I’m a little confused by the meaning of Genesis 6:6.
It talks about the “sons of God” going to the “daughters of men” and having kids with them, and those kids ended up being legendary heroes or mighty warriors. There’s also a mention of giants being around at that time, which just adds to the confusion. So who are these sons of God supposed to be?
What does it mean?
Genesis 6:6 is the verse where God was sorry He made man and it grieved Him to His heart, right before the flood. The ‘sons of God’ and ‘daughters of men’ part is a few verses earlier, Genesis 6:1-4.
On the sons of God question, there are two main views. One is that they were fallen angels who took human wives, and their kids were the Nephilim, the giants you mentioned. The same phrase ‘sons of God’ shows up in Job meaning angelic beings. The other view is that the sons of God were the godly line of Seth intermarrying with the ungodly line of Cain, and the ‘mighty men’ were famous, powerful people.
Either way, whatever was happening in verses 1-4 was part of the corruption that grieved God enough to send the flood.
Whoever the sons of God were, the point going into verse 6 stays the same: violence and sin had spread so far that God was grieved. That’s Genesis 6:6, the verse about God regretting He made humanity. He was sorrowful over human wickedness and was going to respond with judgment.
On 6:1-4, Christians have read the ‘sons of God’ either as heavenly beings or as humans (Seth’s descendants or powerful rulers who took the ‘daughters of men’ for themselves). The passage doesn’t say the Nephilim were giants born from those unions, that they were around in that era and were famous warriors.
Genesis 6:6 says the Lord was sorry He had made humanity on the earth, and it grieved Him to His heart. The Hebrew behind “sorry” is nacham. It carries the sense of a heavy sigh, the sorrow that leads someone to act differently. The word for grieved lines up with the pain and toil language from Genesis 3. Human wickedness had become something God felt.
The giant and hero wording mostly comes from how the passage has been translated. Older English Bibles followed the Greek and used “giants,” but the Hebrew refers to the Nephilim being on the earth in those days along with the gibborim, mighty people who made a name for themselves. Verse 5 has said every intent of the human heart was only evil all the time. Verse 7 shows God deciding to blot out what He had made. In between sits the grief. God cared about what people did with a world He called good.
The way Job uses “sons of God” for angelic beings always tipped me toward the first view, Edit: Jude 6 seems to fit that too.
I’d keep the Sethite view separate from the ruler view though, since they rest on different arguments.
The strongest point for the heavenly-being reading is the Hebrew phrase itself. Job 1:6 and 2:1 both use it for members of the heavenly court, and so does 38:7. That alone doesn’t settle Genesis 6, but it does frame the passage as a breach of the boundary between heaven and earth.
The Hebrew word for the woman’s pain in childbearing and the man’s toil with the ground in Genesis 3 shares a root with the word used when God is grieved in 6:6. The sorrow sin brought into human life is the same sorrow God takes into His own heart.
The grief language echoes forward too. Lamech names Noah in Genesis 5:29 hoping for comfort from the painful toil of the ground so right before the grief in chapter 6, the text has already set up the comfort that’s coming. You said human wickedness had become something God felt. If God feels it, He responds to it, and the Noah story shows Him doing that.
The angelic interpretation has always stirred wonder and holy dread in me.
In Job, ‘sons of God’ clearly means heavenly beings standing before the throne. I can’t shake the thought of that boundary between heaven and earth being violated.