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NASB | Genesis 6:2 that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Genesis 6:2 that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful and desirable; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose and desired. |
Bible Question: who are the sons of god that took wives as in the first bbks of gen. |
Bible Answer: Excerpt from Mischievous Angels or Sethites? by Chuck Missler The strange events recorded in Genesis 6 were understood by the ancient rabbinical sources, as well as the Septuagint translators, as referring to fallen angels procreating weird hybrid offspring with human women-known as the "Nephilim." So it was also understood by the early church fathers. These bizarre events are also echoed in the legends and myths of every ancient culture upon the earth: the ancient Greeks, the Egyptians, the Hindus, the South Sea Islanders, the American Indians, and virtually all the others. However, many students of the Bible have been taught that this passage in Genesis 6 actually refers to a failure to keep the "faithful" lines of Seth separate from the "worldly" line of Cain. The idea has been advanced that after Cain killed Abel, the line of Seth remained separate and faithful, but the line of Cain turned ungodly and rebellious. The "Sons of God" are deemed to refer to leadership in the line of Seth; the "daughters of men" is deemed restricted to the line of Cain. The resulting marriages ostensibly blurred an inferred separation between them. (Why the resulting offspring are called the "Nephilim" remains without any clear explanation.) Since Jesus prophesied, "As the days of Noah were, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be,"2 it becomes essential to understand what these days included. "In the mouths of two or three witnesses every word shall be established." In Biblical matters, it is essential to always compare Scripture with Scripture. The New Testament confirmations in Jude and 2 Peter are impossible to ignore. For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell Tartarus, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly; 2 Peter 2:4-5 Peter's comments even establishes the time of the fall of these angels to the days of the Flood of Noah. Even Peter's vocabulary is provocative. Peter uses the term Tartarus, here translated "hell." This is the only place that this Greek term appears in the Bible. Tartarus is a Greek term for "dark abode of woe"; "the pit of darkness in the unseen world." As used in Homer's Iliad, it is "...as far beneath hades as the earth is below heaven."22 In Greek mythology, some of the demigods, Chronos and the rebel Titans, were said to have rebelled against their father, Uranus, and after a prolonged contest they were defeated by Zeus and were condemned into Tartarus. The Epistle of Jude23 also alludes to the strange episodes when these "alien" creatures intruded themselves into the human reproductive process: And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. Jude 6,7 The allusions to "going after strange flesh," keeping "not their first estate," having "left their own habitation," and "giving themselves over to fornication," seem to clearly fit the alien intrusions of Genesis 6. (The term for habitation, oivkhth,rion, refers to their heavenly bodies from which they had disrobed.24) For further exploration of this critical topic, see the following: George Hawkins Pember, Earth's Earliest Ages, first published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1875, and presently available by Kregel Publications, Grand Rapids MI, 1975. John Fleming, The Fallen Angels and the Heroes of Mythology, Hodges, Foster, and Figgis, Dublin, 1879. Henry Morris, The Genesis Record, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids MI, 1976. Merrill F. Unger, Biblical Demonology, Scripture Press, Chicago IL, 1952. Clarence Larkin, Spirit World, Rev. Clarence Larkin Estate, Philadelphia PA, 1921. This article was originally published in the August 1997 Personal Update NewsJournal. |