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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
The sons of God; either,
1. Persons of greatest eminency for place and power, for such are called gods, and children of the Most High, Psa_82:6; where also they are opposed to men, Gen_6:7, i.e. to meaner men. And the most eminent things in their kinds are attributed to God, as cedars of God, all of God, & c. But it is not probable that the princes and nobles should generally take wives or women of the meaner rank, nor would the marriages of such persons be simply condemned, or at least it would not be mentioned as a crying sin, and a great cause of the deluge. Or rather,
2. The children of Seth and Enos, the professors of the true religion. For,
1. Such, and only such, in the common use of Scripture, are called the
sons and
children of God, as Deu_14:1, Deu_32:19, Isa_1:2, Isa_45:11, Hos_11:1, Luk_17:27, &c.
2. This title manifestly relates to Gen_4:26, where the same persons are said to be called by the name of the Lord, i.e. to be the sons and servants of God.
3. They are opposed to the daughters of men, the word men being here taken in an ill sense, for such as had nothing in them but the nature of men, which is corrupt and abominable, and were not sons of God, but foreigners and strangers to him, and apostates from him.
4. These unequal matches with persons of a false religion are every where condemned in Scripture as sinful and pernicious, as Gen_26:35 Exo_34:16 1Ki_11:2-3, Ezra_9:12, Neh_13:23, &c.; Mal_2:11 1Co_7:39 2Co_6:14, and therefore are fitly spoken of here as one of the sins which brought the flood upon the ungodly world.
Saw, i.e. gazed upon and observed curiously and lustfully, as the sequel showeth,
the daughters of men, of that ungodly and accursed race of Cain.
They were fair, i.e. beautiful, and set off their beauty with all the allurements of ornaments and carriage; herein using greater liberty than the sons and daughters of God did or durst take, 1Pe_3:3; and therefore were more enticing and prevalent with fleshly-minded men. Either,
1. By force and violence, as the word sometimes signifies. Or rather,
2. By consent; for the sons of God were so few, in comparison of the wicked world, that they durst not take away their daughters by force; which also proves that they did not take them for harlots, but for wives.
They took them wives, possibly more than one for each of them, after the example of those wicked families into which they were matched; of all which they chose, i.e. loved and liked, as the word choosing is taken, Psa_25:12, Psa_119:173, Isa_1:29, Isa_42:1, compared with Mat_12:28. This is noted as the first error, that they did promiscuously choose wives, without any regard to their sobriety and religion, minding only the pleasing of their own fancies and lusts, not the pleasing and serving of their Lord and Maker, nor the obtaining of a godly seed, which was God’s end in the institution of marriage, Mal_2:15, and therefore should have been theirs too.