Genesis 6:1-4: Why the Flood and Why Noah?

-or-

From Zondervan's "The Beginner's Bible"

Genesis 6-9 tells the story of Noah and the flood, but many people get hung up on Genesis 6:1-4, because it is ambiguous and taken out of context quite often. Some say the whole story is just a myth, but the New Testament often mentions Noah and the flood story as fact, not myth (Matthew 24:37-38, Luke 17:26-27, Hebrews 11:7, 1 Peter 3:20, 2 Peter 2:5). These verses are simply the story of why the flood happened and why Noah was saved.

• 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. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. -Genesis 6:1-4

This text does not explicitly say who the sons of God and the sons of man are, but some have claimed they are angels intermarrying with people to create a hybrid giant race.  This is ridiculous, baseless, and easy to refute.  First of all, logically, good angels would not sin in this way and fallen angels could never be considered sons of God. Also, angels cannot procreate since they are spiritual beings without bodies (Hebrews 1:14). Thirdly the Bible explicitly says that angels are not sons of God in both the Old and New Testaments.  Job 38:7 makes the distinction between angels (stars of the morning) and the sons of God. The New Testament explicitly states that the angels are not sons of God in Hebrews 1:5:

• For to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you”? Or again, “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son”?

So, who are the Sons of God? Every time the Bible uses the phrase it is talking about people who have faith in God.

• “You are the sons of the Lord your God. You shall not cut yourselves or make any baldness on your foreheads for the dead. -Deuteronomy 14:1
• "They have dealt corruptly with him; they are no longer his children because they are blemished; they are a crooked and twisted generation." -Deuteronomy 32:5
• "If I had said, “I will speak thus,” I would have betrayed the generation of your children." -Psalm 73:15
• "In the fear of the Lord one has strong confidence, and his children will have a refuge." -Proverbs 14:26
• For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. -Romans 8:14-16
• “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. -Matthew 5:9
• [F]or in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.... And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” -Galatians 3:26,4:6

So then, who are the children of men? In the general sense everyone, but here being opposed to the children of God, it means the children of only men, and not God, or unbelievers. Ezekiel 31:14 explains that children of men are powerful men that are prideful and so God will "cast them out." This becomes clear when the Genesis verses are read in context. At this point there were two civilizations. One civilzation is from the descendants of Cain (Genesis 4:17-24), and they are are unbelievers, so the sons of men only, not sons of God. The other civilization is from the descendants of Seth, who carry the covenant promise, so his descendants are faithful sons of God (Genesis 4:26). As Saint Augustine says in the City of God, Book XV, Chapter 1 - Of the Two Lines of the Human Race Which from First to Last Divide It, "Of these two first parents of the human race, then, Cain was the first-born, and he belonged to the city of men; after him was born Abel, who belonged to the city of God." Faithful men intermarried with the unbelieving women and it affected their faith. Just like God told the Israelites later on not to marry unbelievers and when they did, they strayed and worshiped idols.

At the same time this was happening, there were large powerful men, who began to take control and become leaders for the first time in human history, because they could dominate others. It is explained in Numbers 13:32-33, that the Nephilim is simple a name for "people of great height." They began relying on their own power and strength, rather than on God. These are the wicked things that people were doing mentioned in verse 5. By the time that Noah (a descendant of Seth as shown in Genesis 5) came around, he was the only one clinging to promise of messiah and remaining faithful to God. Tying this into the context of the verses after verse 4, that is why he was chosen.

Therefore, letting scripture interpret scripture by using the Bible's definitions of the terms and taking the story in its context of immediately verses before and after, it becomes clear that this is a story about how God preserved a bloodline of faithful people from Adam and Eve (through Seth) to Jesus, the promised Messiah. That is what the Old Testament is about after all. More specifically, these verses are setting up the story of the flood and are simply the background of why the flood happened and why Noah was saved. Therefore, these verses of Genesis 6:1-8, could be read in this way:

When the unbelieving descendants of Cain began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the believing male descendants of Seth saw that the unbelieving female descendants of Cain were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose... and they bore children to them, who fell away from the faith due to the influence of their unbelieving mothers. Concurrently, tall, powerful men who trusted in themselves over God, were on the earth. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.

The Lord saw that the His chosen people were not being faithful to Him, but falling away due to intermarriage with unbelievers and that men were relying on their own power and strength instead of God and His promises. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah, who remained faithful to God's promises, found favor in the eyes of the Lord.