Genesis 6:1-6

All right, here we are.
Why did I question?
I should have known.
I should have simply known.
Well,
we are grateful to have you with us
as we continue under a different little bit of environment,
but I continue through Genesis today
into a part that I think many people resonate with,
that many people enjoy,
stories that are well known.
In some cases, maybe surprisingly different in the scripture,
or at least there are probably aspects in the scripture
that are different from those things
that people might think they know.
And so as we enter this sixth chapter,
the book of Genesis,
we’ve kind of said this before,
but you have a section of narrative,
and then there’s a kind of transitional section or a bridge,
and we get that today.
In some ways, the genealogy functions as that,
but specifically as we move toward the Noah stories,
we have this intro to chapter six
that has to do with setting the stage for those stories.
So let me read a few verses here,
and then we can unpack them.
When men began to increase in number on the earth,
and the daughters were born to them,
the sons of God saw the daughters of men were beautiful,
and they married any of them they chose.
Then the Lord said,
“My spirit will not contend with man forever,
for he is mortal.
His days will be 120 years.”
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days,
and also afterward, when the sons of God
went to the daughters of men and had children of them,
and they were the heroes of old,
renowned. So here we have this
transitional section.
Nobody has exactly known what to do with these verses.
Their function in the story is really twofold.
It kind of sets the stage
for the fallenness of man
that God is going to reflect on in the next passage,
and we move away from these fantastic numbers of lifespan,
and we get to,
in the 10 generations that have followed,
God now says that human lifespan is going to be fixed,
and so no longer in the story are there going to be these
800,
900-year-old lifespans,
that there’s going to be
numbers that we would find more familiar.
Now, in their context, these numbers are still
astronomical.
I mean, 120 years old in the ancient world
would have been an incredible,
fantastic number,
but they serve in the story to limit life,
and here we get that theme that we’ve seen before,
that God is setting some limitations on human experience,
that God and man,
it says it here,
I’m not going to contend with man,
and there is that little bit of a note of adversarial.
Man has sinned.
In a few chapters,
we’ll see man try to,
if not replace God,
find equality with God,
and so here we move into this part of the story
as God and man sort of set up the conflict
that is to come with the Noah stories.
Yeah, so this interim text here
has gotten a lot of really interesting play.
I would say, especially in the last 100 years, this has been
picked up,
and
the Nephilim, as you’ve said, Clint, have really very little context in the Bible.
The other spot you’re going to find the Nephilim mention
are in Numbers 1333,
where they’re said to be the inhabitants of Canaan,
as Israel makes their way into the possession of that land.
Essentially,
if you look at the biblical scholarship,
we don’t know.
We don’t know exactly what’s referenced here,
but this idea that there are giants,
that there are beings that are endowed
with superhuman strength, size.
This does in some way fit the context,
the Malu of the scriptures,
because you have this significant kind of,
you have this significant sort of backstory
where these massive fortresses that the Israelites come into the,
looking ahead to the like the Joshua narratives
when they take Canaan,
that there’s these huge embattlements,
and they look and see the remains of these massive cities.
So the idea that embedded in this narrative
is that there’s these heroes of old,
these sort of kind of oral stories that have been passed on.
It serves, I think Clint, your point is well made,
and I’m only going to say it in a different way.
It serves as a mechanism for us to then see
how we go from the ancient story
to the next contemporary chapter of Genesis.
We go from those things that were,
to now this next season in which God is once again,
going to engage with the active life of humanity, in this case,
in a very sort of destructive sense.
And we now make this transition away from the family tree,
that family cemetery idea that you mentioned yesterday,
Clint, and now we move into this new way
of seeing that we’re looking at the society
of this moment, of this day, they’re living more normal lifespans.
We know that they’ve bound together in marriage.
We know that there’s some sense of society
though we’re gonna get the sense of how depraved that is.
And so now we’re transitioning into this setting
and in this setting,
we’re gonna see God interacting.
So I do think as a transition text,
I would warn you,
be careful to not view too much meaning
into things that we don’t have meaning for.
There are nice and interesting rabbit trails
that people will take here,
but this is a transitional text.
Let’s not make it more than what it is.
Yeah, there’s always a certain danger
in taking a small detail and making it a big point
on this story.
And I think we wanna be careful of that.
Also, we have to remember that we’re dealing here
with ancient literature and I don’t want to insinuate
that this is mythology,
but all of these ancient stories also have an aspect
of explaining things.
And so what is the explanation here?
Well,
as they told stories of their ancestors
who lived these amazing lives and these heroic stories,
by the way,
none of which they felt compelled to include
in the book of Genesis,
they explained that by saying,
well, those were these kind of hybrid divine human men.
And many cultures and many religious stories
have that sense of God and humans producing offspring
and them being heroic.
We see that in the Greek mythology,
we see that in Roman mythology,
Canaanite mythology, Sumerian.
I mean, this is not unheard of.
And so some of those elements find their way
into the Israelite telling of the story,
but I do think it should be noted
that they named none of those stories,
that Genesis doesn’t take the time to dig in there.
Genesis simply mentions it as a bridge
to get to the next story it wants to tell,
which is the Noah story.
And I think to your point, Michael,
it is really worth noting
that if Genesis doesn’t feel the need to explain that,
we should be careful putting too much attention on it.
Yeah, and ultimately, it would distract us
from the thing that it goes out of its way to make clear
as we get to this next section here.
I mean, ultimately,
this whole section of what was
is small in comparison to the idea
that God would be sorry for what he made.
We’ve not read that yet, Clint, have we?
No, go ahead though.
Well, I’m just like,
let’s not miss
this strong language that’s here,
the wickedness of humanity,
the inclination of their heart that is continual,
that the Lord is actually grieved to the heart,
sorry that he had made,
I mean, this language that we are encountering now,
this is the thrust of what we’re coming into.
So for all of the,
everyone who’s read a children’s Bible
knows how the story of Noah ends,
right?
There’s no surprise in this for anybody in the Bible study.
The setup to this is much sharper than you might anticipate.
It is made very clear here
that the infraction against God is not just legal,
it’s relational.
God is feeling this with very anthropomorphized language.
And it’s not to say that we don’t see that elsewhere
in the texts of scripture, we certainly do,
but this language is sharp.
And so if we’re gonna get hung up on verses one through four,
we’re gonna miss five and six and seven,
and that would be a big, big mistake.
Yeah, let’s talk five and six.
Let me read those quickly.
“The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth
had become and that every inclination
of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.
And the Lord was grieved that he made man on the earth
and his heart was filled with pain.”
So a couple of things that are really important
when you look at this verse,
look at verse five.
“He had
great wickedness,
every inclination of the thought of his heart
was only evil all the time.”
This is one intensifier after another
and it serves in the language to point out
that this is almost complete corruption.
It would have been enough to say any one of those things,
but instead the author adds three of them.
Every inclination,
only evil all the time.
And God’s respond,
“He had pain.” There is a very limited amount of scripture
that speaks to hurting God.
God is pained,
God is grieved
that he has created man
and mankind has gone this way
to fill the world with wickedness.
This is a remarkable turn
since we saw only a couple of chapters ago,
God proclaimed the world very good.
Yeah,
probably the two stories thus far
that get us closest to this
would of course be God walking in the garden and asking,
why are you hiding from me?
And then the next of course is that encounter,
where’s your brother?
God seeing this murder take place
of the first two born into creation.
Now we have this.
Notice that this is plural,
right?
This is not two sons.
This is not Adam and Eve.
When the Lord is seeing the wickedness,
he’s seeing the wickedness of humanity.
Wickedness that was great,
that their hearts, their thoughts, their inclinations are only evil continually.
This is like a reformed Genesis story right here.
This is displaying the depths of that human sinfulness
and it’s a human spiritual sickness
that of course is theologically called original sin.
But when we talk about original sin,
this is what we’re describing.
We’re talking about this inward bent
that is ingrained into the fabric
of what it means to be human.
And it was the thing that became the turning point
for Adam and Eve.
But now when it’s displayed across an entire society,
when it’s looked at across the ripples
that it makes over time,
you begin to see that it’s driven wedge and wedge and wedge
until God looks at this thing that like you said,
Clint, exactly to that point,
the author doesn’t include details like this on accident,
that when you get to God saying that he was grieved
that he had made humanity,
you have to think back to those proclamations of,
it’s good, it’s good, it’s good, day six,
it’s very good.
Now God has grieved that this thing has been made.
And so this is the extent to which the human sickness
of sin has now progressed
and it’s going to require a drastic solution
in the same way that there’s now a drastic problem.
And so we just see this being teased out.
The setup to the Noah story is intentionally emphasizing
how bad things really are.
And it shows us how this pattern of sinfulness
has been passed down.
And we would even wanna say probably it’s expanded,
it’s become more forceful in that time.
Yeah, and we will pick this up tomorrow
when we see that not only has humankind’s corruption
affected their own heart,
and not only has it grieved God,
it has scarred the creation.
It is the creation itself that will to some extent
pay for the sin of man.
And we will come back to these verses tomorrow,
but as of now,
the stage is set
for what God in his grief and pain will decide to do
as a result of human sin.
Yep, friends,
it’s a joy to have you with us.
It’s a joy to have you here.
Maybe not a joy to come to these words.
These are some difficult words
as we make our way into the Noah story,
but we’re glad to get to spend this time together
and we will see you all tomorrow.
All right, see ya.