Genesis 5:28-6:7

Review of the genealogy of Adam to Noah:

• Adam means “man”
• Seth means “appointed”
• Enosh means “mortal, frail, miserable” from root anash “to be incurable”
• Kenan means “sorrow, dirge”
• Mahalalel means “blessed God” from “mahalal” for “blessed” and “el” for “God”
• Jared means “shall come down”
• Enoch means “commencement, teaching”
• Methusaleh means “his death shall bring” from “muth” for “death”; “shalach” for “bring or send forth”
• Lamech means “despairing” (similar our word lament or lamentation)
• Noah means “comfort or rest”

In order the first ten generations of first born sons makes the following statement of a promise and the gospel message:

“Man is appointed mortal sorrow; but the blessed God shall come
down teaching that his death shall bring the despairing rest.”

5:28
When Lamech had lived 182 years, he had a son.

5:29
He named him Noah and said, "He will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the LORD has cursed."

Lamech is the only father to explain the name of his son.

It is a call or prayer for help which indicates the pain of life in these early days of man.

God will answer this prayer and end the violence with the flood.

5:30
After Noah was born, Lamech lived 595 years and had other sons and daughters. 31 Altogether, Lamech lived 777 years, and then he died.

 5:32
After Noah was 500 years old, he became the father of Shem, Ham and Japheth.

The vertical genealogy goes horizontal at this point.

Shem, Ham and Japheth will become the focus of chapter 9:28 and following.

The nations will all be traced from these three sons.

But before the genealogy is continued a portion of narrative is added which will apparently include some of Noah’s own written records.

6:1
When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them,

This age of man is described as a time of increase in population.
Estimates of the population at this time are huge.
Estimates range from 5 to 17 billion people

6:2
the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.

“Sons of God” is the Hebrew “Bene ha elohim”. “Ben” means “son of” and “elohim” is the Hebrew word for God.

Sons of God in scripture refer to beings that come directly from the hand of God such as:

1. Adam
2. Jesus
3. Born again believers
4. Angels

“Sons of God” refer to angels in Job 1:6; Job 2:1; Job 38:7; Psalm 29:1; 82:6; 89:7; Daniel 3:25.

In Luke 20:34-36 men are compared to angels, but the angelic comparison is used to point out that men will not die after the resurrection. Mankind will not be married after the resurrection but that was not the reason that Luke records Jesus saying we will be like the angels.

Apparently angels do not have baby angels since angels were created directly from God. But, this does not mean that Genesis 6:2-5 can’t mean what it clearly is saying.

Genesis 18:2 angels appear as men and eat.

Genesis 19:1 angels are thought to be men by the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Hebrews 1:7 angels are transformed into wind or fire.

Ezekiel 28:13 describes the creation of Lucifer’s angelic body

Luke 1:35 the Holy Spirit overshadows a woman and she conceives

6:3
Then the LORD said, "My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years."

“mortal” is the word “flesh”. God’s problem with man was man’s state of being sinful flesh first. The actions of man were secondary.

“a hundred and twenty years” indicates the length of time before God destroys mortal man with the flood.

a. In the days of Noah the Spirit of God was trying to draw all men back to him. The Spirit did this in a variety of ways that we know:

i. The preaching of Noah (1 Peter 3:19, 20)

ii. The inward checks and the law written on their hearts (Rm. 2:15)

b. Point One: The Spirit strives with sinners to turn them to God

c. Point Two: The Spirit will eventually stop calling each individual and group back to himself. There is a ending point to the Spirit’s work of urging men to repent.

i. “The Israelites are stubborn, like a stubborn heifer. . .Ephraim is joined to idols; leave him alone!” Hosea 4:16,17

d. Point Three: Man is mortal (also translated, “flesh”) and is naturally opposed to the immortal Holy Spirit. It is simply natural and must be accepted that many men will resist the Spirit’s work. Grace is not an eternal option. In every case the day of opportunity passes.

e. “contend” (NIV) also means “strive” with, “rules” in or is “humbled” in. In his 1870 book “Old Testament Word Studies,” Wilson gives the meaning of this Hebrew word as “to judge, contend, to be at strife. Most of the ancient versions give it the sense of remaining or dwelling. . . .Gen. 6:3 may be translated, ‘My spirit shall not always be despised by man, i.e. I will not suffer my spirit, admonishing them and pleading with them by the prophets, to be perpetually neglected, I will punish them.” More modern studies of etymology show the meaning of “contend” to be better translated as “continue” or “last”. The Septuagint and the Vulgate confirm this. This makes more sense of the context and fits the whole theology of the Holy Spirit than the word “strive.”

6:4
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 by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.

Nephilim- (Hebrew: “nepilim”) “

• The term itself almost certainly means ‘fallen ones,’ whether morally fallen in the general sense or fallen from (i.e., cast out of) heaven in a more specific sense.
• The word is used twice in scripture: Gen. 6:4 and Numbers 13:33
• It has been plausibly proposed that the Nephilim were princes born into the royal houses of the ‘sons of God’ (Gen. 6:4) and that they were ‘the mighty tyrants who . . .esteemed their might to be their right.’
• Certain Jewish exegetes have ingeniously assumed that the later Nephilim strain of Num 13:33 was preserved through the Flood in the persons of Noah’s daughters-in-law.
• The literature of the intertestamental period, however, takes a different track. According to Sir 16:7 the ‘ancient giants’ were rebellious and deserved divine punishment. Wisd. 14:6 and Bar.3:26-28 are even more specific: The giants were destroyed by the Flood. If so, the later Nephilim were namesakes, not descendants, of their earlier counterparts.” (New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, 1997)
• Virtually every ancient culture has an account of gods or star people or angels who produce offspring on the earth: Sumer, Assyria, Egypt, Incas, Mayans, Babylon, Persians, Greece, India, Bolivia, South Sea Islands, Sioux Indians.

Sons of God– In Job 1:6 and 2:1 the same Hebrew phrase “sons of God” is translated “angels.”

Heroes- (Hebrew: “gibbor” or “gibborim”) and is translated as “mighty men” in 2 Sam. 23:8; JOB 16:14; 2 Samuel 10:7. The LXX (Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures around 250 BC) translates “gibbor” with the Greek word “gigas” or “gigantes” (“giant”) in:

Gen.10:8-9,1 Chr. 1:10, Ps. 19:5,6, Ps. 33:16, Isa. 3:2, Isa. 13:3, Isa. 49:24-25, Ezek. 32:12; 32:21, 27; 39:18, 20

Nephilim is used in the Hebrew in Numbers 13:32,33:

“All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim

there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim).”

This was a true report (but, faithless) since Deuteronomy 2:10-12 records:

“The Emites used to live there (Moab) - a people strong and numerous,

and as tall as the Anakites. Like the Anakites, they too were considered

Rephaites, but the Moabites called them Emites. Horites used to live in Seir,

but he descendants of Esau drove them out.”

Rephaites was the general name for people like the Anakites, Emites, Horites. In Deuteronomy 2:20 they are called Zamzummites by the Ammonites:

“That too (region of Moab at Ar) was considered a land of the Rephaites,

who used to live there; but the Ammonites called them Zamzummites.

They were a people as numerous, and as tall as the Anakites.”

The Greeks who settle in Philistia (coming from Caphtorites) and became known as the Philistines destroyed a group known as the Avvites in Deuteronomy 2:23.

Goliath and Og were the two best-known Rephaites. Also named in scripture are Ishbi-Benob and Lahmi

The Descendents of the Nephilim

Og, King of Bashan	Rephaites	Deut. 3:11, 13; Jos. 12:4; 13:12
Anak comes from the Nephilim	Anakites	Num.13:33
Moab called them	Emites	Dt. 2:10-12
Ammonites called them	Zazummites	Dt. 2:20
Edom	Horites	Dt. 2:12
Philistines drove out the	Avvites	Dt. 2:23
Descendants of Rapha	Raphaites	2 Sam. 21:16, 18, 20, 1 Chr. 20:4-8

Skeletons 3.2 meters tall have been excavated in Palestine (Wiseman, 23; cf. 244, n. 58 from Dictionary of OT Theology and Exegesis)

Matthew 22:30

6:5
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. 6 The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.

6:7
So the LORD said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them." 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.

NOTES:

Demons – seek bodies Lke 8:26 and Mark 1:24

Tartarus – 2 Peter, Jude, 1 Peter 3:19 – spirits in prison

Map of underworld

Seed of the serpent

Satan’s continual attack on the seed of the woman, Abraham, Hebrews in Egypt, David, Jews in Persia, Greece, Herod and Bethlehem boys, etc.

The great delusion of the end times

Compare what Enoch says with Jude 6:

12:4 – The angels have abandoned the high heaven, the holy eternal place= Jude 6a

10:4 – Bind Azazel hand and foot and throw him into the darkness = Jude 6b

10:6 – that he may be sent into the fire on the great day of judgment = Jude 6c