This is part four of The Strange Parts, a series on the passages of Scripture that only make sense with a supernatural worldview. Fair warning. This is the strangest one yet.
“Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose.”
Genesis 6:1-2 NKJV
This is the passage readers skip hardest, and I understand why. Four verses before the flood, the Bible tells us the sons of God took human wives, and their offspring were the giants, the mighty men of old, men of renown. Verse 4 names them. The Nephilim. And then the text moves on to the flood as if it had just said something perfectly ordinary.
Generations of teachers have offered us gentler readings. The most common one says the sons of God are the godly line of Seth and the daughters of men are the worldly line of Cain, and the sin is intermarriage between believers and unbelievers. It is a sermon that preaches well. But watch what it costs. The text says nothing about Seth or Cain in this passage. The phrase daughters of men in verse 2 has to mean all human women in verse 1 and then suddenly mean only Cainite women one verse later. And no one has ever explained why believers marrying unbelievers would produce giants. Ordinary marriages produce ordinary children. Whatever Genesis 6 is describing, the text presents it as a crossing of a boundary that should never have been crossed.
What Sons of God Means Everywhere Else
Here is the controlling fact. In the Old Testament, the phrase bene ha’elohim, sons of God, refers to spiritual beings every single time it appears. Job 1:6 says the sons of God came to present themselves before Jehovah, and the satan came among them. That is the divine council we met in Psalm 82, reporting for duty. Job 38:7 says the sons of God shouted for joy when Jehovah laid the foundations of the earth, which rules out humans altogether, since none existed yet. The Hebrew reader of Genesis 6 heard the phrase and knew exactly what realm it pointed to.
So the plain reading is the supernatural one. Members of the spiritual world crossed into ours, took what was not theirs, and produced the Nephilim. It is strange. It was supposed to be strange. Moses is showing us that the corruption before the flood was not merely human wickedness but a full-scale rebellion bleeding across the boundary between realms.
| Word | Original | Strong’s | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| bene ha’elohim | בְּנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים | H1121, H430 | Sons of God. Spiritual beings of the council in every Old Testament use |
| nephilim | נְפִלִים | H5303 | The giants of Genesis 6:4 and Numbers 13:33 |
| gibborim | גִּבֹּרִים | H1368 | Mighty ones, men of renown |
| tartaroo | ταρταρόω | G5020 | To cast down to Tartarus, the word Peter chooses in 2 Peter 2:4 |
| phulake | φυλακή | G5438 | Prison, where the disobedient spirits of 1 Peter 3:19 are held |
The New Testament Will Not Let Us Off the Hook
If Genesis 6 stood alone, maybe we could shrug and move on. It does not stand alone.
“And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day.”
Jude 6 NKJV
Angels who did not keep their proper domain but left their own abode. That is a precise description of Genesis 6, and Jude places it between Egypt and Sodom in a list of historical judgments. Peter says the same thing. God did not spare the angels who sinned but cast them down to hell, and Peter’s word there is not the usual one. He says God sent them to Tartarus, borrowing the term Greek speakers used for the deepest pit where the old rebel gods were bound. Then, in the very next breath, Peter mentions Noah and the flood. Both apostles read Genesis 6 the way the whole ancient world read it. A real rebellion, before the flood, punished with real chains.
What About Enoch
And yes, we need to talk about Enoch, because Jude quotes him by name, and somebody in your Bible study is going to bring it up. The book of 1 Enoch is a Second Temple Jewish work that retells the Genesis 6 rebellion in vivid detail, and Jude 14-15 quotes it directly. Does that make Enoch Scripture? No. Inspired authors are free to quote true statements from uninspired books, and Paul does exactly that with pagan poets in Acts 17 and Titus 1. What the quotation does tell us is what worldview Jude assumed his readers held. He could cite the Enoch tradition without a footnote because his audience already understood Genesis 6 supernaturally. The strange reading is not a modern invention. It is the ancient consensus, and the tame readings are the newcomers.
The supernatural reading of Genesis 6 is not the fringe position. It is the ancient one, and the apostles held it.
Why Peter Told Suffering Churches This Story
Now step back and ask the pastoral question. Peter wrote to small, scattered, persecuted congregations. Of all the comforts available to him, why reach for this one?
“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared.”
1 Peter 3:18-20 NKJV
Preachers have tied themselves in knots over this passage, but inside the worldview we have been building it reads clean. Between His death and His exaltation, Christ made a proclamation to the imprisoned spirits of Genesis 6. Not an offer of salvation. An announcement. The realm that broke into ours to corrupt it got a personal visit from the risen Lord, and the message was victory. Your rebellion failed. The seed of the woman lives, and I hold the keys.
That is why Peter told suffering churches this story. Because the powers that seemed to be winning in the courts of Rome had already lost in the courts of heaven, and the oldest, darkest rebellion in the Bible ends with chains on the rebels and a crown on the Lamb. Whatever you are facing, it is not bigger than what is already bound.
Discussion Questions
- What were you taught about Genesis 6:1-4, and how does that reading hold up against the words of the passage itself?
- Survey the phrase sons of God in Job 1:6, Job 2:1, and Job 38:7. What do these uses tell us about Genesis 6?
- Read Jude 5-7 slowly. What do Egypt, the angels, and Sodom have in common in Jude’s argument?
- Does Jude quoting 1 Enoch trouble you? How does Paul’s use of pagan poets in Acts 17:28 help?
- Why is Christ’s proclamation to the spirits in prison good news for a believer under pressure right now?
Going Deeper
Heiser’s The Unseen Realm gives the Genesis 6 rebellion two full chapters, and his book Reversing Hermon is devoted entirely to how the New Testament answers it. Read Numbers 13:32-33 and notice who the spies say they saw in the land, and whose sons the text says they were. Then read 2 Peter 2:4-9 and Jude 5-7 side by side and mark every parallel. The two passages are cousins, and together they are the apostolic commentary on the strangest chapter in Genesis.
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