In the OT the term bene Elohim appears only 4 times. three in job where it is only angels and here where a proper exegesis and correct hermeneutic as well as consistent language requires it to be angels. It also speaksof these in Jude and Enoch.
I was in the occult for many years and never once did I see them refer to Gen.6 as angels. Most Bible belieiving churches I know of accept the exegesis as angles.
The word angel does not necessarily mean spirit beings. The root meaning is messenger.
1. Sons of God (Seth line) Daughters of men (Cain line) A. These would not be godly men if they choose ungodly wives. B. Were there no pretty daughters of God? B. Were they all ugly and they had to go to the ungodly for looks?
The scriptures do not explain why the sons of God (Seth line) were attracted to daughters of men (Cain line), but this happened frequently. Israel was warned repeatedly to not take unto them wives from the pagan nations, but they often did so.
The "sons of Elohim" were alternatively explained to mean sons of princes, or men of high rank (as in
Ps 82:6,
bene '
Elyon, sons of the Most High) who degraded themselves by contracting marriages with "the daughters of men," i.e. with women of inferior position.
A second interpretation, perhaps not less ancient, understands by the "sons of Elohim," angels.
This view, however, seemed in later times to be too monstrous to be entertained.
R. Simon ben-Jochai anathematized it. Cyril calls it ἀτοπώτατον
. Theodoret (
Quaest. in Genesis): declares the maintainers of it to have lost their senses; ἐμβρόντητοι καὶ ἄγαν ἠλίθιοι; Philastrius numbers it among heresies, Chrysostom among blasphemies. Finally, Calvin says of it, "Vetus illud commentum de angelorum concubitu cum mulieribus sua absurditate abulide refellitur, ac mirum est doctos viros tam crassis et prodigiosis deliriis fuisse olim fascinatos."
Notwithstanding all this, however, many modern German commentators very strenuously assert this view. They rest their argument in favor of it mainly on these two particulars; first, that "sons of God" is everywhere else in the Old Testament a name of the angels; and next, that St. Jude seems to lend the sanction of his authority to this interpretation.
With regard to the. first of these reasons, it is not even certain that in all other passages of Scripture where "the sons of God" are mentioned angels are meant. It is not absolutely
necessary so to understand the designation either in
Ps 29:1 or 89:6, or even in
Job 1:2.
In any of these passages it might mean holy men.
Job 38:7, and
Da 3:25, are the only places in which it
certainly means angels.
The argument from St. Jude is of more force; for he does compare the sin of the angels to that of Sodom and Gomorrha (τούτοις in ver. 7 must refer to the angels mentioned in ver. 6), as if it were of a like unnatural kind. That this was the meaning of St. Jude is rendered the more probable when we recollect his quotation from the book of Enoch where the same view is taken.
Further, that the angels had the power of assuming a corporeal form seems clear from many parts of the Old Testament All that can be urged in support of this view has been said by Delitzsch in his
Die Genesis ausgelegt, and by Kurtz,
Gesch. des AIten Bundes, and his treatise,
Die Ehen der Sohne Gottes. It must be confessed that their arguments are not without weight.
The early existence of such an interpretation seems, at any rate, to indicate a starting-point for the heathen mythologies.
The fact, too, that from such an intercourse "the mighty men" were born, points in the same direction.
The Greek "'heroes" were sons of the gods; οὐκ οισθα
, says Plato in the
Cratylus, ὅτι ἡμίθεοι οἰ ἡρῶες; πάντες δήπου γεγόνασιν ἐρασθέντες ἢ θεὸς θνητῆς ἢ θνητοὶ θεᾶς.
Even Hesiod's account of the birth of the giants, monstrous and fantastic as it is, bears tokens of having originated in the same belief.
In like manner it may be remarked that the stories of
incubi and succubi, so commonly believed in the Middle Ages, and which even Heidegger (
Hist. Sacr. i, 289) does not discredit, had reference to a commerce between daemons and mortals of the same kind as that narrated in Genesis. Thomas Aquinas (pars i, qu. 51, art. 3) argues that it was possible for angels to have children by mortal women.
This theory, however, must be abandoned as scientifically preposterous.
Verse 1 speaks of men multiplying while verse 2 speaks of another class- the sons of GOd (bene Elohim.) Nowhere in teh OT will you find men called Bene Elohim.
In verse 4 how could a relation between just men and women produce teh Nephilim? (giants in Englis and Titanus in the LXX which are both poor translations of NAPIUL in Hebrew)
also why would mere men and women producing children produce the gibborim? These were not just muscle men, but men of herculean and Atlas strength?
Why would mere men and women producing create men of fame? This is not like Hollywood or sports or political fame, but place in society of high high honor!
No consistency in exegesis, language, and history shows these were Angles who left their first habitation as spoken of by Jude and had sex with human women. those angels in Jude cannot be the ones that fell with satan, for they are free and roaming around the earth, while the angels in Jude are bound awaiting final judgment.
Who were the Nephilim?
It should be observed that they are not spoken of (as has sometimes been assumed) as the offspring of the "sons of the Elohim" and "the daughters of men."
The sacred writer says, "the Nephilim were on the earth in those days," before he goes on to speak of the children of the mixed marriages.
The name, which has been variously explained, only occurs once again in
Nu 13:33, where the Nephilim are said to have been one of the Canaanitish tribes.
They are there spoken of as "men of great stature," and hence probably the rendering γίγαντες of the Sept. and "the giants" of our A. V.
But there is nothing in the word itself to justify this “giants with super human strength” interpretation. If it is of Hebrew origin (which, however, may be doubted), it must mean either "fallen," i.e. apostate ones; or those who "fall upon" others, violent men, plunderers, freebooters, etc.
So the nephilim were men of great evil, who fell upon innocent victims, in a ferocious manner.
Some have observed that if the Nephilim of Canaan were descendants of the Nephilim in
Ge 6:4, we have here a very strong argument for the non-universality of the Deluge. But it can hardly be inferred from these casual references that the name is intended as that of a race. It is rather used in a general way in both passages for
burly fighters.