…the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.
The sons of God? What does that mean? Angels? Demons/Fallen angels? Godly men? Seth’s family line? Well first of all, if these sons of God are not to be men, but angels, then they’re certainly fallen away from God. Thus, these fallen angels would have married human women, and had a mix of human/angel offspring. For this to happen though, obviously these angels would have been able to reproduce in the same fashion as humans. Whether this could be possible is unclear, but certainly the spiritual can produce physical offspring, as we see with Mary and Jesus. This involves God the creator though, and there isn’t any mention whether angels would have the power.
The other main view is that the sons of God simply refer to godly men at the time. These men would have been from Seth’s family line, but wouldn’t necessarily have included the entire line. Thus, these men would have married women from Cain’s lineage, or possibly other un-godly women from Seth’s.
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days – and also afterwards…
In any case, we end up with the Nephilim, or the fallen. This could lend support for either case, either ‘fallen’ angels, or man having ‘fallen’ away from God. But what is interesting is that it is specifically pointed out that they were on the earth in those days, AND also afterwards. After what? After the flood? If so, they must have continued through Noah’s sons, which sways me away from the idea of the angels. However, this after doesn’t have to be the flood, and could easily be contained in the time before.
…his days will be a hundred and twenty years.
Here again is a point at which there are two main views. God is either limiting man’s lifespan to 120 years, or providing a countdown until the flood. Since men lived well past 120 after the flood, that doesn’t seem to match up. Also, God is planning to wipe all of mankind out with the flood, so limiting their lifespan doesn’t seem to have a point. At least, he’s planning to wipe out everyone until he thinks about Noah.
Now once again we come to a new account. This has been happening, but as we get to flood, a couple of these different accounts seem to be mixed together for the next couple of chapters. There’s an idea called the documentary hypothesis which holds that the Pentateuch of the Bible was put together by pulling sections from other older works. The major ones are often listed as the J, E, P, and D sources. J for Yahwist or Jahvist, E for Elohist, P for a Priestly source, and D for Deuteronomist. We’ve seen this idea before, with the different accounts of creation. For example, the day-by-day creation account is attributed to the P source, as well as Adam’s genealogy, and part of the flood story. The other part of the flood story is attributed to the J source, as well as the creation account starting in Genesis 2:4(where the name Yahweh appears and is used throughout).
Whether these other sources actually existed isn’t known, but there are separations as we’ve seen, with different points of focus. Anyways, as far as Noah’s story goes, the start of chapter six is thought to go with the J source, and then at verse 9 we switch over to the P account, as it sets up its stage for the flood. Over chapters 7 and 8 these sources then get intertwined to create the story we have recorded, but could be separated out to each give their own account, with different points of focus. The site energion.com/rpp/flood.shtml has the passage separated out, or just color-coded for comparison if you’re interested.
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