Lonang Commentary on Genesis 6

Gen. 6:1-2,4 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. … 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.

Sons of God and Daughters of Man

Up to this point in Genesis, the focus has been on the immediate family of Adam and Eve and their sons, Cain, Abel and Seth. In chapter 5 we have a brief introduction to the lineage from Adam to Noah and his sons, but nothing really about the wider society or culture of humanity. Here in chapter 6, the focus changes to what is happening generally in the world. The narrative is at a point in time (as per verse 3) about 120 years before the flood, or 1536 years after creation.

Some have calculated there may have been as many as 200,000,000 people on the earth when the flood came. However, any such calculations require making certain assumptions about birthrates that cannot be proved. Chapter 5 makes it clear that people often waited until they were over 100 years old before having children, but it is impossible to know whether this was the result of individual choice, or whether God was directing the fertility rate. In any event, I think the 200 million calculation is a bit aggressive, it also being the approximate world population at the time of Christ roughly 2,500 years later. But there were in all likelihood millions of people on the earth before the flood who then perished in it.

The reference to Nephilim is usually understood to mean giants – human beings, no doubt – who were perhaps 8-10 feet tall. I don’t know why this should be taken as merely a myth, when there is ample record of people reaching 8 feet in modern times, though they are few. By saying the Nephilim were “on the earth in those days, and also afterward,” I take it to mean that this was a genetic trait that survived the flood in some select descendants of Noah. But physical evidence of human giants is scant and hard to come by – some claim that such evidence has been intentionally hidden, but I have no means of determining the truth of such claims. Thus, the evidence of giants among us in history is limited to anecdotal evidence, i.e., stories and legends. I might be inclined to say the Nephilim are merely mythic, except the scripture here treats them as real people.

Apparently, the phrases sons of God and daughters of man have proven difficult for many people to interpret or understand. As a result, there is all kinds of speculation about the meaning of them, such as: 1) the sons of God are angels, and the daughters of man are human, (and according to some, the Nephilim are their unholy offspring); 2) the sons of God are righteous men, and the daughters of man are unrighteous women; and 3) much to the same effect – the sons of God are of the line of Seth (i.e., his descendants), and the daughters of man are of the line of Cain.

Except, angels cannot mate with humans and produce offspring. There is no scriptural evidence whatsoever that angels can reproduce, either among themselves, or with humans. Further, there is no scriptural evidence whatsoever that anyone from the line of Cain survived the flood. And as I said earlier, there is no reason to suppose that all of the descendants of Seth were righteous, as the descendants of Seth comprise every single person alive today, the vast majority of whom are unrighteous. And one can hardly fault men for desiring to take beautiful women as their wives. I don’t doubt that in those days, before the advent of modern diseases, before genetic degradation or a corruption of the food supply, the women generally would have been very attractive.

Yes, sometimes the phrase sons of God does refer to angels (Job 1:6). But other times, it refers to believers in Christ, who are adopted sons of God (Gal. 4:5-7). Still other times, both Adam and Christ are recognized as a son of God because neither of them had a human father. In point of fact, anyone is a son of God who has been created directly by God, either physically or spiritually via the second birth – and this covers all of these cases.

I have even heard preachers scold the sons of God for “taking any wife they chose,” as if there is some biblical doctrine that a righteous man can only choose as a wife the woman whom God shall choose. I confess, I have searched the scriptures for many years, and have never found such a doctrine. Sure, the Israelites were to marry another Israelite, but that isn’t a general rule for Gentile nations. (Dt. 7:3). And Christians are exhorted not to be unequally yoked to an unbeliever. ( 2 Cor. 6:14). But neither of these establish a doctrine or teaching that God chooses every man’s wife. Nor does the example of Isaac and Rebekah. Although, I do believe that if a man asks God to provide him with a wife, that is a prayer request the Lord may respond favorably to.

May I humbly suggest, that if people would simply stop trying to read some spiritual aspect into the text, its meaning is pretty clear. The entire context, using words like man, sons, daughters, wives, children, and men – indicates the text is talking about people. Ordinary human beings. Men and women are getting married and having kids. Remember, Gen. 6 is describing the period in history immediately before the flood of Noah. What do other scriptures have to say about this time in history?

As were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark. (Mt. 24:37-38).

Why look for a supernatural and/or spiritual explanation, when the textual explanation is clear?

So why, you may ask, does Gen. 6 use the phrases, sons of God and daughters of man? It goes straight back to the law of inheritance (we inherit things of a non-genetic nature solely from our fathers), when you put it together with the creation account. Adam was the direct creation of God from the dust of the ground, such that he had no human parent. His only parent was God Himself. Eve, however, was not made from the dust of the ground, but was made from a portion of Adam’s side. Meaning that for Eve, her only parent was Adam.

Men, taking their inheritance exclusively from their father, are each a son of God in the sense that He (God) is the ultimate parent of every man. In other words, if you trace the ancestry of every male human being to its point of origin, the ultimate parent of all men is God. But women stand in the shoes of Eve, as it were – not taking an inheritance from her as ultimate mother (for nothing is inherited from the mother), but taking through the male line until Adam. In other words, the ultimate parent of all women is Adam, not God, just as it was for Eve. Therefore, all men are sons of God, and all women are daughters of Adam.

Pay attention to this phrase, daughters of man, used twice in this text, which can be equally rendered as daughters of Man (as in Adam, the Man), or as the daughters of Adam. For in fact, the Hebrew word for “man” here in these verses is “Adam,” which can be translated either as generic Man, or as the proper name for the first man. Then it becomes clear that Man = Adam, and Adam = Man. So, daughters of man = daughters of Adam. That’s why the text does not say, daughters of men.

Thus, the phrases, sons of God and daughters of Man merely reflect who is the ultimate parent of both men and women. And, as the context itself suggests, these phrases simply refer to men and women in general, all of them ordinary people – nothing supernatural, or even spiritual. Angels, and hybrid offspring, are not in the picture. Nor is any distinction being made in this text between the righteous and the unrighteous. It is simply a reference to people who, in Jesus’ words, were marrying and giving in marriage.

Gen. 6:3,5-8 Then the LORD said, “My Spirit will not remain with man forever, because he is also flesh; nevertheless his days shall be 120 years.” … Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of mankind was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. So the LORD was sorry that He had made mankind on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. Then the LORD said, “I will wipe out mankind whom I have created from the face of the land; mankind, and animals as well, and crawling things, and the birds of the sky. For I am sorry that I have made them.”

The Law of the Land

Earlier I noted that ever since the Fall and the curse of the ground, the earth reflects the sin condition of its inhabitants. I call this principle the Law of the Land. With Adam, this meant that not only he was cursed – along with all of his descendants – but the ground itself was also cursed because of Adam’s sin. In other words, the curse of the ground is a literal curse, against the literal surface of the earth. So, in addition to all people being sentenced to die because of Adam, the land itself was put under a form of bondage to bring forth thorns and thistles (non-edible and non-useful plants), and to become a harsh taskmaster for all mankind. Gen. 3:17-19. This is true everywhere in the world, because nowhere in the world is the land inhabited by sinless people.

Similarly with Cain, not only was he personally put under punishment for his crime, but the land was put under an additional burden by his dwelling on it, which would follow him wherever he went. Gen. 4:11-12. Thus, Cain’s sentence of vagrancy is very typical of the law of the land in operation. And this burden would remain until it was properly atoned for. People often think of Cain’s punishment as being personal only to him, but the fact is even after Cain’s death, the additional burden his actions placed on the land would survive him and continue to apply, at a minimum, to his descendants.

God later confirms this by stating the general rule as part of the laws given to Israel. “You shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land, and no atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of the one who shed it.” Num. 35:33. So, not only does every act of bloodshed (murder) separately pollute the land, but every murder also creates the need for a separate act of atonement to remove that pollution. And if any murderer goes uncaught or unpunished – that is, his act of murder goes unatoned for – then the pollution remains on the land even after the murderer’s death.

The principle that bloodshed pollutes or defiles the land is a universal law applicable to all people in all places and at all times. It did not arise for the first time when Moses was delivering God’s laws for Israel. For the fact that Abel’s blood cried out from the ground shows that, in fact, the ground had been polluted by his blood. And the fact that the first family at the time of Abel’s murder had not been given any additional verbal revelations of God’s laws since the Dominion Mandate was spoken, shows that bloodshed pollution is part of the laws of nature (i.e., the laws of creation) which are eternal and universal. Thus, this is not a rule for Israel only, nor is it for the Old Testament only, because it is not a law flowing from any verbal covenant. It applies to all the descendants of Adam made in God’s image, which is everybody alive today.

However, bloodshed is not the only sin or crime that pollutes the land in this manner, for idolatry also pollutes the land. We see in Rom. 1:21-25 that idolatry is universally condemned by the law of nature, and every person on earth knows it whether they admit it or not. For which God will judge all the people of the earth, for the many ways in which they have defiled the land, and atone for their sins by thoroughly cleansing the land. Which helps put into perspective God’s dispossession of the Jews from the land of Israel for their repeated idolatry as not so much a special case, as an example of a general rule.

Similarly, God told Moses that the people of Canaan, which the people of Israel were about to dispossess, had polluted the land because of their immorality. After listing the various sexual offenses that defiled the land, the Lord said: “Do not make yourselves unclean by any of these things, for by all these the nations I am driving out before you have become unclean, and the land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants.” Lev. 18:24-25. Remember, the Canaanites had neither been given the laws of Israel, nor were they subject to them, so the fact they were accountable for these sexual offenses means those offenses are and were part of the laws of nature, not limited as to person, place or time.

This again is confirmed by Rom. 1:26-28, and it is the operative principle behind verses such as Num. 14:18: “The LORD is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

When the scripture says that bloodshed, idolatry and immorality all pollute or defile the land, it is not talking about a chemical reaction or physical process that will occur to cause chemical or physical pollution. The law of the land is a spiritual principle: the pollution is spiritual, and the defilement of the land is spiritual. The earth responds not from a physical reaction, but in a spiritual sense due to the commission of certain kinds of sin.

We’re not talking about any form of mysticism or animism here. God is not in the ground or in nature, but rather the creation of God is responding to the laws of God that He imbued in the creation when it was made. The implementation of this principle comes from God enforcing His own laws of the way He made the world. We are not here talking about a type of pollution that can be measured scientifically. But at the same time, this pollution is real, that is, it affects things in the natural world, not merely in the spiritual realm.

Which brings us to this text here in chapter 6. In these verses, God gives Noah an advance notice of 120 years that all the people and land animals of the world will be wiped out. Why? Because the “wickedness of mankind was great on the earth, and … every intent of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.” Additionally, as we learn from verses 11 and 13, violence – from which we may infer bloodshed and murder – was a particular problem. All of which would have continually polluted the land on an ongoing basis.

However, the legal framework governing mankind in the first half of Noah’s life has not changed since Cain. In other words, no one had law enforcement authority over crimes except the Lord God Himself. He had not appointed anyone among men to enforce the law – most especially, the law of murder. But the same was true for idolatry and immorality. The method of atonement for murder specified in Num. 35:33 (capital punishment) was not available to anyone yet. Which meant that by the time of the flood, about 1656 A.M., no atonement for the sins of mankind has yet been made since creation, and the pollution of the land is piling up, as it were. God’s gotta do something drastic. And you can bet God is going to address the lack of law enforcement situation.

Gen. 6:9-13 These are the generations of Noah. … And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

Gen. 6:17 For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die.

Atonement and Cleansing of the Earth

The Law of the Land has a cumulative effect, not just an immediate one. Over time, as bloodshed goes un-atoned for, and as idolatry and immorality increase unchecked, the defilement of the land begins to accumulate. This accumulation of defilement creates a sin debt which burdens the land, weighs it down, and puts the earth under a heavy strain – one that it was never meant to carry indefinitely. This accumulated defilement of the land – unless atoned for – never goes away. Every new defilement which is not atoned for just gets heaped on top of the previous defilements.

“The earth lies defiled under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse devours the earth, and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt; therefore the inhabitants of the earth are scorched, and few men are left.” Isa. 24:5-6.

God, as the Great Governor of the universe, who made the world and all those who dwell on it (Ps. 24:1), is simply not going to allow the sin debt to accumulate forever, for it is spoiling His creation. He knows all too well the law of atonement, for it is His law, and He knows that nothing other than the blood of the wrongdoers can atone for the defilement of the earth. So here in Gen. 6, He announces His intention to make an end of all flesh, the result of which will be a monumental shedding of blood. For at this point in time, all the sins of man in history have gone un-atoned for, and from a certain point of view, God doesn’t really have any choice.

In the context of the law of the land, what does atonement mean, really? Are any of the defilers repenting of their sins, or confessing faith in God? No. Is God extending forgiveness to anyone, or is anyone being redeemed? No. In this context, atonement means the land is being cleansed – wiped clean. The accumulated sin debt is being paid off in full. The defilement and pollution of the land is being removed, and the land is being given a fresh start. Which means, at a minimum, the defilers of the land have all got to die, for atonement can be attained no other way.

I know it is common for people to view God’s sparing of Noah and his family from death in the flood as a form of salvation, presaging the work and ministry of Christ. However, while the scripture clearly indicates Noah was a man of faith, it says nothing about the faith of his family members, and there is no reason to assume any of them shared Noah’s faith. Besides which, there is nothing in the text of Genesis even hinting that bringing these eight people through the flood worked some kind of individual spiritual cleansing, forgiveness or a change of heart. No, sorry to disappoint, but the only atonement going on in this story is the atonement of the land, and it will definitely not be going to an eternal heavenly reward.

Think back to our example of the Canaanites, who defiled the land of Israel with their immorality. Is God going to take this polluted land and give it to His people as a filthy and corrupted inheritance, with a huge leftover sin debt? No, He is going to first cleanse the land and wipe it clean, so the Israelites will take possession of the land with a fresh start. So when the scriptures say the land vomited out its inhabitants (Lev. 18:25), what that really means is the prior inhabitants all had to die. Their bloodshed would act as an atonement – not for anyone’s personal salvation, either for the Canaanites or the Jews – but solely for the cleansing of the land. When Israel took possession of Canaan, no one was personally saved.

So back in Noah’s time, faced with the accumulated sin debt of over 1600 years, God doesn’t have too many options. It’s not time for Jesus to arrive on earth yet, so that means the only way to cleanse the earth and give it a fresh start – paying off the sin debt in full – is to wipe out everyone except for Noah’s immediate family. And, as it turns out, do some extensive terraforming at the same time.

Back then, the earth cracked open (think of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge). Continents moved, and mountain ranges were formed. The water level of the oceans undoubtedly rose. Lakes, glaciers, and deep canyons formed where there had been none before. Sediment was piled up everywhere, and the remains of sea creatures were deposited over the entire surface of the earth to become fossilized. From a topographical standpoint, nothing was the same after the flood as it was before. I assume all traces of the original Garden of Eden were wiped out. The courses of the four rivers flowing from Eden (Gen. 2:10-14) undoubtedly changed – the Tigris and Euphrates still exist, but noone knows where the Pishon and Gihon were.

For all of its destructive power and effects, the Genesis flood only took care of the sin debt problem temporarily. As soon as people began to multiply again, the defilement of the earth and the accumulation of a sin debt just started up all over again. However, the complete destruction of the present earth and the creation of a new earth will do away with the problem forever, since sin, death and the curse of the ground will all be eliminated at that time. (Rev. 21:4; 22:3).

Gen. 6:14-16 Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark 300 cubits, its breadth 50 cubits, and its height 30 cubits. Make a roof for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above, and set the door of the ark in its side. Make it with lower, second, and third decks.

Building of the Ark

I take this account of the building of the ark to be literal and historical. As for the technical and scientific matters implicated in the building of the ark, I leave to others to describe and defend. The Ark Encounter in Kentucky is probably the leading advocate for showing how, even with the limited technology available at the time, the construction and outfitting of the ark were entirely feasible and reasonable.

Many people have spent their lives and resources trying to locate the ark and prove its existence. I think it no small coincidence that many artifacts mentioned in the Old Testament – Noah’s ark, the ark of the covenant, chariots at the bottom of the Red Sea from the time of the Exodus, etc. are, or are thought to be, in locations controlled by Islamic countries, and are therefore largely inaccessible today. The fact is, there are many people in the world who do not want these items to be found, because it would validate biblical history, most especially Jewish history.

I have no doubt that Noah’s ark, presumably located somewhere in the mountains of Ararat (in modern Turkey), will one day be found, or rather, exposed. I think this is true for all the “missing” ancient artifacts from the scriptures, because God is waiting to reveal these things at the proper time. Until then, people will have to take the existence of these items and their historicity on faith, as God desires us to do. But with respect to Noah’s ark in particular, it being located on a mountain, I have no doubt that it will someday be revealed, because scripture plainly teaches that in the future, all the mountains will be leveled.

The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. Rev. 6:14. And every island fled away, and no mountains were to be found. Rev. 16:20.

I don’t know it for a fact, of course, but it just seems to me to be extremely likely, that Noah’s ark will be revealed when the mountains are all thrown down by God’s doing, if it hasn’t already been found before that. (These scriptures refer to the end of the Tribulation.)

Gen. 6:18-22 But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female. Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground, according to its kind, two of every sort shall come in to you to keep them alive. Also take with you every sort of food that is eaten, and store it up. It shall serve as food for you and for them.” Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.

Destruction and Regime Change

I’ll discuss the how of Noah getting all the animals on the ark in chapter 7. For now, I want to focus on the why. The most obvious answer, of course, is that God wanted Noah to bring all the animals with him for the same reason the Lord chose Noah, a man with three adult sons who had wives. That is, to repopulate the planet, with both people and animals.

Yet it is a little odd that God should mention a covenant with Noah at this time, which is presumably still 120 years before the flood, since the covenant only comes after that. Indeed, the word covenant is not used again until chapter 9. Some argue this indicates that God and Noah are in some limited sense striking a bargain, or coming to a mutual understanding at least, whereby Noah willingly accepts the coming covenant as shown by his obedience to God’s commands. But I suggest there is something more going on – God is subtly indicating to Noah that big changes are coming, not merely to the environment, but in human society as a whole. When Noah gets off the ark on the other side of the flood, human relationships and society are not going to merely resume and pick up where they left off.

A fact that we, having the benefit of scripture and hindsight, now know to be true. For it was only 100-150 years from Noah’s emergence from the ark until the Tower of Babel experience – a mere blip in time historically. The Tower of Babel was of course enormously important, linguistically, anthropologically, etc. But the old way of governing the world, as it were, was about to go the way of the dinosaur.

For before the flood, the entirety of the human race was governed by patriarchs – men who were the heads of their families, on a family by family basis. No family was above the rest (does anyone really think Adam was governing or ruling over his great-great grandsons?). There were no nations, nor were there any kings as far as we know, before the flood. People often refer to Adam as the king of the world, but scripture never calls him that.

But after Babel – after the flood – the world was no longer ruled by patriarchs, as such. Governance of the human race was put into the hands of nations, where it has remained ever since. This situation will not change until Christ returns and sets up his earthly Millennial kingdom. And that worldwide government will remain in place until the end of the world, when the heavenly kingdom will take charge of, well everything. Interestingly, each time one of these major regime changes occurs, it will be immediately preceded by a total destruction of the earth.

In the totality of history, God will destroy the earth three times: 1) with a flood of water (Noah’s flood); 2) with the great earthquake (the last event of the Tribulation) that will raise every valley, topple every mountain, and make every island flee (Isa. 24:1,19; Rev. 6:12-14; Rev. 16:18-20); and 3) the ultimate destruction of the earth with fire (2 Pet. 3:7, 12). I have heard sermons on the first and the third, but never the second. Why? Most likely it reflects the belief of many (i.e., amills and postmills) that once Jesus returns, history will end and the burning of the earth and heavens by fire will follow swiftly. Yet the coming earthquake is very real, and is not far off (that is, it is only as far off as the Tribulation itself).

But don’t lose the significance of these three destructive events, namely, that each marks a fundamental change in the way the world is governed. And each destruction makes it possible for the next form of world government to be ushered in. Which is why I strongly believe the great earthquake will not signal the end of the world, but rather it will prepare the world for the next regime – in this case, the kingdom of Christ. Which is strongly indicated by the association of the great earthquake with Armageddon:

For in my jealousy and in my blazing wrath I declare, On that day there shall be a great earthquake in the land of Israel. The fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens and the beasts of the field and all creeping things that creep on the ground, and all the people who are on the face of the earth, shall quake at my presence. And the mountains shall be thrown down, and the cliffs shall fall, and every wall shall tumble to the ground. Eze. 38:19-20.

All of these things are a manifestation of the operation of the law of the land and the accumulated sin debt principle. In Noah’s time, the land had to be cleansed from the sin debt of 1656 years, to make way (provide a clean slate) for the emergence of the nations. Since then, God has provided for both human law enforcement (by the creation of nations and implementation of capital punishment) and redemption by Christ to help alleviate the burden of sin in the world. However, the salvation offered by Christ only redeems individuals – it does nothing to cleanse the land. And the efforts of human law enforcement have hardly been effective. The greatest evils of bloodshed in particular have been committed by nations, making the sin debt problem worse, not better.

Which means we now have about 4300 years of accumulated sin debt, and many more people and evildoers than existed in Noah’s time, putting the earth under a terrible strain.

For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. (Rom. 8:22-23).

We know what is required. The earth must be wiped clean, be reformed, and most of the people living on it must die. “Behold, the LORD will empty the earth and make it desolate, and he will twist its surface and scatter its inhabitants.” Isa. 24:1. Just as God was not willing to have His people Israel possess the Promised Land tainted by its prior occupants, so when Jesus returns to establish His kingdom, the earth must be set free from the pollution and defilements left over from the rise and fall of the Kingdom of Satan.

Even again, when the inhabitants of the earth make a final rebellion against God at the end of the Millennium (Rev. 20:7-10), the earth will need to be destroyed by fire to set it free from the sin debt, the curse of the ground, and even death. Only then, with the creation of a new earth, will the sin and sin debt problem be completely eliminated permanently.