Passage

Genesis 6

Book: Genesis · NASB95

Core verses (6:5-8)

"Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. The LORD said, 'I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.' But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD." (Genesis 6:5-8, NASB95)

Sons-of-God passage (6:1-4)

"Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. Then the LORD said, 'My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.' The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown." (Genesis 6:1-4, NASB95)

Immediate context (±2 verses)

NASB95 (NASB95)

"1. Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, 2. that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. 3. Then the LORD said, 'My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.' 4. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. 5. Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6. The LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. 7. The LORD said, 'I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.' 8. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD. [vv. 9-21]... 22. Thus Noah did; according to all that God had commanded him, so he did." (Genesis 6:1-22, NASB95)

Setting

Speaker: Moses, traditionally; functionally inspired narrator. The chapter is third-person narrative with reported divine speech.
Audience: Israel, for whom the Flood narrative establishes God's holiness, judgment of human sin, covenant faithfulness in preserving a remnant (Noah), and the goodness of post-flood creation through covenant (Genesis 9).
Location: narrates antediluvian humanity ("the earth"); compositional setting is Sinai / wilderness, c. 14th-13th c. BC.
Time period: The chapter narrates the rapid expansion of human wickedness in the antediluvian period and God's commissioning Noah to build the ark. Traditionally dated c. 2350 BC for the Flood event (Ussher) or earlier on different chronologies.

Theological reading

The chapter is the theological inflection point of the Genesis primeval narrative, the trajectory from creation's "very good" (Genesis 1:31) → the Fall (Genesis 3) → escalating violence (Genesis 4 Cain, Lamech) → the Sons-of-God / Nephilim (Genesis 6:1-4) → the universal-judgment Flood (Genesis 6:5-8:22). Five claims:

Sons of God + daughters of men + Nephilim (vv. 1-4), the chapter's most disputed passage. Three readings:

Sethite view (Augustine, Calvin, most Reformed): "sons of God" are the godly Sethite line; "daughters of men" are Cainite line; intermarriage corrupts the godly line.
Angelic view (1 Enoch, Jude 6, 2 Peter 2:4-5, most Patristic, modern conservative scholars Michael Heiser, John Walton): "sons of God" are fallen angels (Watchers) who took human wives; the Nephilim are their hybrid offspring. Supports: Job 1:6 / 2:1 / 38:7 use bnei elohim unambiguously of angels; Jude 6 references this episode; the LXX of Genesis 6:2 reads angeloi tou theou in some manuscripts.
Royal-tyrant view (medieval Jewish): "sons of God" are kings / divine-court judges (cf. Psalm 82:6) who built harems by force. The angelic view has gained ground in recent conservative scholarship; the Sethite view dominated post-Augustinian Western tradition. Both have substantive defense; ris3n's notes (Did angels have sexual intercourse with women) engage this directly.

Universal sin (vv. 5, 11-12), every intent of every thought is only evil continually. The hyperbole is theological: human depravity is total, not partial. Romans 3:10-18 is the NT echo.
God grieved (v. 6), vayinacheim YHWH, "the LORD was sorry / repented." Anthropopathic language. God does not change His mind in any sense incompatible with omniscience (Numbers 23:19; 1 Samuel 15:29), but Scripture freely uses emotional human-language to convey God's responsive interaction with creation. The grief is real; the divine nature is not modified.
Universal judgment (v. 7), I will blot out (echeh, wipe out, erase). The Flood is judicial, not capricious; it answers the wickedness of v. 5.
Noah found favor (v. 8), the remnant principle. Even in universal judgment, God preserves a faithful line through whom the covenant continues. The Flood is judgment; the ark is grace.

Patristic. The sons-of-God / Nephilim passage was widely read as angelic by the early Fathers, Justin Martyr (Second Apology 5), Athenagoras (Embassy 24-25), Tertullian (On the Veiling of Virgins 7; Apology 22), Clement of Alexandria (Stromata 3.7), Origen (Against Celsus 5.55), and Eusebius all follow what is essentially the 1 Enoch tradition. Augustine (City of God 15.23, c. AD 420) shifts to the Sethite reading, partly to distance Christian theology from the Enochic-apocryphal tradition and partly on philosophical grounds (angels as incorporeal cannot procreate). The Sethite reading dominates Western theology after Augustine.

Reformed. Calvin (Genesis commentary, c. AD 1554) adopts the Sethite reading explicitly, calling the angelic interpretation "ridiculous." This becomes the standard Reformed position through Westminster (which doesn't address it directly) and into modern dispensationalist debates.

Modern conservative, angelic view revival. Michael Heiser (The Unseen Realm, 2015; Reversing Hermon, 2017) argues the angelic reading is the natural sense given Job 1-2, Job 38:7, Jude 6, 2 Peter 2:4-5, and the Second Temple Jewish reading evidenced in 1 Enoch. The supernatural worldview of the Hebrew authors is foreign to modern naturalistic readings; the Sethite view is partly an accommodation. John Walton (Genesis NIV Application Commentary) similarly defends the angelic reading.

Apologetic use. The chapter anchors:

The Flood as historical, global vs local debate among modern conservative scholars (cf. ris3n's Population - Adam, Eve and Noah cluster). Both views affirm divine judgment; differ on geographic scope.
God's holiness and judgment against modern moral-therapeutic-deism. Genesis 6 makes plain that God's character includes severe judgment, not just love.
Noah's typological role, preservation of the remnant through judgment by entering the ark; NT typology of Christ as the greater Noah (1 Peter 3:18-22; Hebrews 11:7).

Key words

H7843 - shachath (pending), shachath (corrupt / destroy), central to the chapter's diagnosis
H1121 - ben, ben (son), in bnei ha-elohim
H0430 - elohim, elohim (God), in the disputed bnei ha-elohim
H5303 - nephilim (pending), Nephilim (the giants / fallen ones)
H1320 - basar, basar (flesh), God's reason for limiting human days