That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
The sons of God saw the daughters of men. This is a difficult passage, and various modes of interpreting it have been proposed:
(1) An opinion extensively adopted is, that the "sons of God" denote angels, "daughters of men," women generally; and that the transaction referred to was, that the angels who had been appointed to guard Eden and perambulate the world, becoming enamoured with women, mingled familiarly in their society, and cohabited with them. This view is of great antiquity, having been entertained, according to Josephus, in the later ages of the Jewish Church, and eagerly adopted by Justin, Athenagoras, Clemens Alexandrinus, Tertullian, and Lactantius, whose semi-pagan imaginations were dazzled by the rhapsodical legends of the Apocryphal book of Enoch. Being strenuously opposed at a subsequent period by Chrysostom, Augustine, and others, it was long exploded in the Christian Church as a wild and revolting fiction, until it was revived in modern times, and supported on various grounds by Rosenmuller, Gesenius, Kurtz, Tuch, Knobel, and Delitzsch, in Germany; and by Govett ('Isaiah Unfulfilled'), Maitland ('False Worship'), and others (Birks' 'Difficulties') in England, not to speak of Milton, Byron, and Moore, all of whom enlisted it in the service of poetry.
The alleged application of the name "sons of God" to angels in the poetical book of Job (Job 1:6; Job 2:1; Job 38:7; and perhaps Daniel 3:25), which is thought to have been written by Moses; the Septuagint version [which has hoi (G3588), angeloi (G32) tou (G5120) Theou (G2316), the anqels of God]; the supposed testimonies of Peter (1 Peter 3:19-20; 2 Peter 2:4) and Jude (Jude 1:6-7) in favour of this view, referring, as some imagine, to a class of fallen angels who, unlike Satan and his followers, are, because the enormity of their crimes, reserved in chains until the judgment-day; and the assumption that an extraordinary outrage must have been perpetrated before a judgment so awful as the flood would have been inflicted, are the grounds on which this opinion is rested by its supporters. But Keil, Faber, and others, have successfully shown that angels are not designated "the sons of God" in any part of the Pentateuch; that there is no reference to angels in this passage; still less in Peter, where, by 'the disobedient spirits in prison,' and the angels that kept not their first habitation, as also in Jude, where by the allusion to Sodom and Gomorrah, Balaam and Korah (Jude 1:7-11), it is proved that the apostles had in view only erring, sinful men.
Moveover, not to dwell on the impossibility (Matthew 22:30; Mark 12:25; Luke 20:36) of angels having such a carnal intercourse as is alluded to, and on the likelihood that Divine Providence would have immediately interposed rather than have deferred the judicial punishment of so enormous a violation of natural order for 120 years, the entire context of this passage refers to men as having corrupted their ways, and being, by the withdrawal of God's Spirit, doomed to punishment. For these and other reasons, this opinion as to the connection of angels with women is generally opposed by orthodox divines as contrary to all sound notions both of philosophy and religion.
(2) Another interpretation of the passage, which has been suggested in our own day, proceeds on the hypothesis that there were other varieties of mankind in existence beside the descendants of Adam; and, in accordance with this view, the following translation is proposed:-`And it came to pass, when the Adamites (literally, the Adam) began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,' 'the sons of 'Elohiym (H430)'-the sons of the gods-the other races, saw the daughters of the Adamites that they were goodly, and they took them wives of all which they chose ('Genesis of the Earth and of Man'). That 'Aadaam (H121), with the Hebrew article, is used as the name of an individual, see the note at Genesis 6:1-2. The term is, indeed, frequently used generically for mankind, but never to denote a distinct race of human beings; and accordingly it is not found in the plural, which it would have been if applied to a race. It might naturally have been expected, that in some ancient version this interpretation, if right, would have been found, but not one has been discovered to give the smallest countenance to such a view; and therefore, until some stronger evidence shall be adduced than what the world has yet seen, to prove that mankind are not all descended from one pair, the theory respecting the existence of a race called the Adamites, as separate from other human creatures, must be rejected.
(3) The most correct, and now the most prevalent, view of this passage-the view supported by Chrysostom and Augustine in ancient, and by Luther, Calvin, Hengstenberg, Keil, Faber, etc., in modern times-is that by "the sons of God," are meant the Sethites principally, but including also those other descendants of Adam who professed the same religious views and feelings:
`That sober race of men, whose lives Religious titled them the sons of God.'
And by "the daughters of men," women of Cainite descent, including such as might have joined their degenerate society from other branches of the Adamic family. Pious people, professors of the true religion, who truly reflected the divine image, were "the sons of God ( 'Elohiym (H430))," and were called by that name long before the theocracy had brought the Israelites into the special relationship of the Lord's (Yahweh's) children (Exodus 4:22-23; Deuteronomy 14:1; Deuteronomy 32:5; Psalms 73:15; Psalms 82:6; Isaiah 63:16; Hosea 1:10), or the idea attached to the name had received its full development in the Christian Church (John 1:12; Romans 8:14; Romans 8:19; 1 John 3:1-2).
Moveover, that the Hebrew word 'Aadaam (H121), with or without the article, is often used to denote a particular class, in contradistinction to men in general-men of worldly, irreligious character-will appear from the following passages (Judges 16:7; Judges 18:28; Psalms 73:5; 1 Corinthians 3:4). The meaning of the clause under notice, then, is that the professedly religions class of the antediluvians, consisting principally of Sethites, with some others-a class who, by their principles and practice, had long kept themselves separate from the world-began gradually to relax their strictness, and to abandon their isolated position, by cultivating acquaintance, and then forming alliances, with "the daughters of men" in general, the Cainite and other women of similar character. This is what is referred to by Jude, when he says (Jude 1:6) that they kept not х teen (G3588) heautoon (G1438) archeen (G746)] their primitive dignity as sons of God, and the original excellence in which they were created, but left [to idion oiketeerion] their own proper situation (Bloomfield). The interpretation of the phrase, "sons of God" now given connects the present passage with Genesis 4:26, from which it is divided by the insertion of Genesis 5:1-32, which seems a distinct document; and the two verses thus viewed throw light upon each other, as well as upon the course of the following narrative.
They took wives of all which they chose. The Hebrew verb, laaqach (H3947), to take, with 'ishaah They took wives of all which they chose. The Hebrew verb, laaqach (H3947), to take, with 'ishaah (H802) (Genesis 19:14; 1 Samuel 25:43), and sometimes without it (Genesis 34:9; Genesis 34:16; Deuteronomy 20:7; Deuteronomy 1 Chr. 22:22), signifies to take in marriage. From this usual import of the term, therefore, the marriages which the Sethites formed with the Cainite women were legitimate connections; and as female beauty has always exercised a powerful influence over the minds of men in the choice of their wives, there was no impropriety in allowing that element of attraction to have weight in forming the matrimonial relation then, any more than now. But the Sethites seem, in their admiration of external charms, to have paid no regard to the will of God respecting religious principle and character; and as intermarriages with unbelievers and profane women have in all ages been productive of numerous evils (Genesis 27:46; Genesis 28:1; Exodus 34:16; 2 Corinthians 6:14), it must be concluded that the sacred historian had such consequences in view when he took such a prominent notice of the manners which formed a characteristic feature of the latest antediluvian age.
Mixed marriages between parties of opposite principles and practice must necessarily be sources of extensive corruption. The women, irreligious themselves, would, as wives and mothers, exert an influence fatal to the existence of religion in their household, and consequently the later antediluvians sank to the lowest depravity. But the phrase "took them wives of all which they chose evidently implies something very different from the simple exercise of a free choice; and it seems a conclusion perfectly warranted by the terms of this passage, that the practice of polygamy had widely spread. until it became the chief cause of that universal corruption and violence which ensued. In connection with this, it may be added that the Hebrew 'Elohiym (H430) sometimes signifies 'the great, the mighty' (Psalms 29:1; Psalms 82:1; Psalms 82:7; John 10:34), and the Hebrew 'aadaam (H120), as distinguished from 'iysh (H376), denotes the poor, humble, and common people (Psalms 49:1-2; Isaiah 2:8-9); so that we may consider the passage still further as implying that the princes, or sons of the chief men, broke through the restraints of social and domestic order, by taking, in profligate and violent licentiousness, numbers of beautiful women from among the humbler classes to fill their harems.