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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 . 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. 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. ( V1-4)
Hang onto your seats, folks, this ride may get a little bumpy.
There are 4 groups mentioned in these verses. Those groups are ‘men’,
‘daughters’, ‘sons of God’ and ‘giants’. The ‘men’ is self-explanatory, as is
‘daughters’. Even ‘giants’, as fantastic as the idea might be, at least carry a
very clear connotation. But were we wind
up in high weeds (and run afoul of respectable Christianity) is in trying to
identify the ‘sons of God’. But rather than shrink from the fantastic, we will
compare how the term is used in other parts of the Bible, and follow that truth
wherever it may lead us.
Starting from the back of our Bible and working our way towards Genesis,
we see that saved people are referred to as sons of God in John 1:12. There were no modern New Testament Christians
around in Genesis 6, so it can’t be them.
Jesus Christ is referred to as the son of God, and so is Adam (Luke
3:38) but it can’t be either one of those individuals. Israel as a nation is called ‘sons of God’ in
Isi 43:1-6, and Hosea 1:10, but obviously this early on in the Bible there is
no Israel so it can’t be them. That leaves only one possibility.
In Job 1:6 as well as Job 38:4-7 angelic beings are called the ‘sons of
God’. So in Genesis 6 we have angels
leaving their ‘first estate’ (Jude 1:6-7) and somehow mixing their seed with
the seed of men, producing a race of giants.
Not only has this happened before, but it will happen again (Daniel
2:43).
The offspring of these sons of God and human
women were not only giants, but men of renown. These unnaturally large people
show up over and over again in your Bible, (Josh 11:21 and Deut 2:10-20, for
example) usually when a descendant of Israel is about to take the throne (1 Sam
17).
Interestingly, the mythologies of ancient peoples are full of legends of
‘gods’ cohabitating with human women and producing remarkable offspring. This
hardly surprising, considering that although there is one God, there are
many gods (Ps 82:1-6, Ps 86:8, Ps 97:7-9, 96:5). In Acts 14;11, the people
thought it entirely reasonable that the gods had come down to them in
the likeness of men. But outside of the
Bible, we have examples like Isis the first woman who gained immortality from
Ra the Egyptian sun God by enchanting him with a serpent. The first emperor of
China claimed to be half-god, referring to himself as ‘the son of the great red
dragon’. Hercules was the result of a
union between Zeus and a human woman.
The 5 Pandava brothers of India were flying giants who were born of a
human woman impregnated by a god. Thesueus
was the son of Psoiden and a human woman.
Even Gilgamesh, the king of modern Iraq was reportedly a god-woman
hybrid of some sort. These legends show up in almost every culture and probably
have their basis in the very real exploits of these men of renown. The legends survived the flood and then were
carried to the four corners of the earth by the people leaving the tower of
Babel.
In verse 3, God makes an interesting
statement. He says man is ‘also’ flesh.
Many have taken the 120 year limit on man here to be some sort of ‘upper
limit’ on how long a man can live. As interesting as that is, I think there is
a much simpler explanation. God is talking to himself here. We know that Noah had kids when he was 500, and the flood happened
at 600, so God decides 20 years before he talks to Noah about the flood.
This means 120 years left for the wicked population on the earth to live.
“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. And it repented the LORD
that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And 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 the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.”
(V5-7)
The word ‘repented’ is used a couple of different ways in the Bible, and
people have written whole books on the subject that are much better than what I could produce, but
primarily ‘repent’ is used to indicate a change in direction. Just being sorry
isn’t enough; if you sin against God you should be sorry, but until you stop
the sin, you haven’t repented. In 2 Cor 7:10, the sorrow isn’t the repentance;
the sorrow is what causes you to repent. God tells man to repent (Matt 3;2,
4:17, Mark 6:12, Luke 5:32, Acts 20:21), and there is an element of repentance
in the gospel, but one has to be careful not to make that repentance into a
work. It’s amazing how we can overthink
salvation and rob ourselves.
In verse 6, God shows his heart to his
creation. Not once in the Koran does
Allah the moon god show any emotion or compassion. This is because he is a
stone idol and incapable of caring. But
the God of the Bible not only cares, and is grieved, but takes the time to let
us peek behind the glory and power and majesty and see his heart (Ezek
6:9, Heb 4:15).
In verse 7, God vows to kill man, beast,
creeping thing and fowls of the air. For obvious reasons, he never vows to kill
fish, although one night out on the street a man asked me if I thought Noah
took any fish on the ark. I asked him, “Why would he?”
“But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD. These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a
just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God. And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and
Japheth. The earth also was corrupt
before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it
was corrupt ; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh
is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and,
behold, I will destroy them with the earth.” ( V8-13)
This is the first mention of grace in the
Bible, and here, as in every other place, it means ‘unmerited favor’. A grace
you can earn is no grace. As Kyle Stephens said “Grace isn’t something God
invented at Pentecost.” Why did God give
Noah grace? It looks like, according to verse 9, that Noah’s family line might
have been the only family line left on earth that had not been corrupted by the
reproductive efforts of the sons of God.
After all, in verse 11, the
phrase “his way” shows up, which means whoever or whatever was doing the
corrupting is male. The corrupting is being done” through them” according to
verse 13, and the destruction will come “through them”. Noah certainly wasn’t
perfect, but he was perfect in his generations. Perfect also means ‘finished’,
according to Lev 22:21. Heb 2:10, Job 1:1, and Heb 5:8-9.
“Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the
ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make
it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it
fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a
cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the
side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it. And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of
waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life,
from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die .” ( V14-17)
The ark is for
floating, not sailing. One of my pet peeves are illustrations of the ark where
it has a lovely keel and a little room
on top, along with lots of windows and
the obligatory pair of giraffes sticking
their heads out the window. The ark, as it is described in the Bible ,
looks like a big floating box, almost
like a coffin, but as a coffin contains death,
the ark contained life. The ark
is made of gopher wood, which means something organic has to die to protect
Noah and his family. There are no nails
in the ark, nothing iron, just like the
Temple.
Verse 15 lists the measurements of the ark as 300 cubits long, 50 cubits
wide, and 30 cubits high. If a cubit is
22.5 inches, then the ark winds up being 562.5 feet long, 93.7 feet wide and
56.25 feet tall, which is 3,500,000 cubic feet.
If you use a giants cubit, it’s even bigger. Furthermore, the ark is
described as having a window, and a door.
There are three stories to the ark,
just like there are 3 heavens, 3 sections
to the tabernacle and 3 stories in Ezekiels temple (Ezek 42:5-6). The pattern
seems to be that if God intends to inhabit something, it has 3 parts to it,
just like he does.
Verse 16 also has mention of a door in the side ((John 19:34, Heb
10:19-20, John 10:1-9) and in verse 17 everything that breathes air is put
under the penalty of death.
“But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come
into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee. And of every living thing of all flesh, two of
every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they
shall be male and female. Of fowls after
their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the
earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.
And take thou unto thee of all food that
is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee,
and for them. Thus did Noah; according
to all that God commanded him, so did he.” (V18-22)
This is the first mention of a covenant, and
this covenant is conditional; get in the ark and you’ll be safe. Stay out here
and you’ll drown.
Noah is told two of every sort, male and female. A misreading of this has led to all sort of
well-intentioned error. He takes two
males and two females of every unclean animal and of every clean animal he
takes 7 males and 7 females. Also notice that Noah did not run about scooping
up animals, the animals came to him.
This also relives him of the burden of distinguishing which animals are
clean and which are unclean, since he didn’t have Leviticus 11 to fall back on.
Noah gathered up food for the animals, not animals.
The animals had lived off of vegetation before the fall, and will live
off of vegetation again during the millennium, so it’s not inconceivable that
the animals getting on the ark switched back to a temporary grass diet.
Now since God made man in one spot, but put animals all over the earth,
some of these animals had to have started out on their journey towards the ark
a long time before, possibly years before.
People educated beyond their intelligence have long railed against the
account of the ark with such platitudes as ‘Noah couldn’t fit two of every
animal on earth in the ark’. He didn’t.
He fit
at least four ( 2 males, 2 females) of every ‘kind’. If you want an interesting little Bible study, take a look at what God
considers ‘kind’, and keep in mind that
our idea of how to classify animals (Kingdom. Phylum, Class, Order, Family,
Genus, Species) isn’t God’s way.
