Who are these sons of God in Genesis 6:1–2? Please explain the meaning and significance of the sons of God taking wives. Who were they?

This text is from a transcript of a talk by David Gooding, entitled ‘An Abundant Entrance into the Eternal Kingdom’ (1985).

Now, this is a matter, for one reason or another, that interests believers of all shapes, sizes, ages, and nationalities. If there is one verse more than another that I've been asked to comment upon in my small experience in many different countries, it is this one. And why shouldn't it excite people's interest? It is there. It's a poor job if we weren't interested in what Scripture talks of.

You probably know that Christian people hold widely different interpretations of this verse. And, who knows, you may have put the question just to find out, 'What will this babbler say upon this topic?' One more curiosity to put into your theological museum; I don't know.

The views divide over this question: were these 'sons of God' angels, spirit beings; or were they some branch of the human family?

You say, 'Why should anybody ever think they were angels?'

Why, because normally, in the Hebrew Old Testament, the term 'sons of God', bene elohim, is the term used for angels. You'll find it so used, for instance, in the first chapter of the book of Job.

Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the lord, and Satan also came among them. (Job 1:6)

Bene elohim is a Hebrew phrase for angels, and therefore you might think that that settles the matter. But many have found difficulty here because Genesis 6:2 says that these sons of God saw that the daughters of men were attractive and took wives from among them. And people have said, 'How could angels possibly do any such thing? Does not our Lord tell us that angels cannot marry?'

Well, no, he doesn't. Actually, what he tells us is that they don't marry, neither are they given in marriage.

And Jesus said to them, 'The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels . . . (Luke 20:34–36)

Therefore, many people have felt that that verse means that angels can't marry (and certainly can't marry humans) and that, therefore, Genesis 6:2 cannot mean that spirit beings came and married human women. In fact, that great, notable and famous expositor, Campbell Morgan said that if there was one thing Genesis 6:2 could not mean, it is that it could not be referring to angels. And many feel likewise convicted of that same position.

Who were 'the sons of God' then, according to them? Well, there have been a variety of explanations. Perhaps the most common one has been that these sons of God were the godly line of Seth, that is, men that descended from the patriarch, Seth, and formed a godly line leading up to people like Enoch and Noah, and so forth and so on. And so what Genesis 6:2 is saying is that this godly line of Seth, having maintained a noble, godly behaviour for some many centuries, alas, in the end fell and went astray, and married the ungodly. So that is explanation number one.

There are others who hold that there were men and women before Adam, pre-Adamite man. They would be inclined to say that this means that true human beings went and had union with a sort of pre-Adamite man.

Well, that explanation convinces many a very serious and competent mind. It is not a view I share. All I propose to do now is to tell you why I don't share it. I don't share it because, number one, it seems to me to be impossible to get it out of the meaning of the Hebrew.

At this point, perhaps, the question itself may give us an opportunity just to reinforce in our thinking the basic terms of this passage of Genesis. Let's go back to Genesis 5:1, which says, 'This is the book of the generations of Adam.'

'Adam', as I said before, was the name of the first man, his personal name, like yours is 'Tom' or 'Billy'. But, again, adam in Hebrew is more than that. It is a word meaning 'man', and it is used in that sense in verse 2: 'Male and female he created them, and blessed them and called their name Adam', that is, 'Man'. Here he does not call them 'Adam and Eve' but 'man', for here is the generic term 'man', as distinct from 'monkey'. It means 'human being', if you like. He called their name 'human being'. Now, notice the word. It is, of course, singular.

With that in mind, you come across to Genesis 6:1. Many English versions read, 'It came to pass when men began to multiply,' but that is not what the Hebrew says. The Hebrew says simply, 'It came to pass when man began to multiply.' He is still thinking generically of this new creature, man. So, if you like, 'when human beings began to multiply on the face of the ground and daughters were born, that the sons of God saw these daughters . . .' not of men, please, no. It does not say that 'the sons of God saw some daughters of some men', but 'sons of God saw daughters of man'. That, of course, is straight Hebrew for human females. And you will see that the writer goes on to retain that idea of 'man'.

The lord said, 'My spirit shall not [always] abide in man'. (Genesis 6:3)

It does not say, 'in men' but 'in man'.

The lord saw that the wickedness of man . . . (Genesis 6:5)

I will blot out man whom I have created. (Genesis 6:7)

We are thinking of the race, we are thinking of the genus: man, as distinct from animal or angel. Because that is the sense in which the term is used, I suggest to you that in verse 2, the only way we can take that Hebrew is simply to allow it to mean what it means all the rest of the way through the chapter. 'Sons of God' are put in opposition to 'daughters of man'. Daughters of man, therefore, are human females. That would imply that the term 'sons of God' are spirit beings—angels, and so of a different genus.

If you say, 'How could that be when our Lord says that angels, spirit beings, cannot marry?'

Well, our Lord doesn't actually say that, does he? He says they don't. And perhaps in such obscure matters as these, we ought to be careful to remain exactly according to what our Lord says and not necessarily go beyond it. He says that angels don't. Certainly, they normally don't.

Jude, the sister epistle to 2 Peter, seems to throw light upon this matter somewhat, doesn't he? He says,

Angels which kept not their own principality, but left their proper habitation. (Jude 6 RV)

What does he mean by habitation? Maybe he is talking of their general sphere. You may compare the word he uses (if you know a little bit of your Greek) with the word Paul uses in 2 Corinthians 5:1. Speaking of believers, he says that when we go home to heaven, we have 'a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.' Paul is referring to that spiritual body that we shall have there. Here Jude says that these angels did not keep their 'house', their 'habitation'. And he compares what they did then: 'just as Sodom and Gomorrah' (Jude 7). What was the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah? Well, they went after strange flesh. There was a perversion in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah. What these angels did was even as Sodom and Gomorrah. It was, in some sense, a perversion of their original state and function.

More than that, I would not say. I leave it there. I merely tell you the reasons why I hold my own view.