming down, intermarrying with women, producing a race of giants. I mean that is sci-fi channel stuff. I mean that gets people's attention, right?

I am not making fun of it, I am just saying that people appeal to things that are extraordinary. And the first one is very extraordinary. The second one also is very illicit. Kings and harems and sex trade and all that stuff.

We get to the third one and it is like, well, so what you are saying is the sons of God and the daughters of men is just faithful people and unfaithful people intermarrying. That is not that big of a deal.

But think about how big of a deal it is. Walk through the Bible and see how many times the people of God are told not to intermarry with the pagans, not to go outside and union themselves with those who are outside of the faith.

And walk back with me just a few weeks and follow the reasoning I have been giving you since we started at Genesis 3 .15. Remember Genesis 3 .15, the Proto-Evangelium? There is the descendants of the serpent and the descendants of the woman, right?

There is the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, right? And these two seeds have been marked by what? The line of Cain, which is the line of the unrighteous, and the line that was begun in Abel but was snuffed out and continued in Seth.

And so not only do I believe this is a correct interpretation, I believe it follows the context which began two chapters ago, which follows two lines. You see, if you accept the angel interpretation, what you have to do is have to say something completely irregular has been introduced into the context.

Something completely outside of the context is now being introduced. Rather than simply following the context, you have two lines. The line of Cain is given in chapter 4, the line of Seth is given in chapter 5, and now you have the sons of God and the daughters of men who intermarry with one another.

And what happens? The Bible says bad company corrupts good morals, right? It is much more common that if a faithful person marries an unfaithful person, that the unfaithful person will be a drag upon them than they are to uplift the other.

Very common that we see that. Now, I want to give a few more very quick arguments. Number one, I believe the context demands this interpretation, but I could be wrong. I'm just saying I think contextually this follows the narrative.

Number two, the introduction of angels and demons at this point is violating the context and the term sons of God is never used by Moses to speak of angels. The term sons of God is only used in Job, never by Moses.

So this would not only be an extra, this would be a term that is used in the Bible, but not by the writer that's using this term. So to say sons of God always refers to angels, that ain't so. Sometimes it refers to kings, sometimes it refers to those who are believers.

We are called sons of God, and it's throughout the Bible that way. But here's one that really stresses my credulity. And that is that Jesus tells us in the New Testament that angels neither marry nor are given in marriage.

And so the idea that angels came and married women seems to be a violation of what Jesus tells us about angels. And therefore I don't think it would pass muster as far as an interpretation. Now the interpretation usually goes, well these men, they indwelt the bodies of men.

Okay, here's my response to that. If they indwelt the bodies of men, then it's still a man having relations with a woman. You no longer have the special miraculous angel seed that's supposed to create this giant Nephilim race.

See here's the thing, if you interpret the angels as the sons of God, as angels, the next natural thing is that the Nephilim are the byproduct of that. They're these giant men who come as a byproduct of this special intermarriage between angels and women.

But if they're just men who are possessed by angels, then their seed is no different than any other man's seed, and therefore they're not going to create any special type of particularly mongrel race.

Didn't mean to spend all my time on number one, but you understand this one's pretty big because this also affects number two, who are the Nephilim. But we'll get there in a moment. So my answer, and do you guys know what Occam's Razor is?

Occam's Razor is a philosophical perspective, and I know philosophy and theology sometimes butt heads, but sometimes it's not wrong to invoke a little philosophy. Occam's Razor is simply stated, all things being equal, the simplest explanation is probably the right one.

All things being equal, the simplest explanation is probably the right one. So we go back to the three options, right? Angels and women, and they create a mongrel race of hybrids. It's pretty spectacular.

Kings and women creating harems, possibly. Following the context, two lines, the lines are represented by the sons of God and the daughters of men. To me, it's the simplest explanation, and following the philosophical principle of the simplest explanation is probably the right one.

And that's the one I tend to hold to. Simple enough? Again, if you want to write me a three-page dissertation as to why I'm wrong, send it to Brother Mike. I hope you enjoyed that short sermon clip from Sovereign Grace Family Church.

Again, if you're interested in hearing more, or you would like more information about SGFC, please go to our website at sgfcjax .org. That's Sovereign Grace Family Church of Jacksonville. And if you're in the Jacksonville area, please come visit us on an upcoming Lord's Day.

Thank you for listening today to Coffee with a Calvinist. I'm Keith Foskey, and I have been your Calvinist.

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