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The Universal Corruption in consequence of the mingling of the two lines.—The anomism (or enormity) of sins before the flood.—Predominant unbelief.—Titanic pride.—After the flood prevailing superstition
Gen_6:1-8
PRELIMINARY QUESTION, EXEGETICAL AND THEOLOGICAL, RESPECTING THE SONS OF GOD
The question, what kind of beings are we to understand by the Sons of God, has been answered in different ways from the earliest times, and has lately, again, given occasion to lively theological discussions. We give here, in the first place, the statement of Kurtz, who has engaged in the question with peculiar earnestness (History of the Old Covenant, i. p. 30, 3d ed., 1864, and in a long Appendix to vol. i., under the title: Die Ehen der Söhne Gottes mit den Töchtern der Menschen, Berlin, 1857). “In respect to the Bne Elohim, we find three principal views: 1. they are filii magnatum puellas plebeias rapientes; 2. they are angels; 3. they are the pious, that is, the Sethites, in contrast with whom the “daughters of men” denote Cainitish women. The first view is found in the Samaritan, Jonathan (Targum), Onkelos (Targum), Symmachus, Aben Ezra, Rashi, Varenius, &c., and may now be regarded as exploded. The second view is most strongly represented in the old synagogue and church. It would seem to have its ground in the Septuagint. At least the manuscripts vary between õἱïὶ ôïῦ èåïῦ and ἄããåëïé ôïῦ èåïῦ . Very decidedly, however, it is presented (and mythically improved upon) in two old Apocryphal books, namely, the Book of Enoch, and the so-called Minor Genesis, of which Dillman in Ewald’s Year Books has given a German translation derived from the Ethiopic. It is, moreover, recognized in the Epistle of Jude (Gen_6:6-7 ?) and in the Second Epistle of Peter (Gen_2:4-5 ?). It was also presented by Philo, Josephus, and most of the Rabbinical writers (Eisenmenger’s “Judaism Revealed,” i. p. 380), as well as by the oldest church fathers: Justin, Clemens Alex., Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, and Lactantius. Since then it fell gradually into disfavor; Chrysostom, Augustine, and Theodoret contended zealously against it; Philastrius denounced it as downright heresy, and our old church theologians turned from it almost with abhorrence. It found also in the synagogue vehement opposers Rabbi Simeon Ben Jochai pronounced the ban against all who adhered to it. In more modern times it has been seized upon by all exegetes who regard the early history of Genesis as mythical, notwithstanding which a decided number of commentators who are believers in revelation have not allowed themselves to be deterred from deciding in its favor,—for example, Köppen (“The Bible a Work of Divine Wisdom,” i. p. 104), Fr. von Meyer (Blätter für höhere Wahrheit, xi. p. 61 ff.), Twesten (“Dogmatics,” ii. 1, p. 332), Nitzsch (“System,” p. 234 f.) Dreschler (Einheit der Genesis, p. 91), Hofmann (“Prophecy and Fulfilment,” i. p. 85, and “Scripture Proof,” i. p. 374 ff.), Baumgarten (“Commentary on the Pentateuch,” ad h. l.), Delitzsch (Comment. ad h. l.), Stier (“Epistle of Jude,” p. 42 ff.), Dietlein (“Comment. on the Second Epistle of Peter,” p. 149 ff.), Luther (“Comment. on the Epistles of Peter and Jude,” pp. 204, 341). The third view is found in Chrysostom, Cyril Alex, Theodoret, (on the special ground that Seth, on account of his piety, acquired the name èåüò , and that, therefore, his descendants were named õἱïὶ ôïῦ èåïῦ ). It was held by almost all the later church theologians. In modern times it has been defended with special zeal by Hengstenberg (“Contributions,” ii. p. 328 ff.), Hävernik (“Introduction,” i. 2, p. 265), Dettinger (“Remarks on the Section, Gen_4:1–Gen_6:8,” in the Tübingen Journal of Theology, 1835, No. 1), Keil (“Luther. Periodical,” 1851, ii. p. 239), and many others.
The preceding statement has been made complete by Kurtz in his Book (“The Marriages of the Sons of God,”) Berlin, 1857, p. 12; as likewise by Keil (p. 80) by the citation of the treatise of Hengstenberg (“The Sons of God and the Daughters of Men,”) in the Evangelical Church Gazette, 1858, No. 29, and No. 35–37; in the exposition of Philippi (“Church Doctrine of the Faith,”) iii. p. 176 ff, and the controversial writings of Kurtz that have appeared against the treatises of Keil and Hengstenberg (“The Marriages of the Sons of God with the Daughters of Men),” Berlin 1857, and “The Sons of God,” in Gen_6:1-4, and the “Sinning Angels,” in 2Pe_2:4-5, and Jude, Gen_6:6-7. Mitau, 1858. Engelhardt also takes the side of Kurtz (“Lutheran Periodical,” 1856, p. 404). Delitzsch appears as the latest defender of the angel hypothesis of any considerable note (“Comment.” 3d Ed., 1860, p. 230 ff.). Its latest opponent of note since Keerl (“Questions on the Apocrypha,” p. 206), is Keil (“Comment,” 1861, p. 80 ff.)
It is shown by Keil (p. 80) that the relation of our passage to the Sethites had its defenders, both among Jews and Christians, before the time of Chrysostom; since Josephus knew of this interpretation, and the critical Julius Africanus maintained it in the first half of the third century. So also did Ephraim the Syrian, to which add, among the Apocryphal writings, the Clementine Recognitions, and the oriental Book of Adam.
We take first into view the section as it lies before us, with its connection and the analogies of the Old Testament, then the relations to our passage of the New Testament, farther on, the exegetical traditions, and finally, the religious-philosophical, dogmatic, and practical significance of the question.
The Place itself in question; its Connection, and the Analogies of the Old Testament. The Sons of God. Bne Elohim. According to the angel hypothesis, angels alone are here to be understood, not-withstanding that there is no mention of angels immediately before this, to stand as its antecedent, but only of the pious race of Sethites. Chap. 5 gives us an account of pious men, of chosen men, of a wonderfully glorified man of God; but of angels, on the contrary, there is not a word, even to this place, except the mysterious language respecting the cherubim, in which we cannot at all recognize any personal angel-forms. The single apparent ground for a supposition, at first view wild and abrupt, is found in the fact, that in the later books of the Old Testament, not the pious are called áְּðֵé úָàֱìֹäִéí , but the angels. It is, however, simply incorrect to say that anywhere in the historical scriptures the angels are called sons of God without anything farther; only in a few poetical places, and in one nominally prophetic (Job_1:2; Job_38:7; Psa_29:1; Psa_89:7 : Dan_3:25) are they so called; and then, too, beside the poetical language, there comes into view the elucidating context. In Job 1 they form the council of God represented as administering government (therefore not bne Elohim, as nomen naturœ in distinction from Maleak, as nomen officii), and in fact in contrast to Satan. In the same way in chap. 2. In chap. Gen_38:7, they hail the laying the foundation of the earth and the creation of man. Psa_29:1, they are called upon to glorify the Lord in the thunder-storm, and in the restoration of his people. Psa_89:7, are they thus denoted by way of contrasting their dependent state with the glory of the Lord. Dan_3:25 hardly belongs here, but is, perhaps, to be interpreted according to chap. Gen_7:13. In respect to this, Hengstenberg has already shown that the name bne Elohim belongs to the poetic diction.
Whilst, therefore, in the pure historical pieces the angels are never styled sons of God, there does appear the indication of a filial relation, or of a sonship, in respect to the people of Israel, to the Old Testament kings, to the pious or dependent wards of God, and that, too, in various ways, even in the legal sphere. Delitzsch remarks, that the idea of a filial relation in the Old Testament had already begun to win for itself a universal ethical significance beyond the limitation to Israel (Exo_4:22; Deu_14:1)—as though this filial relation of the children of Israel, under the law, were a real step in progress in respect to Abraham and the Sethites. But the case is exactly the other way. In the Epistle to the Galatians, the patriarchal standpoint of belief in promise is a higher one than that of the Mosaic legality (Gal_3:16). It is to be specially remarked in regard to Kurtz, that he knew not how to distinguish the different economies of the Old Testament. When, for example, the Apostle Paul tells us, that the law was given through the mipistry of angels, he concludes that the angel of the Lord that appeared to Abraham must have been a creaturely angel (History of the Old Testament, p. 152). And yet Paul brings forward this character of the angelic mediation for the express purpose of showing that the revelation of the promise was a more essential, and, also, a higher form than that of the law-giving; it could not, therefore, have been in this sense (of Kurtz) that the law-giving is referred to the mediation of angels. The explanation consists in this, that the promise was a revelation for Abraham, and, generally, for the elect patriarchs, whilst the law-giving, on the other hand, was for a whole people mingled and coarse, or at all events, greatly needing an educating culture. But as the patriarchal economy, in respect to its relationship to the form of the Gospel, had a superiority to the form of the law-giving, and in so far appears like to the New Testament, so again had the economy of the Sethites a superiority to the Abrahamic. The specific distinction is the separation between the line of the pious, and the godless, curse-loaded line of Cain. Therefore it is that that peculiar designation of Enoch’s piety: “he walked with God,” never occurs again in the later law-times of the Old Testament. In a word, the Sethic economy is a ἅðáî ëåãüìåíïí in the Old Testament, which has been fundamentally mistaken by the contenders for the angel hypothesis. It has a prefiguration of the New Testament state, and acknowledges, therefore, the èåïῦ , or sons of God, as is done in the New Testament in our Lord’s sermon on the mount. If the objection is made, that the redemption is not yet perfectly introduced, it is to be remarked, that the faith in redemption, in the time after Christ, is not to be measured, in its degrees, by the chronological advance; as is shown in the examples of Enoch and Abraham. Luther, moreover, knew better how to estimate the worth of this singularity in the economy of the long living so greatly exalted through the blessing of Seth, and who reflected in their life the end of time: “They are the greatest heroes that, next to Christ and John the Baptist, ever appeared in this world, and at the last day we shall behold their majesty.” Since, therefore, even the law-period, notwithstanding Israel’s servant-relation, did not exclude the idea of Israel’s sonship generally, or of the believing especially, (as the places Deu_32:5; Hos_2:1 (therefore not poetical) and Psa_73:15 show to us, how much more clearly must this idea have appeared, in its typical significance and beauty, among the pious descendants of Seth. In that case it has been said, they ought to have been called bne Jehovah (instead of bne Elohim); but this is not to keep clearly in view, that the Sethites represented the universal relation of humanity to God, and that they, like Melchizedek at a later time, disappeared from the stage. That the angels, however, in a physical sense, as opposed to an ethical sense, could be called sons of God,—that is, could be referred to some generation of a physical kind, is a view that has been rightly denounced by Keil (p. 11). And in this way, for the unprejudiced, the matter might seem tolerably well disposed of. But further on it occurs as a thing to be considered, that the sons of God woo the daughters of men. How, it is asked, when it is said in its general sense (Gen_6:2) that men multiplied themselves, can we limit the expression daughters of men, Gen_6:2, to the daughters of the Cainites? We cannot here rest upon the usual mode of stating this. There is no reason why the sons of God should have found a tempting beauty only among the daughters of the Cainites. The daughters of men may, in the first place, be women in general. In that case, however, the first contrast would consist in regarding the ethically defined sons of God as opposed to the physically defined daughters of men,—among whom the Cainitic women might be primarily understood, especially since the Sethite women too belong to the children of God. Their first transgression, however, would consist in this, that in the choice of wives they let themselves be determined by the mere charm of sensual beauty. From this follows the second transgression, that they took them wives of all whom they chose, that is, of all that pleased them. On the word îִëֹּì , therefore, rests the emphasis of the expression (out of all). Instead of looking at the spiritual kinsmanship, they had an eye only to the pleasure of sense. That was the first thing. Then there is nothing said here of any moral satisfaction in beauty. This appears from the fact that they took them wives of all that pleased them, of all that they desired. Instead of holding pure the Sethic line, they took wives indiscriminately ( îִëֹּì ), and that was the second and decisive transgression. By this was the dam torn down which stood between the Cainites and the Sethites,—that is, the dam which kept back the universal corruption, and which hitherto had protected the race of the blessing. Therefore is it, Gen_6:3, that the corruption which now comes is charged upon men, and not at all upon the angels. If we look for a moment at the angel hypothesis, it is not easy to see how such amours with individual women could have had so decided an effect upon the destiny of the whole race, at a time, too, when more than now, men formed the deciding factor; and this may we say, without taking into view the fact, that in the historical style angels are never called bne Elohim, that angels do not seek nor are sought in marriage (Mat_22:30), and that the expression: “take themselves wives,” denotes marriage-ties, not by way of unnatural amours, or romantic loves, as Kurtz pictures it in his first treatise (p. 99). But indeed, out of those demoniacal, fleshly amours, it is said, must have proceeded the ðְôִìִéí and âִּáֹּøִéí , and thus they would bring the whole matter to a decision. In the first place, however, must we remember, that the sentence of God respecting the desperate condition of the race (Gen_6:3) precedes this mention of the Nephilim, and it is clear that the ðְôִìִéí must already denote a special form of the evil, which, with its fleshly lust, stands at the same time in a position of reciprocity. According to almost all interpretations, and according to Num_13:33, “when the giant Anakim are reckoned among them,” the Nephilim were gigantic,—or, more accurately, the distinguished, the prominent or overpowering. According to such it is from ðôì , a near form to ôìà ; other derivations see below. In their bodily appearance the Nephilim were not exactly what are called giants in the mythical sense, but prominent and powerful forms of men. In strength, in courage, or pride, they were Gibborim, that is, mighty men, heroes; in deeds, they were men of renown; but their deeds were especially deeds of violence çָîָí (Gen_6:11; Gen_6:13), unrighteousness, and oppression. The meaning is, that the fleshly nature of pride and cruelty ever associates itself with the fleshly disorder of lust. Lamech the Cainite and his song were now the general type of the human race. But as the tendency to violence came in cotemporaneously with the lust, and not as a generation for the first time descending from it, so were the Nephilim contemporaneous with these fleshly mesalliances, having been, in fact, from the days of Cain hitherto “men of renown.” The Hebrew is äָéåּ , not åַéִּäְéåּ ; there were Nephilim, it is said, áéîéí ääí , in those same days, not there became or came to be, as Knobel translates it. Add to this the offspring of the sons of God and the daughters of men, that is, of the grossly sensual marriages of the pious, and their mingling with the Cainitic race. Thus flow together two origins of the Gibborim. In respect to the first were they men of renown, or men of old, îֵòåֹìָí —that is, the Cainites. Thus, too, in the easiest way does our section connect itself with both the preceding chapters. In the fourth chapter there is described the line of the Cainites as still divided from the line of Seth; in the fifth chapter we have the line of the Sethites in its devotedness and elevation; then, finally, in the section before us, the mingling of both lines, and the universality and flagitiousness of corruption, as, according to the programme of the Cainitic Lamech, it culminates in the two fundamental features of carnality and cruelty. Whoever reads Genesis, to the passage before us, without any prejudice derived from opinions alien to it, would never think of understanding by the bne Elohim anything else than the pious Sethites, and by their connection with the daughters of men anything else than a corruption of marriage and a mingling with the Cainites. This would especially appear from the fact, that in this section the sharp contrast between the two lines, which is so prominent in the previous chapter, wholly disappears. If we read further we find, too, that not the Cainites alone perished in the flood, but both lines together, with the exception of Noah and his house. Further on, Ishmael, who is a “wild man,” and whose “hand is against every man,” appears as the offspring of Abraham and “the maid,” a copy, as it were, giving us a clear idea of the Gibborim, and of the way in which they originated, although the connection of the patriarch was from a purer motive, and more excusable. Hence the traditional and legal abhorrence of untheocratic marriages in the theocratic race; as we find it in Gen_24:3; Gen_26:34-35; Gen_27:46; Gen_34:9; Deu_7:3; Jos_23:12; Jdg_3:6; 1Ki_11:1; Ezr_9:2; Neh_10:30. The falling away of the Israelites in the desert came not from any amour between angels and the daughters of men, but from an unlawful intercourse between the Israelites and the women of Midian (Numbers 25). So the apostasies of Israel in the time of the Judges were derived from the mingling of the Israelites with the daughters of the Canaanites (Jdg_3:6). The fall of Solomon, and the falling away of the people that followed it, came from Solomon’s connection with foreign wives (1Ki_11:1). So the ten tribes sunk into the worship of Baal in consequence of the connection of Ahab with the Sidonian Jezebel, whose horrible significance goes on even to the Apocalypse (1Ki_16:31; Rev_2:20); and so, too, Ezra and Nehemiah, after the great visitation, know no other way to secure their people against a new degeneracy, than by contending earnestly against foreign marriages. Thus again and again do the theocratic mesalliances of one section reflect themselves in the Israelitish history, without the angels playing any part therein. For the first time, in the apocryphal Tobit (Tob_6:15), does there meet us a demoniac interest in human females, and this is characteristic for the origin of the angel-hypothesis. Here, too, it must be remarked, that marriage with the heathen was not absolutely forbidden to the Israelites. When the principle was secured, that the believing party might make holy the unbelieving (1 Corinthians 7), such marriages appear sometimes even in a favorable light. It was only union with the Canaanites that was absolutely forbidden, since they, as well as the Cainites, were sunk in incurable corruption; and Hengstenberg has rightly supposed that our history here was given for the purpose of warning the Israelites against such marriages.
2. The relations of the New Testament to the passage before us. There is the passage of the Epistle of Jude, Gen_6:6, which, in fact, we regard as the original in its relation to the kindred passage, 2Pe_2:4. Here, too, Kurtz reasons from the mode of speaking, but not happily: “Both epistles designate the actors who are punished as simply ἄããåëïé . When we interrogate the biblical style of speech it shows us at once that this word is never thus nakedly used of spirits ἐí ἀñ÷ῇ who have fallen. These are ever called äáßìïíåò , and their head äéÜâïëïò or óáôáíᾶò .” We will give presently the simple solution of this objected difficulty. Wherever there is mention of the actual existence of Satan’s kingdom it is naturally and generally of Satan, of the demons, etc., although variations occur, as Eph_6:12, et al. Here, however, when the original fall itself of the demons is mentioned, they must be denoted according to their original state as angels. Otherwise it would mean that the devil had sinned, and thereby became a devil. In that case our catechisms would have to be corrected where they speak of fallen angels. When it is said, however, that there is here no special mention of Satan, or that the sins of the angels cannot be particularly described, or that the fall of Satan is nowhere designated as a leaving his habitation, all such assertions we must hold as having no significance at all.
The Epistle of Jude is a prophetical word of warning against the beginning of antinomianism. Here the Israelites who fell in the wilderness are the first example. In respect to these it is confessed that they did not fall in the wilderness merely on account of sins of sensuality. Then are there named the angels who kept not their dominion ( ἀñ÷Þ ) but for-sook their own proper habitation—that is, their sphere of life. The contrast in the guilt of these angels is made clear by that which precedes. The Jews in the wilderness kept not their salvation, but gave themselves up to unbelief and fell. The angels kept not their dominion, but lost their station and fell. To this corresponds the third example: Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities are presented in a similar manner with these ( ôïýôïéò ), that is, the angels and the Israelites, as an example of such as are exposed to the judgment of the eternal fire, and this on the special ground of their excessive sensuality, and their degenerate going after strange flesh. The words ὄìïéïí ôñüðïí ôïýôïéò stand in relation to ðñüêåéíôáé äåῖãìá , and the parenthetical ἐêðïñíåýóáóá has its special interpretation as referring to the Sodomites. The Israelites in the wilderness furnish an example of a lost condition, as ìὴ ðéóôåýóáíôåò , the angels as ìὴ ôçñÞóáíôåò , &c., Sodom and Gomorrah as ἐêðïñíåýóáóáé , &c. The forms of antinomianism are different, the judgment upon it is throughout the same. The distinction, however, in antinomianism is this, that the Israelites sinned through unbelief in the word of revelation; the angels sinned against the divine ordinance, assigning their position, and in striving, beyond their sphere, after a limitless dominion; the Sodomites sinned against the natural law of the sexual relations, established as a moral foundation of life itself. The antinomists, against whom Jude contended, resemble the before-named in this, that like the Sodomites they pollute the flesh; like the fallen angels they contemn authority; like the unbelieving Israelites they speak evil of äüîáò , glories (rendered dignities—visible proofs of the revelation of God in Israel). So, too, in the second chapter of the second Epistle of Peter, the ground-idea is the inexorability of the divine judgment against an obdurate anomism, without giving the special form of that anomism. Of the angels it is merely said that they sinned. God spared them not although they were angels. And so he spared not the whole old world (Genesis 6), on whom there is here no other charge imputed than ἀóÝâåéá (impiety). So, too, Sodom and Gomorrah are here denoted as having incurred judgment solely under the same point of view. Clearly, however, has the second Epistle of Peter distinguished, in addition, the judgment of the fallen angels from the judgment upon the old world (Genesis 6). The judgment against the angels, the judgment against the old world, and the judgment upon Sodom, are three judgment periods. And these places, it is pretended, exactly confirm the angel-hypothesis! Compare also Fronmüller on the respective places, in the Bible-work.
3. The exegetical tradition. The first interpretation, in which the bne Elohim were sons of the magnates, or great ones, who wooed the daughters of the low-born, Keil denotes as the interpretation of orthodox Judaism. More correctly, however, may it be denoted as the interpretation of the Hebraistic or Palestinian Judaism, in its dry story-telling tendency as represented in the Talmud. The second interpretation Keil rightly describes as that of the ethnizing, cabbalistical Judaism; however zealous Kurtz may be on its behalf (Part i. p. 8). It is not without significance that the first trace of this interpretation appears in single codices of the Septuagint. It is sufficiently acknowledged that the Alexandrian Jews took pains in every way to throw a bridge between the Old Testament and the Greek tradition. Here now appears a fair probable occasion to introduce into the biblical text an analogous story of Sons of God and of divine begettings. Thereupon present themselves two apocryphal books as the first defenders of the angel-hypothesis: the Book of Enoch and the Lesser Genesis. Without doubt Philo found it already in existence, and it suited entirely well with his system; whilst it is acknowledged, too, by the more hebraistic Josephus. That Christian theologians of the Alexandrian school, like Clemens Alexandrinus, uncritical fathers like Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, should find the angel-hypothesis suited to their peculiar notions, is nothing to be wondered at. The fact that from the fourth even to the eighteenth century, with some isolated exceptions, the taste of the church discovered in the angel-hypothesis a suspicious theosophic savor, cannot be set aside.
4. The religious, philosophical, dogmatic, and practical significance of our question. In its relation to the philosophy of religion the angel-hypothesis would have the effect of confounding all the ground conceptions of revelation, and of obliterating its distinctions. It authenticates a fact which perfectly destroys all distinction between revelation and mythology, between a divine miracle and magic, between the biblical conception of nature, as conformity to law, and the wild apocryphal stories. “We stand here,” says Delitzsch, “at the fountain of heathen mythology with its legends, but this primitive golden age, to take it in the sense of heathenism, is divested of all its apotheosizing gaudiness.” Rather may it be said, if we take that view, that an evident myth was implanted in the garden of the primitive religious history; it is therefore not to be wondered at, that all theologians who maintain the mythical character of Genesis, like Knobel for example, should go in most earnestly for the angel-interpretation. “And no less,” adds Delitzsch, “do we stand here, at the fountain of a dark magic that carries us back, if not to a sexual, yet still to an unnatural intercourse with the demons.” We stand rather by the troubled waters of a paganistic apocryphal superstition, where the siren of an apparent theosophic profundity would allure us to plunge into the dark floods of “baseless paradox.” With what sort of superstition this angel-interpretation had already connected itself in early times we may learn from the twenty-second chapter of Tertullian’s Apologetic. When we regard it in its dogmatic relation we find the most wonderful things proceeding from the view in question when fully carried out. There would be a double fall into sin, one in the human, the other in the angelic, family.
The effects of the second fall must be destroyed by a flood, whilst those of the first remain through and after it. The gnosticizing darkening of this place has for a consequence that there should be gradually drawn from it series after series of similar deductions, according to the tenor of its biblical dogmatic process of idealless, anecdotical inventiveness; for example, what is said on the passage (1Pe_3:19-20) respecting Christ’s preaching to the spirits in prison.
Instead of this, we hold that the derivation of the angel-interpretation from an ethnizing, apocryphal, gnostico-cabbalistical tendency in Judaism (as we find it shown in Keil) is the correct one. We hold, too, that Hengstenberg had grounds for the affirmation, when he said: The next thing is, that in the maintaining of this supposed remarkable fact, men are led into uncouth theories, which violate the limits that separate the church’s theology from the chimerical ideas of Jews and Mohammedans, and that one such distortion of a sound theological comprehension may possibly have for its consequence an extensive process of disorder. In like manner does the objection appear well grounded, that the angel-interpretation robs our narrative of all significance and practical applicability. The same practical significance which is exhibited in the history of the Israelites in the wilderness (Numbers 25), and in the time of the Judges in the history of Solomon, in the history also of Ahab, in the history of Herod Antipas—that same significance, though in a more powerful and original way, is presented in the history that lies before us. We may, therefore, with Cyril of Alexandria, reckon the angel-interpretation among the ἀôïðþôáôá , things most strange and absurd.
[Note on the Spirit and the Flesh: Gen_6:3.—The various interpretations of øåּçִé here must be tested by their harmony with words in the context. “The life that I have given shall not always rule (or abide) in man.” This does not seem to suit well with ìòåìí . Shall not long rule, &c., would have been consistent. The word forever makes it the same with the original sentence of death pronounced upon man: he shall not live forever—he shall die. “My spirit shall not strive with man” (morally) makes a good sense in itself, but has little congruity with the reason given: “because he is flesh,” or is inclined to the flesh, whether we take the old or the later interpretation of áùâí . That alone would seem to be a reason why it should continue to strive; since man had been flesh, or inclined to be flesh, ever since the fall. Unless we take it, as Pareus does, as denoting a feeling of hopelessness, ratio ab inutili:it is of no use; but this would be a form of the anthropopathism the least acceptable of all that are presented; unless it be that of some of the Jewish interpreters: “My own mind, or thought, shall no longer be occupied or troubled with him”—I will have no more care about him.
There is another view that may be offered, and which would seem to harmonize these difficulties. Some of the Jewish interpreters approach it, but do not come fully up to it. “My spirit,” meaning man’s spirit (the spirit that I have given him), but in the higher sense of ðíåῦìá as distinguished from øõ÷Þ , according to the trichotomic view. The reason, wherein appears the image of God, the spirit in man as something higher than the animal nature, the öñüíçìá ðíåýìáôïò as distinguished from the öñüíçìá óáñêüò , may, with a high propriety, be called “my spirit,” as nearest to the divine, or, that in man through which, or in which, the Holy Spirit strives, or comes in connection with the human. It is not always easy, even in the New Testament, to determine whether ðíåῦìá , in certain passages, means the rational spirit of man, or the Spirit of God, or both in one joint communion. Von Gerlach has no right to say that “the contrast of spirit and flesh in the moral understanding, as in the Epistles of Paul, does not occur in the Old Testament,” unless it can be shown that this is not a clear case of it.
When øåç is thus regarded as the spiritual, or rational, in man, in distinction from the carnal, the sentence becomes a prediction, instead of a declaration of judgment—a sorrowing prediction, we may say, if we keep in view the predominant aspect or feeling of the passage. The spirit, the reason, that which is most divine in man, will not always rule in him. It has, as yet, maintained a feeble power, and interposed a feeble resistance, but it is in danger of being wholly overpowered. It will not hold out forever; it will not always maintain its supremacy. And then the reason given suits exactly with such a prediction: He is becoming flesh, wholly carnal or animal. If allowed to continue he will become utterly dehumanized, or that worst of all creatures, an animal with a reason, but wholly fleshly in its ends and exercises, or with a reason which is but the servant of the flesh, making him worse than the most ferocious wild beast—a very demon—a brutal nature with a fiend’s subtlety only employed to gratify such brutality. Man has the supernatural, and this makes the awful peril of his state. By losing it, or rather by its becoming degraded to be a servant instead of a lord, he falls wholly into nature, where he cannot remain stationary, like the animal who does not “leave the habitation to which God first appointed him.” The higher being, thus utterly fallen, must sink into the demonic, where evil becomes his god, if not, as Milton says, his good. In this sense of the reason in man, or the öñüíçìá ðíåýìáôïò , ruling over the flesh, there is a most appropriate significance in éãåï , as denoting the judicial power of the conscience, or of the reason as the imperative, the commanding faculty. On these deeper aspects of humanity, consult that most profound psychologist, John Bunyan, in his Holy War, or his History of the Town of Mansoul, its revolt from King Shaddai, its surrender to Diabolus, and its recovery by Prince Immanuel. Bunyan was Bible-taught in these matters, and that is the reason why his knowledge of man goes so far beyond that of Locke, or Kant, or Cousin.
The whole aspect of the passage gives the impression of something like an apprehension that a great change was coming over the race—something so awful and so irreparable, if not speedily remedied, that it would be better that it should be blotted out of earthly existence, all but a remnant in whom the spiritual, or the divine in man, might yet be preserved. Thus regarded, too, as a prediction, it is the ground of the judgment rather than a sentence of judgment itself. It is in mercy to prevent a greater catastrophe; like the language used in reference to the tree of life (see page 241, and note). Men, left to themselves, might have realized upon earth the irrecoverable state of lost spirits, or that combination of the brutal with an utterly degraded reason that makes the demon. In this view, too, the divine sorrow appears heightened in such a way that we can better understand what is meant by God’s “grieving,” and being “pained in heart.” A generation of men is to be removed to prevent the utter dehumanizing of the race. It was this necessity that made the intensity of the sorrow.
Delitzsch has a similar view, but it is strange that he did not see how it is in conflict with his angel-hypothesis. According to that, the deangelizing, if we may use the term, and the consequent dehumanizing, was confined to these higher beings and some of the daughters of men. And yet they are not mentioned as having any part in the catastrophe, or in the immediate evil that occasioned it. Men alone are involved in it, and they because of an excessive sensuality that had made it inevitable. This, however, was purely human; it was man that was in danger of becoming wholly flesh, and it was man for whom God grieved with a divine sorrow. It was man who was in danger of descending into a lower grade of being, even as the ante-Adamic angels who kept not their first estate. The antediluvians were drowned for the salvation of a race, but for some of them, at least, 1Pe_3:19-20, gives us the glimpse of a hope that their condition was not wholly irrecoverable.—T. L.]
2. Gen_6:4. There were giants.—The ðְôִìִéí , from ðָôִéì , used only in the plural, Num_13:33. All the old interpretations take the word as denoting giants, ãßãáíôåò . If we put out of view the monstrous popular representations, there are simply meant by it stately and powerful men. In this sense Tuch explains the word as mentioned before, namely, the distinguished. Keil understands by the word, invaders, according to Aquila ( ἐðéðßðôïíôåò ), Symmachus ( âéáῖïé ), Luther (tyrants). Delitzsch, nevertheless, together with Hofmann, prefers to explain it as the fallen, namely, from heaven, because begotten by heavenly beings. Here from to falt, would he make to fall from, and from this again, to fall from heaven; then this is made to mean begotten of heavenly beings! The sense, cadentes, defectores, apostatœ (see Gesenius), would be more near the truth. “There were giants” ( äָéåּ ), not, there became giants, which would have required åַéִּäְéåּ for its expression (see Keil). These giants, or powerful men, are already in near cotemporaneity with the transgression of these mesalliances (in those very same days), and this warrants the conclusion of Luther, that these powerful men were doers of violent deeds.—And also after that [Lange renders: and especially after that].—Keil shows that Kurtz makes trial of three mutually inconsistent explanations of this verse, all of which, too, offend against the law of language (p. 89, note). We take âַּí as denoting a climax to the fact already stated. “There were giants in those days, and moreover,” etc. Here it comes nearly to the same thing, whether we render àçøéÎëï àùø posteaquam (2Sa_24:10) or postea quum; the fact remains established that the Nephilim were already before the mesalliances.—Came in unto: an euphemistic phrase.—Mighty men [Lange renders it heroes].—A designation, not merely of offspring from the mismarriages, but referring also to the Nephilim who are earlier introduced, as it appears from the appended clause. The author reports things from his own standpoint, and so the expression: “they were of old, men of renown,” affirms their previous existence down to that time. Of these men of old, men of renown, Cain was the first. But now there are added to the Cainites the Cainitic degenerate off-spring of these sensual mesalliances. It was true then, as it has been in all other periods of the world’s history, the men of violent deeds were the men of renown, very much the same whether called famous or infamous. Knobel will have it that there are described here postdiluvian races of giants.
3. Gen_6:5-8. And God saw [Lange correctly: And Jehovah saw].—This increase and universal predominance of evil through the mismarriages gives occasion now for a more decided sentence of Jehovah upon the incurably lost race. The wickedness of man in deeds had not only become great, but the thinkings of the purposes (the phantasies or imaged deeds) of his heart, were wholly evil all the day. Judging from the singular ìִáּåֹ , we hold here, as intended, a concentration of the sentence against man. For this reason is it singular.
[Note on the Doctrine of Total Depravity. Gen_6:5.—Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart, ëָּì éֵöֶø îַçְùְׁáåֹú ìִáּåֹ . The Scriptures, it is said, were not given to teach us mental philosophy, nor do they affect a philosophical language, but here is certainly a psychological scala going down as deeply into the human soul as was ever done by any scholastic treatise. Here are the three stages of the great original evil: the fashioned purpose, the thought out of which it is born, the feeling, or deep mother heart, the state of soul, lying below all, and giving moral character to all. Or, to reverse the order of the statement, there Isaiah , 1. the tohu vabohu, the formless abyss of evil, 2. the thought (the ἔííïéá , see Heb_4:12), by which this rises into generic form, 3. the imaged or specific purpose ( ἐíèýìçóéò ), through which, again, this thought makes itself manifest in the objective sphere of the active life. In other words, as the thought is the form of the feeling, so is the shaped purpose, or what is here called the imagination, the form of the evil thought. Our Saviour gives the same gradations, Mat_15:19 : “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts” ( äéáëïãéóìïὶ ðïíçñïὶ , evil thinkings, reasonings, subjective, not yet shaped into outward intent), and then follows the awful brood of the later born, öüíïé , ìïé÷åῖáé , êëïðáὶ , âëáóöçìßáé , “murders, adulteries, thefts, blasphemies.” They are all in the thought; they are all in the mother-heart, that deep seat of moral character that lies below the formative consciousness—that is, the conscious thought and still more conscious purpose. Take the worst one apparently of these hideous births; a man may not have formed the purpose of murder, fear may have kept him from this extreme stage; he may never have entertained the thought consciously, the habitual educating power of law, or other influences of a social or of a gracious kind, may have prevented even this objective form of evil from rising in his soul; but it may lie in his heart nevertheless, and even be active there, for this dark place is not a mere blank capacity, or receptacle, but has its processes, its choosings, its willings, and even its unconscious reasonings. Our Saviour declares neither more nor less than this when he makes it the procreative source of evil thoughts ( äéáëïãéóìïὶ ), and so does the Apostle, 1Jn_3:15 : “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer.” This idea of the unconscious heart, as underlying all moral character, is deeply grounded in the Hebrew language. Hence the peculiar expression òìä òì ìá , to ascend, come up, in the heart, or above the heart. See Jer_3:16; 2Sa_11:20, with other places. One of the most striking is in Eze_11:5 : “Thus shall ye say to the house of Israel, îַòֲìåֹú øåּäֲëֶí àֲðִé éְãַòְúִּéäָ , the upgoings of your spirit, I know every one of them,”—implying how deeply unknown they might be in their source, even to those who were the subjects of them.
øַ÷ øַò ëָּì äַéּåֹí : Only evil, nothing but evil, all the day—every day, and every moment of every day. If this is not total depravity, how can language express it? There is an intense aversion to the phrase in some minds. It is shared by many who would admit that human depravity is taught in the Bible, and that it is great. This term, however, of our older and more exact theologians, shocks them. The feeling comes, in some measure, from a misapprehension of its true meaning. It is a term of extensity, rather than of intensity. It is opposed to partial, to the idea that man is sinful in one moment, and innocent, or sinless, in another, or sinful in some acts and pure in others. It affirms that he is all wrong, in all things, and all the time. It does not mean that man is as bad as the devils, or that every man is as bad as every other, or that any man is as bad as he possibly may be, or may become. That is, there are degrees of intensity, but no limit to the universality or extent of the evil in the soul. So say the Scriptures, and so says the awakened conscience.
There seems to be an allusion to the psychological division of Gen_6:5, in Heb_4:12. The extent and depth of human sinfulness are kept from the objective consciousness by the ignorance or denial of the threefold distinction here conveyed—the purposes, the thoughts, and the heart. According to the Apostle, it is the office of “the living word ( ὁ ëüãüò æῶí êáὶ ἐíåñãὴò , vivid and inworking), sharper than a two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing (the division line) of soul and spirit” ( ðíåῦìá and øõ÷ὴ ) to make these distinctions, and bring them home to the human conscience. Hence it is called êñéôéêὸò ἐíèõìÞóåùí êáὶ ἐííïéῶí êáñäßáò —“a critical discerner (and exposer) of the purposes and the thinkings of the heart.” In this language ἐíèýìçóéò corresponds locally to éֵöֶø , and ἔííïéáé to îַçְùְׁáåֹú . The terms are no mere redundant tautology, any more than those used above for soul and spirit. The bare dichotomic view fails to explain the language of the Scripture, whether as given in its Greek or Hebrew terms. The Greek words, however, are less precise than the Hebrew, since both ἔííïéá and ἐíèýìçóéò may be used for the purpose or the thought.—T. L.]
And it repented the Lord.—Most truly, as Keil rightly remarks, is this sentence so pronounced on man alone, directly against the angel-interpretation. On that hypothesis the angels must have been the original authors of the corruption; and so in consistency with Genesis 3, where the serpent is first sentenced, ought the first doom here to have been pronounced upon the sinning angels.—It repented Jehovah.—A peculiarly strong anthropopathic expression, which, however, presents the truth that God, in consistency with his immutability, assumes a changed position in respect to changed man (Psa_18:27), and that, as against the impenitent man who identifies himself with the sin, he must assume the appearance of hating the sinner in the sin, even as he hates the sin in the sinner. But that Jehovah, notwithstanding, did not begin to hate man, is shown in the touching anthropomorphism that follows, “and it grieved him in his heart.” The first kind of language is explained in the flood, the second in the revelation of Peter, 1Pe_3:19-20, and Gen_4:6. Against the corruption of man, though extending even to the depths of his heart, there is placed in contrast God’s deep “grieving in his heart.” But as the repentance of God does not take away his unchangeableness and his counsel, but rightly establishes them, so neither does God’s grieving detract from his immutability in blessedness, but shows, rather, God’s deep feeling of the distance between the blessedness to which man was appointed and his painful perdition. Delitzsch does indeed maintain it, as most real or actual truth, that God feels repentance, and he does not equate this position with the doctrine of God’s unchangeableness, unless it be with the mere remark that the pain and purpose of the divine wrath are only moments in an everlasting plan of redemption, which cannot become outward in its efficacy without a movement in the Godhead. And yet movement is not change.—I will destroy man.—To man in the wider sense pertains the human sphere of life; therefore it is said that the beasts too shall be destroyed. Of any corruption that had entered into the animal there is no mention (see Gen_6:12). The perishing of the beasts, therefore, can only have meaning as a sharing in the atonement for human sins (Jer_12:4; Jer_14:5; Hos_4:3; Joe_1:18; <