Our commentary
Who were the sons of God in Genesis 6?
Our own look at a common question, by David Dell. The background on this page is ours, not a summary of the book.
Four verses at the start of Genesis 6 have produced more argument than almost any passage of their length. Here is the text, the three main ways it has been read, and who held each view.
The text
“And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,” Genesis 6:1 (KJV)
“That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.” Genesis 6:2 (KJV)
“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.” Genesis 6:4 (KJV)
The Hebrew phrase behind “sons of God” is bene ha-elohim. Everything turns on what it means here.
View 1: angels
The oldest surviving interpretations read the sons of God as angels who sinned. That's the reading of the Book of the Watchers in 1 Enoch (chapters 6–19), of Jubilees and of the Genesis Apocryphon from Qumran. The first-century historian Josephus puts it plainly: “many angels of God accompanied with women, and begat sons that proved unjust” (Antiquities 1.3.1, tr. Whiston). One early copy of the Greek Old Testament, Codex Alexandrinus, was corrected at Genesis 6:2 to read “angels.” Among early Christian writers, Justin Martyr, Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria all took this view.
Supporters point out that the same phrase means heavenly beings in Job:
“Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them.” Job 1:6 (KJV)
“When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” Job 38:7 (KJV)
They also read Jude 6 and 2 Peter 2:4, on angels who “kept not their first estate” and were held in chains, as New Testament echoes of Genesis 6 (more in What happened to the fallen angels?).
View 2: the line of Seth
On this view the “sons of God” are the godly descendants of Seth and the “daughters of men” are descendants of Cain; the sin is a believing line marrying into an unbelieving one. The third-century chronographer Julius Africanus argued it, and Augustine gave it its most influential form in City of God XV.23. From then on it dominated Christian interpretation for centuries, roughly from the fifth to the twelfth century. Supporters point to Seth's line as the people who “call upon the name of the LORD”:
“And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the LORD.” Genesis 4:26 (KJV)
They also cite Jesus' words about angels and marriage:
“For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.” Matthew 22:30 (KJV)
Angel-view readers answer that the verse speaks of angels “in heaven,” not of angels who left their place.
View 3: rulers or “mighty ones”
A third reading, strongest in Jewish tradition, takes the sons of God as men of high rank: kings, nobles or judges abusing their power to take any woman they wanted. The Aramaic Targums (Onkelos and Jonathan), the Greek translator Symmachus and the midrash Genesis Rabbah read it this way. Genesis Rabbah 26 even records Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai cursing anyone who called them “sons of God,” and medieval commentators such as Rashi followed the human reading. In modern Christian scholarship Meredith Kline argued for a version of this view, that the sons of God were kings.
Weighing the views
This section is our own commentary. Each view has its texts. The angel view has the oldest Jewish interpretations and the usage of the phrase in Job. The Seth view has the immediate context of Genesis 4–5, which traces two family lines. The rulers view has the ancient Near Eastern habit of calling kings sons of gods. What the passage clearly cares about is that something crossed a boundary and the world grew violent: “the wickedness of man was great in the earth” (Genesis 6:5). If you take the angel view, the offspring are the Nephilim; we follow that thread in Giants in the Bible and Who were the Watchers?. For the book many of the angel-view sources draw on, see Is the Book of Enoch in the Bible?
Sources: Genesis 4:26, 6:1–5; Job 1:6, 38:7; Matthew 22:30 (KJV) · Sons of God · Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews (Whiston), Book 1 · Augustine, City of God XV.23 · Review of Doedens, The Sons of God in Genesis 6:1–4 (JTS)