Read the story in parallel versions here.
The beginning of chapter 6 brings us out of the genealogy and takes a quick detour into the land of the giants before moving on to the story of Noah.
Verse 2 reads: the sons of God noticed that the daughters of men were beautiful. They looked them over and picked out wives for themselves. A little later, verse 4 contiuues the idea with: This was back in the days (and also later) when there were giants in the land. The giants came from the union of the sons of God and the daughters of men. These were the mighty men of ancient lore, the famous ones.
The phrase "sons of God" is usually interpreted to mean angels, or at least some sort of heavenly beings. In this brief and mysterious passage we see the heavenly beings becoming attracted to human women and having children by them. The larger than life children of these unions are called "giants" in some translations and as the Nephilim--which literally means "the fallen ones"--in others.
This idea of divine beings (usually male) mating with humans (usually female) and having children with them is not limited to the Bible; in fact it is a widespread idea in different cultures across the world. The best known examples are probably what come to us from Greek mythology where the gods of Olympus seem to have had no self control at all. Stories of the gods (especially Zeus) impregnating human women are everywhere.
The Greek word for children like this is demigods which means "half-gods." They are human in many ways but are usually much stronger (like Heracles), much bigger (like Orion), much more beautiful (like Helen of Troy) or much cleverer (like Theseus) than normal humans. As half-gods, these characters could do all sorts of things that mere humans couldn't. They slew terrible monsters, crossed into the realm of the dead and returned, and dealt with the gods more-or-less as equals.
The ancient people of Israel would not have been familiar with the Greek legends, but they knew the stories of other peoples of the ancient Near East. During the time when they were living as captives in the Babylonian Empire they would have heard the story of a demigod called Gilgamesh. The pharaohs of Egypt claimed to be sons of the god Horus and thus to be demigods. For that matter, most of the great kings of the region, whether Assyrian, Sumerian, Babylonian, Persian, Philistine, etc. claimed to be descended from the gods and thus considered themselves better than ordinary mortals.
It's interesting that, as important as these larger than life heroes were in other cultures, they don't rate much more than a footnote in the Bible. It's true that Samson had super-strength but that was a blessing given by God rather than a result of having a divine parent. And the miracles that people like Moses and Elijah did were also by the grace of God. Even Jesus, who is called Son of God by Christians, is very different from a demigod (there will be more on this when we get to the New Testament).
The overwhelming number of heroes in the Bible are ordinary people. They aren't necessarily smarter or stronger, or more beautiful than anyone else around them. They make mistakes, they feel fear, and some of them are really awful people. The heroes of the Bible don't succeed because they are better than mere mortals, but by the grace of God. The Bible isn't an epic about great heroes; it's the story of a God who loves ordinary people, and who helps them succeed in spite of their weakness and mistakes. Even the kings in the Bible aren't seen as semi-divine figures to be obeyed, but as flawed humans who are given the responsibility to serve the people.
I think this short section is kind of a nod to the other religions. I suspect that when the Babylonians would taunt the Jews with the the idea that their ancient heroes were giants and their Great King was a demigod, the Jews could point to this story and say: "Yeah, we know all about that sort; we call then the Nephilim. They just aren't very important."
I think that's also what's behind the reference to God limiting human age (to a still-impressive 120 years) in verse 2. It's a signal that this isn't going to be a book about demigod heroes and near-immortals from long ago and far away. The Bible is a book about ordinary people written for ordinary people who want to form a relationship with our extraordinary God.
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