Our last
paper led on to the days of Noah by way of the line of promise and blessing,
namely, through Seth. Where details of
any of these sons of Adam are given, they are seen to be men of God; Enoch walks with God, Lamech looks for
comfort, not from the civilization spread by the sons of Cain, but from the
type of Christ, Noah. The last verse
of chapter v. gives the names of the three sons of Noah,
but the generations of Noah and the building of the ark do not commence with
the opening verses of chapter vi. The
first eight verses are a continuance of the book of the generations of Adam,
and takes us back to the period indicated in
Gen. v. 4, “and the days of Adam
after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years; and he begat sons and daughters”. Genesis vi.
differs from chapter v. in one or two important respects. Genesis v.
tells us of Adam “in the day that God created man … and blessed them”. Genesis vi. 1-8 does not speak of the line of blessing – it
tells of the curse.
It is
necessary to point out that the word “men” in
vi. 1, 2 is in the singular,
carrying the article, and indicates, not men, but the man Adam. We must be on
our guard, however, of hurriedly forming a hasty conclusion from the presence
or absence of the article; there is no
article in v. 1 before the word Adam, yet inasmuch as this is
the first of a series of ten generations of individuals, it must mean the man
Adam; the same is true of the opening of
verse of I Chronicles i. It is
the individual man Adam that is meant in
v. 3, for he alone could be the
father of Seth, so also verses 4, 5;
thus it will be seen that while the presence of the article would
generally indicate the man Adam, the absence of it does not necessarily refer
to mankind in general. Just as in these
verses Adam without the article can mean none other than the first man Adam
himself, so in vi. 3, “My spirit shall not always remain in Adam,
for that he also is flesh”, simply tells us that the man Adam would die, for
that he also is flesh, like the others; then
the length of Adam’s days is given as 120 years.
One other
reference to this question of the article must be given. In verses
7, 8 the Lord said:--
“I will destroy (wipe off or blot out) man
whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man and beast and creeping thing, and the
fowls of the air; for it repenteth Me
that I have made them. But Noah found grace
in the eyes of the Lord” (Gen. vi. 7, 8).
The Lord did
not “destroy” Adam. Chapter v. 5 records his death in exactly the same terms
as it does that of Seth. God did destroy
man and beast with the flood, and these were “made” by Him, which is parallel
to the word “create”. The statement also
is definitely contrasted with the case of Noah, and it must be remembered that
Adam had been dead over 120 years before Noah was born, or over 720 years before
the flood came. Again, in Gen. viii. 21 “man” in both cases is “Ha-Adam” — yet, though the article is there, this cannot mean Adam
himself. We can now come back to the
opening verses of chapter vi. and render it as follows:--
“And it came to pass, when Adam began to
multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born unto them, that the
sons of God saw the daughters of Adam, that they were fair: and they took them wives of all which they
chose. And the Lord said, My spirit
shall not always remain in Adam (the article is not used here, even as it is
omitted in the words ‘in the earth’
in verse 4) for that he also is flesh: yet
his days shall be an hundred and twenty years” (Gen. vi. 1-3).
Who are
the sons of God? Adam himself is so
called in Luke iii. 38, but none of his descendants as such are afterwards so called. “The sons of God” are in exact contrast with
“the daughters of Adam”. Adam here is
literal, it carries with “the daughters”, and the words “of God” are in
contrast with “of Adam”. If the sons of
God were men, they were sons of Adam, and to contrast the sons of Adam with the
daughters of Adam by calling them sons of God must lead to error. Scripture does not mislead.
Job i.
6; ii. 1; xxxviii. 7
speak of the sons of God, and in these passages whatever else the “sons
of God” may mean, certainly they do not mean any of the sons of Adam. In Psa. xxix. 1
and lxxxix. 6 reference is made to the sons of the mighty,
the changed word being Elim instead
of Elohim; the second reference places these sons “in
heaven”. Another legitimate parallel is
that of Dan. iii. 25. As the language of Daniel iii.
is Syriac and not Hebrew, we
have the word bar instead of ben for “son”, but the meaning is the
same. Nebuchadnezzar’s words recorded
in Daniel iii. were not inspired, nevertheless, seeing that
he explains what he meant when he used the expression, “son of God”, his
explanation must carry more weight than that of those who live in the present
time. In verse 28 Nebuchadnezzar
explains his meaning of a son of God by saying that God had sent “His angel”.
We know
that angels fell, for Jude 6 speaks of the angels which kept not their
first estate, but left their own habitation.
The word for habitation is oiketerion
and occurs nowhere else except in
II.Cor.v.2. Their sin is likened to that of Sodom and
Gomorrha in its essential feature,
viz., “going after strange (heteros)
flesh”. The time of their fall is not
given in Jude, but Peter links the “angels that sinned” with the time of Noah
(II Pet. ii. 4, 5), and refers to the spirits in prison, which were disobedient
during the time that the ark was preparing.
When we
remember that angels are always spoken of as men, and indeed were entertained
as such for some hours by Abraham, the difficulty which we may have in
connection with this subject may not appear so great. It may seem strange at first that Gen. vi. 3 should come in between the two statements
concerning the sons of God, but we are sure that it is there with a definite
object. Of Adam the Lord said, “My
spirit shall not always remain in Adam, for that he also is flesh”. The spirit remaining in man keeps him alive; when that spirit is withdrawn man dies, he is
but flesh. Adam differed nothing in this
respect from his children, his days were numbered, and it is revealed to us
that from this point “his days” were to be “an hundred and twenty years”. “There were giants in the earth IN THOSE
DAYS”, so continues verse 4, and the only days that can be meant are those
which refer to the last 120 years of Adam’s life. Not only were they in the earth then, but
“after that”, after Adam had died, and after the flood had destroyed the giants
that were in the earth during Adam’s closing years. The word “giants” comes from the Greek gigantes, which did not originally mean
only greatness of size, but is derived for gegenes,
“earth born”. The Hebrew word is Nephilim, or “the fallen ones”; these were the Gibbor, the “mighty”, for so it is translated 139 times out of 159
occurrences. Nimrod was “a mighty one in
the earth”, and “the beginning of his kingdom was Babel”. These mighty ones are also called “men of
renown”, or literally, “men of name”; this again is a prominent feature in the
rebellion that originated Babel, for the builders said, “let us make us a
name”.
That the
Nephilim numbered among them literal giants, the Scriptures clearly
testify. The spies sent by Moses into
the land of promise spoke of the “men of great stature” that they saw, saying,
“and there we saw the giants (Nephilim)
the sons of Anak which come of the giants”.
All however were not of necessity gigantic in size, although they seem
to have left that impression upon the mind of man: their unnatural origin, their superhuman
prowess supplied the basis for the “heroes” of Greek legend, and the “giants”
of most folk tales; the giant cities of
Bashan still bear testimony to the existence of a race of literal giants, the
iron bedstead of Og, king of Bashan (over 15 feet long) bears its witness also;
hence although the A.V. gives “giants”
as a translation of Nephilim, and is
therefore open to the charge of giving a private interpretation rather than a
translation, let us not hastily come to the conclusion that these Nephilim were not, nevertheless, literal
giants, for Scripture most definitely tells us that many of them were. The intermarrying of one section of Adam’s
children with another does not supply a reasonable argument for “giants” as a
result. If the sons of God were fallen
angels, the abnormal consequences are what may be expected, and such a drastic
and universal destruction as the flood becomes a necessity. Amid the awful corruption of the flesh on
every hand Noah stand uncontaminated.
“Noah was a just man and perfect (without blemish) in his generations
(his contemporaries)”; through him only
could the line of promise run. Satan had
tried to prevent the coming of the Seed of the woman, but had again failed; he tried at the birth of Cain, for Cain “was
of that wicked one”. Finding that Seth
was given in place of Abel, he corrupted the stream of life while Adam still
lived by the irruption of the angels that fell.
Again his attempt failed, and the purpose of God held steadily on its
way. Satan himself in the form of a
serpent sought by the temptation in the garden to thwart the Most High. Satan by his angels again attempted by most
diabolical means to render the purpose impossible of attainment, but he
failed.
So has it
always been, and so must it be till the end, for concerning His purpose it is
written, “As I have purposed, so shall it stand”.
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