The Angelic View

The third theory says the sons of God were fallen angels. They took on physical form and married human women. The Nephilim were the offspring of that union, a hybrid race born of angels and humans. This is the oldest reading of Genesis 6. It is also the reading that fits the evidence at every turn. Start with the phrase itself. Bene ha'Elohim appears in Job 1:6, Job 2:1, and Job 38:7. Every time, it means angels. No exception exists anywhere in the Hebrew Bible. If the phrase “sons of god” (bene ha’Elohim) is used elsewhere other than in Job 1:6, 2:1, and 38:7, it should be understood to keep the same meaning. Good Bible interpretation, or what is called exegesis, requires the same translation be given to the phrase when it is used in other places. That single rule of interpretation does more damage to the other two theories than any other argument. Consistency is not optional in good Bible study. A phrase means what it means, in every place it appears, unless the text itself signals a change. Genesis 6 gives no such signal. History backs this reading as well. The earliest translators of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, the men who produced the Septuagint, rendered the phrase as "angels," not as "sons" in any human sense. And it came to pass, when men began to be numerous upon the earth, and daughters were born to them, that the angels of God having seen the daughters of men that they were beautiful took to themselves wives of all whom they chose. Septuagint, Codex Alexandrinus The men who translated this text understood bene ha'Elohim as angels of God. They lived centuries closer to the original Hebrew than any modern reader. They had no reason to invent an angelic reading. They inherited it from the tradition already standing behind them. The early church carried the same understanding forward. The angels transgressed and were captivated by love of women and begat children who are called giants. The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 8 Justin Martyr held this view. So did Irenaeus, Athenagoras, Tertullian, Lactantius, Eusebius, and Ambrose. Josephus, the Jewish historian, recorded it as well. This was not a minority opinion clinging to the margins. This was the standard reading of Genesis 6 across the early church and across Jewish scholarship before it, for hundreds of years. The New Testament confirms the same view. Jude writes directly about it. In like manner gave themselves over to fornication, and went after strange flesh. Jude 7 Jude places this statement beside the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah, and beside his earlier statement about angels who “kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation” (Jude 6). The pairing is deliberate. Jude is describing angels who abandoned their proper place and pursued union with flesh that did not belong to them. One objection remains. Can a spirit being take physical form and father offspring? Scripture answers that question before Genesis 6 even closes its account. Angels appeared to Abraham on the plain of Mamre. They looked like men. They walked with him. They sat down and ate the food his household prepared for them. Whatever the mechanics, Scripture treats angelic embodiment as something real, not something poetic. Every line of evidence points in the same direction. The grammar of bene ha'Elohim. Its use in Job. The Septuagint. The early church. The New Testament witness of Jude. None of these sources stand alone. They confirm each other, and together they leave no real room for the Sethite or royal views to survive. The angelic view is not a modern theory dressed up to sound ancient. It is the oldest reading on record, and the one every later alternative had to argue against rather than build upon.