The Royal View

The Royal View The second theory says the sons of God were kings and rulers. The daughters of men were ordinary women, the masses under their rule. In this view, the sin was polygamy. Powerful men took many wives from among the common people. The “sons of god” or beney ha’Elohim are thought by some to be mere rulers, and the “daughters of men” only the masses. The transgression in this view is polygamy. This theory leans on the fact that ancient kings were sometimes called gods, or described as offspring of the gods, in the literature of the surrounding nations. Egyptian pharaohs claimed divine descent. Mesopotamian kings did the same. Supporters of the royal view point to that custom and apply it to Genesis 6. The argument does not hold up. The connection between royalty and deity belongs to Egypt, to Mesopotamia, to the nations surrounding Israel. It does not belong to the Hebrew Bible itself. The evidence for this view is that rulers are often referred to as gods or the offspring of gods. This is an even weaker interpretation. The problem with this theory is that royalty has not, in any way, been associated with a supreme deity, now or in ancient times, or anywhere in the Hebrew Bible. Scripture never calls an Israelite king a god or a son of God in the sense this theory requires. The kings of Israel were judged by the same law as everyone else. They answered to God. They were never described as members of His divine household. If Genesis 6 meant kings, it would stand alone in the Hebrew Bible, using a royal title found nowhere else attached to that phrase. The royal view also fails to explain Job. The same phrase, bene ha'Elohim, appears three times in that book, describing beings who gather in heaven before the Lord. No reader of Job has ever argued that those beings were earthly kings. If the phrase means angels in Job, consistency demands it means angels in Genesis too.