Reading Genesis 6:4 in Its Setting, and the Two Lines of Genesis 4 and 5

Moses wrote out the line of Cain (Genesis 4) and the line of Seth (Genesis 5) at length, side by side, and placed Genesis 6:1-4 immediately after them. He did so to show how those two human lines mingled and how the whole earth became corrupt. If Genesis 6:1-4 is suddenly read as a story about heavenly beings, the two genealogies so carefully set against each other no longer connect to the cause of the flood.

Genesis 6:4 The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man (adam), and they bore to them; they are the mighty ones who were of old, the men of the name.

1. The setting: “The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that” (Genesis 6:4).

The verse does not say that the Nephilim were born from the marriages of the two groups. It says that they were already on the earth in those days, and that they were there also afterward. The name Nephilim is commonly linked with the verb naphal, “to fall” or “to fall upon.” The book of Numbers shows directly that there were Nephilim “also after that” (Genesis 6:4), that is, after the flood:

Numbers 13:33 And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who are from the Nephilim; and we were in our eyes like grasshoppers, and so we were in their eyes.”

The flood killed all flesh outside the ark (Genesis 7:22). If the Nephilim had been a hybrid race born once from angels and human women, their bloodline would have ended in the flood. Yet the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, appear again in the land of Canaan. They cannot be such a hybrid race. In Joshua’s day the Anakim remained “only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod” (Joshua 11:22). Later Goliath, who stood against David, was “from Gath; his height was six cubits and a span” (1 Samuel 17:4). And Og king of Bashan, the last “of the remnant of the Rephaim,” had an iron bedstead nine cubits long (Deuteronomy 3:11).

2. The event: “when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man (adam), and they bore to them” (Genesis 6:4).

The sons of God, the line of Seth, who should have kept themselves holy, joined themselves without discernment to the daughters of the line that had turned away from God.

3. The result: “they are the mighty ones who were of old, the men of the name” (Genesis 6:4).

The structure of the verse shows the difference. The Nephilim were already on the earth before the two lines married. The children born when the two lines mingled are called “the mighty ones who were of old, the men of the name” (Genesis 6:4). In Hebrew the mighty ones are gibborim, and “the men of the name” is anshei ha-shem. Like Nimrod, who after the flood “began to be a mighty one in the earth” (Genesis 10:8), and like the builders of the tower who said, “let us make for ourselves a name” (Genesis 11:4), they made their own name and strength great on the earth, not the name of God.

The first home of Adam and Eve after they were driven from the garden lay outside Eden, yet it was still a place where they could hear the voice of God and speak with Him. Even Cain, after he had killed his brother Abel, spoke with God directly there.

Genesis 4:9-10 And the LORD said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” And he said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” And he said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground.

Adam and Eve had to bear not only their own disobedience but the horror of their firstborn, Cain, striking down his brother Abel. So when they were given Seth in Abel’s place, they raised him in godliness before God. The toil of the ground (Genesis 3:17) was there too, but it remained a place of grace, where they could still hear the voice of God and live in dependence on Him.

Genesis 4:25-26 And Adam knew his woman again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth: “For God has appointed for me another seed instead of Abel, because Cain killed him.” And to Seth, to him also a son was born; and he called his name Enosh. Then it was begun to call upon the name of the LORD.

The descendants of Seth, who grew up calling on the name of the LORD in the presence of God, are the sons of God. The Gospel of Luke traces this line back and ends it with “the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God” (Luke 3:38). Noah too was chosen from within this line, and from him the line of life ran on to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

The place where Cain was driven was another matter entirely.

Genesis 4:13-14 And Cain said to the LORD, “My iniquity is too great to bear. Behold, you have driven me this day from upon the face of the ground, and from your face I shall be hidden; and I shall be a wanderer and a fugitive in the earth, and it shall come to pass that anyone finding me will kill me.”

Genesis 4:16 And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

After their parents were driven out of Eden, Cain went further still. He “went out from the presence of the LORD” (Genesis 4:16), leaving even the first home where God spoke with man, and settled in the land of Nod. It was a double separation. In the land away from God, Cain’s descendants built a city, forged “every cutting tool of bronze and iron” (Genesis 4:22), and grew in craft and power. Lamech took two wives (Genesis 4:19) and came to boast in song of killing a man (Genesis 4:23-24).

Then the sons of God from the line of Seth saw the daughters of the line that had turned away from God, and married as their eyes judged good. Genesis 6:2 records this with the same three words used in Genesis 3:6, where the woman in Eden took the fruit.

Saw, good, took. The YLV lets an English reader see it directly. “They were good” in Genesis 6:2 is the same word, tov, as “good for food” in Genesis 3:6, and “they took” is the same verb, laqach, as “she took of its fruit.” What happened in Genesis 6 was not a strange invasion from heaven. The covenant line walked again the road the first humans had walked in Eden: they looked, judged by their own eyes what was good, and took it.

The life and wisdom preserved in the line of Seth were joined to the craft and power built up in the line of Cain, and those born of that union became “the mighty ones who were of old, the men of the name” (Genesis 6:4), famous on the earth. But with this mingling the last boundary fell, and “the earth was filled with violence” (Genesis 6:11). The righteous God judged by the flood all flesh in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life.