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In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.
Genesis 6:1-4
This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
In Genesis, chapter 5, we find an extensive detailing of a family tree that carries the reader from God through the first man, Adam, through his son Seth, until we get to the man, Noah. Essentially, this is a genealogical bridge from one part of early human history to the one, Noah, who along with his family would be the sole survivors from God’s massive judgment imposed on mankind to punish the world’s wickedness.
As we turn the page to chapter six, we see a brief interlude before we get to the Noah story. Look what we read in the first four verses:
When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.
As the family tree of humanity grew larger, so did the world’s population. We read in this passage that “human beings began to increase in number on the earth” as “daughters were born to them” and these daughters each would be a reproductive possibility to continue to fill the world with people.
Now, these “daughters of humans” were “beautiful” as seen by “the sons of God”.
Who were these “sons of God”?
We can go to a place in the Old Testament to find the answers.
Let’s look at Job, chapter 6, verse 1:
One day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them.
Here, the Hebrew word for angels, bə-nê hā-’ĕ-lō-hîm, translates to “sons of God” and so when we apply this to the passage today, we know that it was the angels who viewed the daughters as beautiful. Such was their adoration that they actually “married any of them they chose”.
Now, we don’t know any actual specifics about these angels. They could have been fallen angels or angels from Heaven. We go to the story of Abraham and the visitation of three men in Genesis, chapter 18, and we know that angels could be sent to earth and take on human form. In regard to these angels, we’re told more about their physical nature and ability to even have sexual relations when they were guests in the home of Lot in Sodom and a gang of men demanded that the men (angels) be sent out so the Sodomite males could have sex with them.
With this, we see how the angels, the sons of God, could and did make love to the daughters on earth and produce offspring. The results were offspring that weren’t normally found in the world. For we read where the children of the sexual union between the angels and the beautiful women were called the “Nephilim”, often translated to men giants. Our passage further describes them as “heroes of old, men of renown”.
It’s not known for sure but it’s believed that one of the reasons God brought judgment on the earth through the flood was because of this sexual relations and childbirth between angels and human women.
There is one other thing we learn in these four verses. For the Lord had this to say in regard to the lifespan of human beings from that point forward:
"My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”
Go back to chapter 5 and we read where the men mentioned were all living far longer than 120 years. In fact, all but three lived 900 years or more. All that changed with this decree from God and as we see today, this still holds. The oldest living person in 2025 is a woman in Brazil who is approaching 117 years of age, still well short of God’s standard.
Will she make it past 120 years?
Only if God allows it because He is the One in control. It’s been true since the earliest creation days of Genesis to today.
Tomorrow, we’ll begin the build up to Noah’s story.
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.
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