The Significance of the
'Sons of God' Episode (Genesis 6.1-4)
in the Context of the 'Primaeval History' (Genesis 111)
Published in On the Way to the Postmodern: Old Testament Essays 1967-1998, Volume 1 (JSOTSup, 292; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), pp. 88-94
Most studies of the 'Sons of God' pericope (Gen. 6.1-4) have busied themselves with the narrower exegetical problems within the pericope itself as an independent, not to say intrusive, piece of 'heathen mythology'/1/ or as a partly demythologized 'foreign particle'/2/ within the biblical text. My purpose here is to examine, via the exegetical problem of the identity of the 'sons of God' and via the backward and forward links between the material and its surroundings, the function of the pericope within the larger whole of the 'Primaeval History'. Without calling into question the consensus of opinion that the material of the piece derives from a pre-Israelite myth, I am concerned here essentially with the 'Þnal form of the text'./3/
1. The Identity of the 'Sons of God'
Concentration on this particular interpretational crux can, I think, point us to a solution of the larger problem of the function of the whole pericope within its present setting.
Three chief interpretations of the identity of the 'sons of God' have been advanced:
(i) The 'sons of God' are the Sethites (cf. 5.1, 3), while the 'daughters of men' are from the Cainite line./4/ In favour of this view is the division of the human race into two lines of descent in the previous chapters (4.175.32), but against it are the arguments that since 'humanity' (µdah) is used in v. 1 of humankind generally, it is unlikely to mean only one section of humanity in v. 2,/5/ and that 'sons of God' does not appear as a collective term for the Sethites, either in these chapters or elsewhere.
(ii) The 'sons of God' are heavenly beings,/6/ who mate with earthly women. In favour of this interpretation is the regular use of the term 'sons of God' for the heavenly court that surrounds Yahweh (e.g. Ps. 29.1; 89.7; Job 1.6). There is a prima facie case for supposing that both the nephilim and 'mighty men' (µyrbg) of v. 4 are to be regarded as the offspring of such unions, though it has been argued that the structure of v. 4 deliberately afÞrms the existence of the Nephilim before the unions of v. 2./7/ We may leave aside, however, the problem of the origin of the Nephilim, and note that the majority of scholarly opinion supports the identiÞcation of the 'sons of God' as heavenly beings./8/ The principal objection to this identiÞcation is that it is far from clear in the present context why humankind as a whole should be subjected to the divine threat of v. 3 for the sin of such non-human beings; the 'daughters of humans' can hardly have been regarded as culpable (though their beauty [v. 2] was the antecedent condition,/9/ since they were taken by force).
(iii) The 'sons of God' are dynastic rulers who, as oriental despots, established royal harems by force/10/ or practised indiscriminate rape. This view has the merit of taking seriously the phrase 'and they took for themselves wives from all whom they chose (lkm µyvn µhl wjqywwrjb rva)'. It also makes intelligible the divine punishment upon humanity as a whole because of the sin of these despots; for in oriental ideology it is not uncommon to Þnd the fate of the people at large bound up with the fate of the king. Nevertheless, the identiÞcation of the 'sons of God' simply as human rulers has the weakness that it is rarely if ever attested in the ancient Near East as a term for kings in general. Though kings in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Canaan and Israel were frequently spoken to as 'son of God', such language seems to have been reserved in the main for courtly rhetoric and poetic adulation, and is not to be met with, in the Old Testament at least, in straightforward narrative style with such a signiÞcation./11/
Westermann appears to feel no difÞculty at this point. Though he seems not to know of the paper of M.G. Kline, he regards the term µyhla ynb as the only one available to the narrator (J) of Gen. 6.1-4 to designate a class of beings superior to humans; for in the 'Primaeval History' humanity is otherwise undifferentiated and undivided socially and politically. Since the pericope concerns essentially the power of one group over another, only the polarity of 'sons of God' and '(daughters of) humans' is open to him./12/
It is perhaps no contradiction of Westermann's position, but rather a development of it, to make the new suggestion that the author of Gen. 6.1-4 in its present form did not work with a system of closed categories in which 'sons of God' must be either human or non-human./13/ Are the µyhlah ynb here then both divine beings and antediluvian rulers? The use of the term may indeed be inherited from earlier formulations of the pericope in which the 'sons of God' may have been divine beings tout court, but it is not improbable that the author of this text in its Þnal form should have understood it in reference to rulers of the primaeval period who had belonged in part to the divine world. In this connection we may observe the appearance of divine names in the Babylonian lists of antediluvian kings, notably the identiÞcation of several rulers with the god Dumuzi or Tammuz./14/ Strictly speaking, of course, Gen. 6.1-4 represents the 'sons of God' as the generation prior to the Nephilim and the 'mighty men' (µyrbg),/15/ so that a simple identiÞcation of 'sons of God' with the other terms is inappropriate./16/ But the intercourse of 'sons of God' with 'daughters of humans' is not envisaged as occurring at only one deÞnite period-the imperfect verb in v. 4 should probably be translated as a frequentative, viz. 'Whenever the sons of God went in unto the daughters of humans'/17/-, so that it is perhaps unnecessary to distinguish too sharply between kings who were 'sons of God' in the strict sense, and kings who were only sons of the 'sons of God', part-human and part-divine.
Such a 'son of God' has his portrait sketched in Akkadian literature, the hero Gilgamesh:Two-thirds of him is god, [one-third of him is human] . . .
The nobles of Uruk are gloomy in their chambers:
'Gilgamesh leaves not the son to his father;
Day and night is unbridled his arrogance . . .
Gilgamesh leaves not the maid to her mother,
The warrior's daughter, the noble's spouse . . .
The onslaught of his weapons verily has no equal.'/18/That Gilgamesh was regarded in the epic as a historical human personage is beyond question; the belief in his divine or semi-divine origins explains his signiÞcance and the survival of the story of his deeds from ancient times, as well as his titles and entitlements; it does not mean that the epic poet conceives of him as any more than a human, and a mortal human at that.
The same outlook is credible in the biblical pericope: that the 'sons of God' were both regarded as rulers of ancient times, and traditionally ascribed divine or semi-divine origins. On this interpretation, the 'sons of God' pericope is no alien intrusion into the story of primaeval humanity, since it concerns-from Þrst to last-humans; but neither is it simply an episode in the catalogue of human sinfulness, since it also concerns the relationship between the divine and the human world that is displayed in the actions of these 'sons of God'. Connections with the surrounding material will become apparent in the ensuing motif analysis.
2. Motif Analysis
(a) The motif of 'breaking the bounds', which recurs in every major episode of the 'Primaeval History', appears here in two forms, if the foregoing solution to the question of the identity of the 'sons of God' is accepted.
First, there is in the union of 'sons of God' with 'daughters of humans' a breach of the primal boundary between the divine and the human worlds. The attempt of humanity in Genesis 3 at self-divinization-and the at least partially successful attempt (cf. 3.22) to merge the spheres of the human and the divine-is here taken up afresh from the other direction in the attempt of divine beings to join the world of humanity. Their attempt also is only partially successful, in that 'sons of God' (µyhla ynb, or at least their offspring, inasmuch as they have breached the bounds between the divine and the human, have forfeited the immortality that is a token of their divinity and have become (like Gilgamesh) subject to death (v. 3).
Secondly, there is clearly another form of 'breaking the bounds' present in the violent and polygamous lust of the 'sons of God'. Westermann/19/ has pointed to the formal similarity between this story and those of Gen. 12.10-20 (and parallels) and 2 Sam. 11, where the beauty of a woman is alleged by some commentators to lead a man to break the bounds of accepted morality. We may observe further backward links within the 'Primaeval History' that highlight the signiÞcance of the sons of God 'taking wives of all whom they chose'. The monogamous order established by God (2.24)-in which, incidentally, it is not the man but God who chooses the wife for the man-has in the course of human decline been casually abandoned by the tyrant Lamech of whom it is Þrst noted (? in emphatic position) that he 'took two wives'./20/ The glimpse in Gen. 6.2 of 'titan promiscuity'/21/ reveals the ultimate stage in the development of a society that has produced a Lamech. The 'sons of God' are intelligible therefore in the present context as the royal successors of Lamech, taking for themselves (µhl) wives of as many women as they chose./22/ Bonhoeffer was not far from the mark when he spoke of the unrestrained sexuality here depicted as 'avid, impotent will for unity in the divided world' [note the link with Gen. 11]; 'it desires the destruction of the other person as creature; it robs him of his creatureliness, violates him as well as his limit . . . [It] . . . is therefore destruction par excellence. Thus it is an insane acceleration of the Fall; it is self-afÞrmation to the point of destruction.'/23/
(b) In the 'Primaeval History' the relation of the divine to the human comes to expression not only in the concept of a boundary between the two spheres, but also in the concept of communication, or communion, between the two spheres. Thus, in Genesis 2, though God is creator and the man is a creature, the man is infused with the divine breath (2.7), and God walks in the garden that the man tends (3.8). To the same effect is the concept of human creation in the image of God (1.26), whatever precisely that may mean; in some sense, at least, the boundary between the divine and the human is not absolute, and humanity can represent God on earth (1.28). In 6.1-4, on the contrary, we Þnd a satanic parody of the idea of the image of God in humanity. Far from God being present on earth in the person of humans as his kingly representatives exercising benign dominion over the lower orders of creation,/24/ we now have the presence of the divine on earth in a form that utterly misrepresents God through its exercise of royal violence and despotic authority over other humans.
(c) A further link between 6.1-4 and the surrounding material lies in the concept of the possession of 'name'. The Nephilim, here identiÞed, it appears,/25/ with the 'mighty men who were of old' (rva µyrbghµlw[m), were the men of renown, lit. 'men of name' (µvh yvna) of ancient times. The striving for a 'name', a permanent memorial in one's descendants, belongs to the dynastic ambitions of these antediluvian rulers. Earlier in the 'Primaeval History', Cain, in a sense the spiritual though not the physical ancestor of the heroes of 6.4 (here the old patristic identiÞcation of the 'sons of God' is not entirely beside the mark), is represented as having the same dynastic ambition: he strives to perpetuate a family name, calling the name of his city by the name of his son Enoch (4.17)./26/ Similarly the self-sufÞcient builders of Babel set about building their city and tower with the explicit purpose of making a 'name' for themselves. This desire to make a name for oneself is more than arrogance; just as their tower whose top reaches to the sky may be seen as an assault on heaven, so their ambition for 'name' is an attack on the prerogative of God, who himself makes his own name great or glorious (2 Sam. 7.23; Jer. 32.20; Isa. 63.12, 14) and who is the true source of 'name' (cf. Zeph. 3.19-20). While it is ironically true that the builders of Babel succeeded in making a name for themselves, it was only a name of derogatory signiÞcance, Babel, 'confusion'./27/
While the line of 'name'-seekers is scattered, there has already come into being a man of 'name', Shem (µv 9.18), ancestor of the 'Semitic' nations, whose name is 'probably intended to be deliberately allusive, providing a contrast to the illegitimate attempt by humans to achieve a name for themselves (11.4; cf. 6.4), and anticipating the great name to be accorded to Abraham . . . (12.1-3':/28/ °mv hldgaw, 12.2; cf. also the prophetic word to David, 'I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones (µyldgh) of the earth' (2 Sam. 7.9)./29/
(d) A Þnal motif with interesting connections in the preceding and following chapters is that of the multiplication of humanity. Its appearance in the 'sons of God' episode is interesting not so much for the fact of its presence, but more for the sake of its irrelevance. Throughout the 'Primaeval History' the multiplication of humanity is enjoined, furthered and blessed by God. The Þrst command to humankind in Genesis 1 is: 'Be fruitful and multiply, and Þll the earth' (1.28). In Genesis 4 Eve bears Cain 'with the help of Yahweh (hwhyAta 4.2), and God 'appoints (tv, 4.25) another child, Seth, instead of Abel. After the Flood, the Þrst divine command to surviving humanity is a repetition of 1.28: 'Be fruitful and multiply, and Þll the earth'. I have argued elsewhere/30/ that the position of the Table of Nations (Gen. 10) before the Babel episode (Gen. 11) compels us to regard the dispersal of the nations not only as a mark of judgment following upon Babel, but also as a fulÞlment of the divine injunctions to multiply the race.
Against that background, it is remarkable that the multiplication of humanity in 6.1 is viewed entirely neutrally, and has no real relevance to the narrative that proceeds from it. C. Westermann, it is true, argues that the increase of humankind, which is indeed an appropriate consequence of the primal blessing, begins to create negative possibilities: the sheer size of humanity creates danger-points for the relation between humans and God (or the gods)./31/ From the point of view of the form of the pericope, which is Westermann's starting-point, it does indeed appear that the introductory clause will be of great moment for the development of the narrative. That is not in fact the case, for the narrative would have the same signiÞcance if the phrase 'when humans began to multiply on the face of the ground' were absent. To be sure, some multiplication of the human race from the primaeval pair of Genesis 2 must have occurred for the events of 6.1-4 to be possible, but such a multiplication has already been adequately attested by the genealogies of the Cainites (4.17-22) and the Sethites (Gen. 5).
The reference in 6.1, then, to the multiplication of humankind only has narrative signiÞcance if the tale is told differently, with the multiplication of humanity a reason or cause for the ensuing events. For the second time in this study, therefore, we are compelled to designate an item 'traditional'. (I should stress that I do not regard an overriding concern for the 'Þnal form' of the text as precluding acceptance of the possibility that some, if not much, of the material, has been incorporated into the Þnal form largely because it has become traditional. We do not have to suppose Þnal authors of our texts being actively engaged in the precise wording or arrangement of every part of their material; 'Þnal form' criticism-if it may be so designated-makes only the assumption of authorial intention in the end-redactors, and authors obviously have many different styles of handling their material. In the present case, I would argue that it makes effectively no difference whether the clause is present or not, so that its presence falls beneath the level of the author's intention.)
Have we then any evidence that the tale may have been told differently, especially in relation to the multiplication motif? Yes, in the Atrahasis epic, the story of the Deluge is prefaced by the lines:Twelve hundred years had not yet passed
When the land extended and the peoples multiplied.
The land was bellowing like a bull./32/Here the growth of humankind results in such clamour that it disturbs the sleep of the high god, Enlil:
'The noise of mankind has become too intense for me,
With their uproar I am deprived of sleep.'/33/The Flood is sent as the Þnal, and successful, attempt, to halt the unlimited growth of humankind. And following the drastic reduction in the size of humanity brought about by the Flood, measures are taken to ensure that henceforth the size of the human population will be controlled: there are to be sterile women as well as fertile women, various orders of religious women who will not marry, and a demon of infant mortality to 'snatch the baby from the lap of her who bore it'./34/
The story of the Flood, therefore, with the near extinction of humankind, may be told as a story about the problem of 'over-population', while the multiplication motif presents the reason for the problem and thus effectively accounts for the origin of death. This explanation for the institution of death Þgures in many myths./35/ 'Earth becomes overcrowded, some check has to be put on mankind increasing to an alarming extent. Thus the only solution is Death.'/36/
Two aspects of the Biblical pericope are particularly instructive against this background. First, the multiplication of humankind, though still forming the backdrop of the 'Sons of God' pericope, is not the cause of the introduction of death. Even though in the pericope a limitation of the human life-span (or, the onset of the death-dealing Flood (7.21-22) after only a brief period of respite-if that is what the 120 years of v. 3 points to) is decreed, the grounds for it are certainly not the over-population but the purely ethical grounds of the sin of the 'Sons of God', however that sin is understood precisely. The origin of death in the 'Primaeval History' has of course already occurred, even more evidently as a result of human wrongdoing. The mere multiplication of humankind, therefore, is no cause for catastrophe in Genesis 111 as it is in the Atrahasis epic;/37/ sheer numbers and the clamour of teeming life are no threat to the cosmos of divine order-but sin is.
Secondly-and this must be tentative-it is possible that the Hebrew text of v. 3 contains a relic of the old idea of the clamour of humankind being the immediate cause of the Flood. The unparalleled conjunction µgvb, usually translated 'because' or 'in that' is a notorious difÞculty./38/ Not only is Av not attested in the Pentateuch as an abbreviation for rva, and not only is the µg difÞcult to make sense of, but the logic of the divine sentence is hard to decipher. We would expect, as Westermann observes, that the decree should be based on an act rather than on a state of affairs. Is it too far-fetched an explanation to suggest that µgvb was earlier the preposition b with a noun cognate with the Assyrian root ¡agåmu 'to bellow, howl'?/39/ The text would then have read: 'My spirit will not abide in humanity forever because of the clamour of þesh'./40/ If that was the case, it is clearly no longer the case, and the sentence, though not crystal-clear, is generally intelligible. It would be strangely appropriate if the 'clamour' of the Mesopotamian myth should have faded in the biblical text into a mere conjunction in a divine speech.
The multiplication motif, along with that of the clamour of humankind, could have provided a rationale for the sending of the Flood. Though the former motif survives, and the latter is possibly present in disguise, neither of them functions signiÞcantly in the pericope. And that is what is signiÞcant about these motifs in the context of the 'Primaeval History': the fundamental sinpunishment pattern/41/ has been stamped upon this doubtless ancient and variously recounted tale of the 'sons of God'.
3. Relation to the Flood Narrative
Enough has been said to show that the 'Sons of God' pericope is well anchored in its present position in the 'Primaeval History' by motif connections with preceding and following material./42/ One speciÞc point, however, needs to be dealt with separately in order to clarify the connection between the pericope and the succeeding narrative of the Flood. The question is whether the 120 years of 6.3 has a speciÞc reference to the coming of the Flood. In other words, is the 120 year period intended as the normal life-span of humans, or as a period of respite before the Flood descends?
In favour of the view that 120 years represents the maximum span of life, it may be argued Þrst, negatively, that the Þgure 120 has no necessary or symbolic connection with a period of grace or respite,/43/ whereas, positively, there is some evidence that 120 years was considered the ideal lifetime. Moses lives the full 120 years (Deut. 31.2; 34.7), while Herodotus reports that the Ethiopians habitually lived to the age of 120./44/ In Egypt, 110 years was apparently regarded as the ideal span of life;/45/ Joseph and Joshua, signiÞcantly, each live to 110 (Gen. 50.22; Jos. 24.29). Elsewhere in the Old Testament, it is true, 80 years is regarded as a normal maximum lifetime (Ps. 90.10; cf. 2 Sam. 19.34-35). It is true, moreover, that the ages of the post-diluvians are not immediately reduced to 120 years;/46/ but that could be accounted for as a mitigation of the penalty, just as the sentence 'in the day you eat of it you shall surely die' (2.17) only slowly begins to take effect. Some have indeed warned against imposing the Priestly system of decreasing ages arbitrarily on the Yahwist account,/47/ while others have claimed to Þnd here polemic against the Babylonian tradition (and, one might have thought, the Hebrew Priestly tradition) of primaeval kings who are said to have lived extraordinarily long lives./48/ In either case, we should ask how the redactor of J and P reconciled to himself the J Þgure of 120 years with the P data of the life-spans of the post-diluvians-unless perhaps the redactor no longer saw the 120 years as a life-span. No insuperable problem remains against the view that the 120 years is the limitation or bounding of life-span as punishment in kind (so to speak) of the bound-breaking by the sons of God./49/
Nevertheless, it seems more probable that in the present setting the threat of the withdrawal of the divine spirit refers to some event that is about to occur. Since, if we assume that the 'spirit (jwr) of Yahweh is equivalent to his 'breath' (hmvn) breathed into the man at his creation (2.7),/50/ the Flood brings about the destruction of everything in whose nostrils is 'the breath of the spirit of life' (µyyj jwrAtmvn, 7.22), the relation of the decree of 6.3 to the destruction of 7.22 appears to be that of cause and effect. Of course, it may be argued that humankind is not in fact entirely destroyed and that the spirit of Yahweh remains in humanity even after the Flood; but it is an adequate rejoinder that 6.3 is in the nature of a threat, and it is just as appropriate to speak of the Flood as the destruction of humankind as to describe it as the salvation by God of the human race from total annihilation./51/
Some further support for the view of the 120 years as a period of respite comes again from the Atrahasis epic, where periods of 1200 years intervene between the catastrophes that are climaxed by the Flood./52/ The Þgures 120 and 1200 clearly originate from the Babylonian sexagesimal system,/53/ and it is therefore possible that the pre-history of this item in the biblical pericope points to its signiÞcance from the beginning as a period of respite. The clinching argument seems to me to be the existence of the Atrahasis epic as a uniÞed sequence of creation, multiplication of humankind, and Flood. Since the biblical 'Primaeval History' is built on the same pattern, it is plausible to regard the 120 years as always having had the same kind of function as the 1200 years of the Atrahasis epic, viz. a period of remission or respite./54/ If this admittedly somewhat distant parallel is not cogent enough, I would fall back on the position of B.S. Childs: 'Regardless of what the original meaning of the one hundred and twenty years was, in its present position one cannot help seeing some connexion with a period of grace before the coming catastrophe'./55/
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