Genesis 6:1–4

Four sentences in Genesis. An entire book in 1 Enoch.

"When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. Then the LORD said, 'My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years.' The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown." — Gen 6:1–4 (NRSV)

The puzzle

Read this cold and you have questions. Who are "the sons of God"? Why is God upset about anyone marrying anyone? What are Nephilim — and why are they suddenly the subject of one sentence with no explanation? Why does this story exist at all, sitting awkwardly between Adam's genealogy and Noah's flood?

The author of Genesis treats this material like the reader already knows it. Four verses are the summary of something. They aren't the story; they are a shorthand reference to a story.

1 Enoch is the long version of what those four verses are summarizing.

How the short version maps to the long version

Genesis 6	What 1 Enoch fills in
"sons of God"	Two hundred Watcher angels (1 En 6:1)
"saw they were fair"	Description of lust and deliberation (1 En 6:1–2)
"took wives"	The oath on Mt Hermon; the actual taking (1 En 6:3–7:1)
"Nephilim"	Giants of monstrous size who devour everything (1 En 7:2–6)
(silence)	Azazel teaching forbidden arts (1 En 8)
"120 years"	Shortened human lifespan as part of the judgment (1 En 10:9–10)
(silence)	Archangels' intercession (1 En 9)
(silence)	The full divine sentence and the binding of the Watchers (1 En 10)

Genesis 6 leaves every interesting question unanswered. 1 Enoch answers all of them. Whether 1 Enoch is preserving an older story that Genesis abbreviated, or constructing a new story to fill Genesis's gaps, is debated. Both directions have scholarly support. But the relationship is undeniable.

The big debate: who are "sons of God"?

How a tradition reads Gen 6 tells you a lot about what kind of tradition it is. The major options:

1. Fallen angels (the 1 Enoch reading). This is also how most Second Temple Jewish writers read it: the Book of Jubilees, the Aramaic Qumran texts, Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Philo, Josephus. It was also the dominant early Christian reading: Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Athenagoras, Irenaeus, Lactantius all assume it. The named-fallen-angel reading lasted in mainstream Christianity until around the 4th century.

2. The line of Seth marrying the line of Cain (the Augustinian reading). In late antiquity, partly as a deliberate move away from 1 Enoch's authority, Augustine argued (City of God XV.23) that "sons of God" really meant the righteous descendants of Seth, and "daughters of men" meant the corrupt descendants of Cain. The intermarriage was moral compromise, not metaphysical category-crossing. This became the dominant Western Christian reading until the modern era.

3. Human nobles or judges (the post-2nd-century rabbinic reading). Mainstream Rabbinic Judaism developed a reading in which "sons of God" meant powerful human elites — petty kings or judges — taking wives from common families. This avoided endorsing the named-angel tradition that was being absorbed by Christians. Note that this reading is not the older Jewish reading: the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan retained the angel reading, and the Midrash Abkir named Shemhazai and Azael.

4. Mythological "sons of god(s)" (the modern critical reading). Modern Hebrew Bible scholars largely return to a version of the angel reading, treating "sons of God" as the standard West Semitic term for members of the divine council — exactly what it means in Job 1:6, Job 38:7, and Psalm 82. Genesis 6:1–4 looks like a small surviving piece of a larger Israelite mythology that was mostly edited out of the final text of the Bible.

The "Nephilim" word

The Hebrew is nəfīlîm (נְפִלִים). Three possible meanings:

From the root nāfal "to fall" → "the fallen ones"
From the root nāfal "to fall (upon)" → "those who fall upon," i.e., attackers
A loan-word from elsewhere with the meaning "giants"

The Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation) translated it as gigantes — "giants." That has been the standard reading ever since.

The same word appears one other time in the Hebrew Bible, in Numbers 13:33: the Israelite spies sent into Canaan come back terrified, reporting that they saw "the Nephilim, sons of Anak from the Nephilim." So the post-flood narrative of Israel reckons that giants — somehow — survived.

Cross-references

1 Enoch 6 — the Watchers' descent
1 Enoch 7 — wives, giants, devouring
watchers descent
Semjâzâ
Azazel
Targum Ps-Jonathan on Gen 6:4 — Shemhazai and Azael named
Jubilees 5 — independent retelling
Jude 14–15 — the NT quotation