The Serpent's Counter-Offensive Text: Genesis 6:1-4
Introduction: An Embarrassing Scripture
We now come to one of those passages that make modern, respectable evangelicals blush. We are quite comfortable with a God who is a therapeutic life coach, and with a Jesus who is a really good example. But a passage like this one, with its talk of strange unions and monstrous offspring, feels like it belongs more to some pagan mythology than it does to the inspired Word of God. And so, the temptation is to domesticate it, to sand off the rough supernatural edges, and to turn it into a manageable morality tale about how godly boys shouldn't marry ungodly girls. But this is not only an act of interpretive cowardice; it is a profound misunderstanding of the spiritual war we are in.
This passage is not some weird, embarrassing uncle in the biblical family. It is a dispatch from the front lines of the cosmic war that was declared in the Garden. In Genesis 3:15, God promised that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent, but that the serpent would bruise his heel. The entire Old Testament is the story of that conflict. The serpent, having heard the prophecy of his doom, did not simply slither off to await his fate. He launched a series of ferocious counter-offensives, all aimed at one thing: corrupting, conquering, or cutting off the line of the promised seed. He tried it with Cain and Abel. He tried it with Pharaoh and the Hebrew infants. He tried it with Herod. And here, in the days before the flood, he tried it in the most direct and monstrous way imaginable.
To reject this passage because it sounds strange to our sanitized, materialistic ears is to be embarrassed by the very nature of the war. It is to be ashamed of the Bible. But as my father taught me, we are not to have any problem passages. We may have problems understanding a passage, but once we understand it, we must submit to it. This passage is not an oddity; it is a crucial piece of the biblical worldview. It shows us the depth of satanic rebellion and the utter necessity of God's cataclysmic judgment in the Flood.
The Text
Now it happened, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were good in appearance; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. Then Yahweh said, "My Spirit shall not strive with man forever because he indeed is flesh; nevertheless 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 men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.
(Genesis 6:1-4 LSB)
The Cosmic Trespass (v. 1-2)
The stage is set in the first two verses:
"Now it happened, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were good in appearance; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose." (Genesis 6:1-2)
The first question we must settle is the identity of these "sons of God." The Hebrew is bene Elohim. A common, but ultimately failed, attempt to domesticate this passage is the "Sethite view," which argues that these were the righteous descendants of Seth who intermarried with the unrighteous daughters from the line of Cain. While the sin of marrying unbelievers is a real and serious one, that is not what is being described here. That interpretation collapses for a number of reasons.
First, everywhere else this phrase, bene Elohim, appears in the Old Testament, it refers to celestial beings, or angels (Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7). To read it as "Sethites" here is to ignore the consistent use of the language. Second, notice the parallel. It is the "sons of God" and the "daughters of men." If this were about two human lines, why is all the masculinity on the godly side and all the femininity on the ungodly side? Did the daughters of Seth not exist? Did the sons of Cain not exist? The text sets up a contrast between two different kinds of beings: heavenly and earthly. Third, and most decisively, the Sethite view cannot account for the offspring. When a Christian boy marries a non-Christian girl, the result is not a race of giants. You get children who need to be evangelized, not a monstrous race that needs to be exterminated.
No, the ancient world, both Jewish and Christian, understood this passage for what it plainly says. These were fallen angels, celestial beings who abandoned their proper station. The Apostle Jude is explicit about this. He says the angels who "did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode" are kept in eternal bonds for judgment. And he compares their sin directly to Sodom and Gomorrah, who "in the same manner as these, indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh" (Jude 6-7). What was the sin? Going after strange flesh. It was a perverse, unnatural, boundary-crossing union.
Notice the progression of their sin. They "saw" that the daughters of men were good in appearance. This is a lustful, aesthetic judgment, divorced from any moral or covenantal consideration. It echoes Eve's sin, who "saw" that the tree was good for food and a delight to the eyes. Then, they "took wives for themselves, whomever they chose." The word "took" here has the scent of force, of lustful acquisition. This was not covenantal marriage; this was rapacious consumption. They did it because they could, because they were powerful, and because they desired it. This was an act of cosmic pride and tyrannical lust.
The Divine Restraint (v. 3)
God's response to this abomination is immediate and judicial.
"Then Yahweh said, 'My Spirit shall not strive with man forever because he indeed is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be 120 years.'" (Genesis 6:3)
God declares that His Spirit will not "strive" or "abide" in man forever. This is not some quiet frustration. This is a judicial declaration. The Spirit of God, who hovered over the waters in creation to bring life and order, will not continue to work in a world so given over to this monstrous rebellion. The reason given is that man "is flesh." This is not an excuse, but a statement of creaturely limitation and, in this context, corruption. Man, in his fleshly state, had become a willing partner in this cosmic treason. The human race was being corrupted at its very source.
This was the serpent's strategy. If you can't kill the woman's seed, corrupt it. Mingle it with something else. Create a hybrid race of demonic-human giants, a race of "mighty men" who owe their allegiance to the powers of darkness. This was an attempt to genetically short-circuit the promise of Genesis 3:15. It was a satanic effort to create an antichrist lineage.
In the face of this, God sets a timetable for judgment. "His days shall be 120 years." This is not a new lifespan for individuals. This is a probationary period for the world. God, in His longsuffering, is giving the world 120 years to repent before the floodgates of His wrath are opened. It is a window of grace before the final, terrible judgment. Peter refers to this when he speaks of "the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah" (1 Peter 3:20).
The Monstrous Result (v. 4)
Verse 4 describes the result of this unholy union and clarifies the timeline.
"The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown." (Genesis 6:4)
The offspring of this union were the Nephilim. The word likely comes from the Hebrew root "naphal," meaning "to fall," so they were "the fallen ones." The Septuagint translates it as "gigantes," from which we get our word "giants." These were not just tall basketball players. They were monstrous hybrids, the "horrific results," as Jude would say, of this crime. They were the Titans of pagan lore, the demigods of mythology. The pagan myths are distorted, demonic echoes of this true historical event. The world was being filled with a race of supermen who were the seed of the serpent in a direct, physical sense.
The text says they were the "mighty men who were of old, men of renown." Their fame was earthly. They were famous for their power, their violence, their rebellion. They were the celebrities of the antediluvian world. But in the courts of heaven, they were an abomination, a pollution of God's created order, and a direct assault on His redemptive plan.
The phrase "and also afterward" has caused some confusion, since the Flood was meant to wipe out this corruption. It could mean that the same sin occurred again on a smaller scale after the Flood. Or, more likely, it could mean that the name "Nephilim" became a title that was later applied to other formidable, giant clans like the Anakim, whom the Israelite spies described in Numbers 13, saying "we saw the Nephilim there."
Christ or Chaos
So why does this strange, ancient story matter? It matters because the war has not changed. The ultimate choice for mankind has always been, and will always be, Christ or chaos.
The rebellion that precipitated the Flood was a rebellion against God's created boundaries. It was an attempt to seize power, life, and renown on man's own terms, aided by the demonic. It was an attempt to build a kingdom of "men of renown" in defiance of the kingdom of God. And that is precisely the spirit of our age.
We are still going after "strange flesh." When our scientists want to create human-animal hybrids in a lab, they are trafficking in Nephilim logic. When our culture seeks to erase the most fundamental created distinction of male and female, they are inviting the tohu wa-bohu, the formless void, back into God's world. When men seek to achieve immortality through technology, a digital transhumanism, they are grasping for the fruit of the Tree of Life without repentance, just as their ancient fathers did.
The sin of the sons of God was to cross a boundary God had established. The sin of the daughters of men was to welcome it. This unholy alliance against the created order is the essence of worldly rebellion. And God will judge it. He judged it with a global flood then, and He will judge it with fire at the end of time.
This passage drives us to the gospel. This monstrous attempt to corrupt the human line shows us just how desperately we needed a pure and uncorrupted Champion. The serpent's plan failed. God preserved a righteous line through Noah. And in the fullness of time, a daughter of man, Mary, conceived by the Holy Spirit, not by a fallen angel. She brought forth the true Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the true "man of renown." He is the one who did not grasp at equality with God, but humbled Himself. He is the seed of the woman who met the full fury of the serpent's seed at the cross and crushed his head forever. The ultimate choice is between the monstrous offspring of rebellion and the righteous Son of God. It is Christ, or it is chaos.