Truth Unites - 7 Reasons the Nephilim Were Angelic

Episode Date: February 24, 2026

Gavin Ortlund lays out seven reasons many scholars interpret the Nephilim as angelic-human hybrids, carefully weighing the biblical and historical evidence.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/X: https://x.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

Near the beginning of the Bible, there's a fascinating and cryptic passage talking about the Nephalim, who are sometimes understood as giants. In fact, if you look up the old King James translation, it will translate the word as giants, but the meaning of this word is disputed, and we're going to work through that here. Many of us have probably never slowed down to look at this part of the Bible, and if we have, we've probably forgotten how strange it is. These figures are so strange that there's an ancient Jewish interpretation that thinks that this story, explains the nature of demons. And Wes Huff described this recently

in his discussion with Sean Ryan. The demons kind of show up in the New Testament. There really isn't all that much said in the Old Testament about demons. So the Nephilim, if you're taking a supernatural understanding of who they are, their fathers

are angels. In some of this ancient Jewish literature that's incorporated and found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, we have some of these discussions of things like, what are the Well, there was a pretty strong threat of thinking within ancient Judaism that demons were disembodied spirits

of the Nephilim. And their mothers are humans. So they're kind of these half supernatural, half carnal things. So when they die, their spirits don't have anywhere to go. So now they're trapped and they're wandering the earth. They're aimless. And they're constantly trying to get back into a physical form. Now, Wes is just summarizing one ancient view. He's not committing himself to that view. I actually thought

when he was asked about this, he reflected a wise restraint. What do you think about that? I think on things that scripture whispers about, I don't want to yell too loudly. So that's the mentality we want to take here as well, where the Bible isn't super clear. Let's not draw a hard line in the sand and be super dogmatic about our view. There is space for Christians to disagree about this in topic. but even just wrestling with this issue can helpfully remind us of the strange new world of the Bible. Sometimes we modern readers of the Bible flatten out the weird parts. And engaging this passage really matters because it invites us into the supernatural, mysterious world of Scripture. It's kind of a reminder that when we're reading the Bible, we're walking through the wardrobe into Narnia.

You know, this is pulling us upward into something we don't already have access to. This is the revelation of God, and as much that is supernatural. And so the question we're going to work through in this video is, who are these Nephalim? And that really turns on an even more basic question of who are the sons of God referenced in this text. So just to acclimatize you to the story, if you're not familiar, in Genesis 6-2, as humanity is spreading out through the land, we're told that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were attractive, and they took us their wives any they chose. So here we're asking the base question of who are those sons of God?

That's the question for this video. Then in verse four, the text seems to indicate that the Nephilim are the result of those unions. That is disputed. Now, there's three classic views about the identity of the sons of God here. First, an angelic or supernatural view. So the sons of God are heavenly beings in this view. Angels, or more specifically fallen angels. and then in the latter two views, the sons of God are human figures.

They're either the descendants of the godly character, Seth, or they are royal figures of some kind. So let's explore this topic in three steps in this video. First, I'll give seven reasons why many interpreters favor a supernatural view of the Nephilim, option one of those three options. Second, I'll face the biggest objections. The biggest objection to this, and that is how can fallen angels procreate, with human women. Is that really what we're suggesting? We'll work through that. And then third, I'll lay out three pastoral consequences to this issue. First, let's lay out seven reasons for a supernatural view of the Sons of God here. Now, these are cumulative, and I am not,

even with all seven working cumulatively, I'm not trying to decisively settle this with certainty as much as just to show that this is a plausible reading of the text and commend it for your consideration. I think this is probably the right view, but I am not super dogmatic about that. and I'm not 100% sure, but I at least want to show this is a reasonable way to read the text. First, let's just start with this clause, Benet ha Elohim, the sons of God. It makes sense to start by just looking at the terms. And what we can note is that elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, this phrase refers to heavenly beings or angels, whether good or fallen angels. In the book of Job, for example, you find the sons of God, the same term here, come to present themselves to the Lord.

and Satan is among them. Later in the book, the phrase, the sons of God is placed parallel to the morning stars. The morning stars is a reference to heavenly beings, what we sometimes today call angels. And you can see my video on a Christian view of the stars for more on that, by the way, the connection between angels and stars. And sometimes in the Psalms also, we have what is translated in some English translations as heavenly beings is actually in the Hebrew the same phrase, the sons of God, Benahah Elohim. And I'll give two examples on the screen from Psalm 29 and 89. And in both of those Psalms, the context has to do with the divine counsel. Now, while Son of God language can be applied to Israel or to the Davidic king in certain contexts, there's no clear

precedent in the Hebrew Bible for this exact phrase, Sons of God, to refer to something like the line of Seth or royal figures or something like that. Furthermore, the contrast here is interesting. Sons of God versus the daughters of man. This antithesis fits well with a supernatural interpretation because it seems natural to read this language as calling to mind two different kind of entities in union, whereas if both groups are human, the contrast is a little more curious. Here's how one commentator puts this. Quote, the alternative interpretations presupposed that what Genesis 6 really meant was that the sons of some men married the daughters of other men. The present phrase, sons of God, is to say the least, an obscure way of expressing such an

idea. Second, let's zoom out a little bit and see this text in the broader context. So we're looking at Genesis 6 1 through 4 within the broader narrative of the unfolding events of Genesis 1 through 11, the sort of very front end of the book of Genesis, what sometimes you'll call primeval history or things like this. And in other words, kind of to ask this question is, why is this passage here at all? Why does the author of Genesis mention the Nephilim in the first place? What is the purpose of this in the overall message of the book? The Nephilim story interrupts a genealogy in Genesis 5 that had ended in the figure of Noah and his three sons,

and then it immediately leads into the story of Noah's flood, which is about divine judgment against evil. So right after the verse referencing the Nephilim, we read that the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on in the earth, and so God resolves to send the judgment of the flood. Now, a theme all throughout Genesis 1 through 11 is the continual escalation of humans. in transgressing boundaries and therefore resulting in divine judgment. You have, of course, the fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3. You have the Tower of Babel, Babel, I think you're supposed to say Babel, in Genesis 11. You also have Lomax boasting in Genesis 4, and the character Nimrod in Genesis 10. Look him up if you've never heard of him. He's the first person called a mighty man, which the

Nephilim are called as well. But there's this recurrent concern about human corruption, overflowing its bounds, the escalation of rebellion against God, the transgression of divinely appointed boundaries resulting in disorder. And the story of the Nephilim fits within this broader message. Here's how I'm with Derek Kidner. He's my favorite commentary on Genesis. Here's how he summarizes the point of Genesis 6-1-4. The point of this cryptic passage, whichever way we take it, is that a new stage has been reached in the progress of evil with God's bounds overstepped in yet another run. Sometimes we put so much focus on Genesis 3, and we forget about Genesis 6, Genesis 11, these other events of human rebellion that are so significant.

And we have some echoes between Genesis 3 and Genesis 6. For example, the language of seeing and taking is used to describe the sons of God taking human women, which may echo Eve's seeing and taking of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So the language here seems to suggest a boundary violation, seeing what is across that instituted boundary that God set and transgressing over the boundary to take it. Think of these words boundary transgression. They're going to come up a lot in this video. So when you read Genesis 6 1 through 4 in this broader context, it gives the impression of something unusual happening, something destabilizing.

This seems to be suggesting something more than just, you know, oh, more people are getting married or something like that. And if some kind of boundary transgression is involved here, that would then explain why we find in verse three, God imposing a limitation of 120 years, whether this is of a lifespan or time until judgment. But this reinforces the idea that something climactic has just occurred in these verses. Now, that can fit with human interpretations of the Nephilim,

but they'll need to answer some questions. For example, Seth is portrayed as a godly character in Genesis, so why would his offspring marrying human women have this dramatic consequence? You know, why is this another case of boundary violation? Perhaps the line of Seth collapsed into sin, but if so, we would expect more covenantal and moral framing for that.

The language here in Genesis 6-1-4 is very cryptic and sort of cosmic, and you're wondering, what is this unique event, right? So any human interpretation of the Nephilim needs to answer this question. Why are the offspring of the sons of God and human women portrayed as unique in the text? On the one hand, these phrases, mighty men and men of renown, which are often taken in reference to the Nephalim here in verse four, are not necessarily supernatural. You know, you might have heard of David's mighty men. This means warriors or heroes or champions. The men of renown suggest sort of legendary figures whose name, who make a name for themselves.

and this doesn't necessarily supernatural, but it does seem to convey something unique and noteworthy. Their fame may anticipate Babel's attempt to make a name for humanity. Genesis is constantly critiquing self-exhaelting power. And so when you see the second reference to the Nephilim in Numbers 13, some people forget about this passage, but you have Nephilim here as well in the book of Numbers, where the Israelite spies are reporting about the promised land. And it references these nephalim, and it says we seemed as grasshoppers compared to them. Now, perhaps they're sort of exaggerating or something like that.

And this doesn't require a supernatural interpretation either, but it does remind us, whatever view of the nephalim we land on, we need to have a satisfying explanation for why they are portrayed as unique and for their placement in the broader narrative. So what we're just summarizing here in the second point is Genesis 6 fits inside a pattern of escalating transgression, escalating boundary violation, and the tone suggests something pivotal and dramatic. That doesn't settle anything, but it fits with this view. It kind of helps, maybe this, we're sort of laying groundwork for why people are looking at the text and finding this to be a sensible way to read it. Okay. So, less far, we've just made two very modest appeals, a lexical argument,

looking at precedent for the language, a contextual argument, looking at the escalating narrative. Let's zoom out even further. These are going to be some of the key points to consider the ancient near-eastern context. Modern readers are at a disadvantage in interpreting this passage because we don't pull from the same cultural background images and stories that the original readers of this text would likely have had. In Joel's book, Joel Motamal's book, The Unseen Battle, he uses this analogy, he's talking about this passage, and he says, imagine someone in our culture says, is MJ or LeBron

the goat? Now, you know that that question is about basketball because of basketball. because of background cultural knowledge. You know, goat means greatest of all time. You've heard of Michael Jordan and so forth. You can fill in the blanks because you already know you have background information. Something similar may be going on here with Genesis 6, because there's other stories floating around the ancient near east

that would have informed the way this text was read. And modern readers typically lack that background cultural knowledge. Here's how Joel puts it. the sparse details indicate this must have been a story that was quite familiar to the people of that time. And we know there were several stories in the ancient Near Eastern world at that time depicting battles between supernatural beings and the presence of demigods, who were the product of the union between divine beings and humans. By the way, little pastoral aside here, sometimes Christians are disturbed by similarities between the book of Genesis and other ancient

literature. But just remember, similarity does not imply borrowing. It can reflect shared cultural vocabulary that Genesis is recasting. And if you pay attention to both the similarities and the differences, sometimes you can note that Genesis is actually undermining these other alternative worldviews. And so here, it's probably best to read Genesis 6 as a kind of quiet polemic, reframing themes that are familiar in the ancient world, divine human unions and this kind of thing, but stripping them of their heroic glory and instead embedding them in the context of judgment. And for more about all this, you can, there's a lot written about this. Joel's book goes through some examples of this.

He's describing some of the examples often referenced in the scholarship about in Mesopotamian literature, for example, for the example, the epic of Gilgamesh. So Gilgamesh is part divine, part human. and I'll put up an example of a scholar that makes this connection. He's noting that Gilgamesh was a man of renown, like the Nephilim, and he was two-thirds God and one-third human. Again, we're not saying this is the exact same thing that's going on in Genesis, but it's part of the background knowledge that Genesis may be pulling from, even as it's critiquing. And so the point is, if there are stories about giant offspring resulting from heavenly and human figures in union, and that's already floating in the cultural milieu,

that's going to influence how you read the text. Strange is that idea can be in the modern world that was a common idea in the ancient world. And of course, what we're after here is we want to know what does the text mean? And that means we have to appreciate that some of the things that we find bizarre, the original readers would not have found bizarre.

This is the point that Michael Heiser is often making over and over again. I think he is making a fair point when he says this. though Christians still balk at this interpretive option for Genesis 6-1 through 4, the ancient reader would have had no problem with it. We're trying to get back to say, what did the original readers take from this passage? Furthermore, this need to check our modern biases doesn't just come up from the general thought world of the ancient Near East, but it also comes up in the subsequent history of Jewish interpretation of this text. For example, in the Septuagint, which is an early

Greek translation of the Old Testament, the phrase Sons of God is translated differently, while the earliest Septuagint manuscripts render the phrase Sons of God. Some later Greek textual traditions interpret it as the angels of God. Furthermore, the Nephilim is rendered gigantes, a term that in Greek literature refers to powerful mythic beings and is often translated as giants. So this bears witness to how this text was taken in at least some ancient Jewish circles. Furthermore, other ancient Jewish interpreters like Josephus and Philo explicitly interpret these sons of God here as angels. Here's Josephus, for many angels of God accompanied with women and begat sons that proved unjust

and despisers of all that was good on account of the confidence they had in their own strength. for the tradition is that these men did what resembled the acts of those the Greeksans called giants. So Josephus is referencing Greek mythology there, but what he's doing in this passage is offering his own interpretive retelling. He's not just giving a translation, and he references a tradition of interpretation, suggesting that this reading was well established in his lifetime. Philo also assumes that the sons of God are heavenly beings, though he interprets this episode in more philosophical and allegorical terms. And then we find an angelic view in sort of expanded narrative retelling in the book of Jubilee,

which I'll put on screen, though I won't read through that. We find this same thing in the book of Enoch, by the way. Now, by the way, so Christians don't, most, some do. Most Christian traditions don't consider these books, the book of Enoch or the book of of Jubilee as canonical. But what we're getting into here is we're trying to shed this. light on how Genesis 6 was interpreted within Second Temple Judaism as one example of pre-modern instincts about how to read this text. And one of the reasons this is so important is such

readings, these Jewish interpretations may have shaped New Testament language, which will come to next. But just to take a closer look at the book of Enoch in particular, this is written, often dated sometime between the third and first centuries BC. In chapter six and seven of the book of Enoch, if you've never read the book of Enoch, it's fascinating to read through. There's a group of angels called the Watchers. Okay, I'll put the names of their leaders on screen. There are 200 of these angels, and they're identified by their heads or leaders here. And you can see, so chapter six starts off by narrating how this group of angels is lusting after human women as they're multiplying on the earth.

And so what happens is they swear an oath together on Mount Hermon to carry out their plan, and then they do so. And in the process, they're not only defiling the women, but they're also teaching them various kinds of magic. And the result is that the women get pregnant and bear these great giants. 3,000 L's or cubits sometimes, there is an enormous, probably symbolic height that you can see on screen. And then as the narrative unfolds, the good angels like Michael and Raphael and others, notice what's happened. And they bring this to the attention of the Lord. and in response, God announces the judgment of the flood. So you have the same idea here of this horrifying transgression of boundaries,

resulting in this grotesque evil, violating the shalom of God's creation, needing to be wiped clean with judgment so that humanity can start over. And the flood of Noah is then described as a kind of cleansing and healing of the earth, which is an interesting point that we'll return to at the end of this video. Again, the point here is we're not trying to put too much weight on ancient Jewish interpretation, And of course, there's different views among Jewish readers as well. The point is, this can help us step into pre-modern ways of engaging this text, and again, how that interpretive world stands as a backdrop to the New Testament, because this takes us

to Jude and 2 Peter, where we find reference to angelic sin, and it's cast as not staying within their own position of authority there in Jude 6, but rather leaving their proper dwelling. You see that language from Jude verse 6 there on the screen. Now, this language again suggests boundary violation, right? And the very next verse actually draws a comparison with Sodom and Gomorrah and the sexual immorality and unnatural desire of that sin in Jude 7. These passages may echo the Inakic reading, especially since Jude is certainly aware of the book of Enoch, since he quotes it, verses 14 and 15.

and you've also got 2.4, which seems to parallel Jude 6. And this text discusses the sinful activity of angels immediately prior to Noah and the flood. So reading these New Testament passages, it's plausible to see a reference to Genesis 6 here. Jack Collins, who has a really helpful book on the early chapters of Genesis, says the simplest way to read the mention of angels who sinned in Jude 6 and 2. Peter 2.4 seems to be with reference to Genesis 6 1 through 5. Now, if that's right, that furthers the plausibility of an angelic interpretation of the Sons of God. So thus far, we've looked at lexical evidence, narrative context, ancient Near Eastern Parallels, Septuagint Reception, Second Temple Jewish interpretation, and then New Testament resonance.

A seventh argument that cumulatively gestures towards an angelic interpretation of the Sons of God would be the early church. And for the sake of time, I'll just give one representative example from Justin Martyr. Others have argued for the same point from Trotelian, Iranas, Clement of Alexandria, and origin. But Justin describes the boundaries that God has instituted at creation with human beings overseeing creation under the oversight of angels. I'll just read this, but the angels transgressed this appointment and were captivated by love of women and begot children who are those that are called demons. And besides, they afterwards subdued the human race to themselves, partly by magical writings, and partly by fears and the punishments they occasioned,

and partly by teaching them to offer sacrifices and incense and libations, et cetera, et cetera, I won't read the rest. I don't mean to suggest, by the way, just to be clear, that all early Christians embraced, like a full Enochic demonology or something like that. But Justin's view is pretty common, especially early on, like in the second century, this is a pretty dominant reading.

And then it's later that the picture really changes with Augustine, who in the city of God favors the Sethite view. and then that interpretation becomes pretty dominant in the tradition at that point for a long time. That's not uncommon, by the way. If you've watched my other videos on things like pacifism and other things like this, it's not uncommon for Augustine to just redirect the entire Christian tradition on a particular point. He's such a massive influence. And today, let's just keep repeating this point that many serious scholars hold that view, the Sethite view, as well as the royal view, and there are strong points that can be made in favor of those views as well. What I'm trying to do with my channel,

when it comes to a topic like this is not try to coerce everyone into saying every intelligent person looks at it just this way. More educational, trying to lay out, here's the arguments, and here's why this view should be taken seriously, and in my mind it wins out over the others, though each view is reasonable. So hopefully you see the spirit in which I'm offering these things. And yes, what the consequence of this would be, yes, if the angelic view of the sons of God is right, then the Nephilim are the resultant offspring of a sort of demonic human union, and they can be thought of as a kind of human-demon hybrid. Strange as that might sound.

Now, that will really, again, the thing we're emphasizing, though, is as strange as that is to modern ears, it'd be less strange to pre-modern ears, but still, it's still strange. I mean, you see Augustine kind of puzzled at the thought that a fallen angel and a human woman could procreate. So let's address just one of the big objections, perhaps the biggest one, and that is, can angels have sexual relations with human beings, resulting in pregnancy and this unusual offspring? After all, aren't angels spiritual creatures? And don't they just not have the same kind of body that human beings have, this physical body that's capable of that, when Jesus wanted to clarify that there's no marriage in heaven in the final resurrected state?

Did he not compare this to the angels in heaven who are not given in marriage? Now, this is a formidable objection. But a couple things to bear in mind. We have to remember that what is depicted in Genesis 6 is an extraordinary boundary transgression, not a normal metaphysical capacity. An angelic interpretation does not necessarily imply that demons are just generally capable of biological reproduction. okay, rather this can be understood as kind of an unusual circumstance in which they assume an embodied form capable of physical interaction. And there are hints in scripture that something like this is

indeed possible. Not just because people entertain angels unawares. The Hebrews 13-2 is a fascinating passage because it implies you can be looking at an angel and think it's a human being, so they can at least appear as human, but because we have other texts of scripture that seem to imply more physical interaction between angels and physical reality. So, for example, in Genesis 18, Abraham's three visitors are capable of eating the meal he provides for them. And in Genesis 32, a divine figure is capable of wrestling with Jacob. Now, a lot will say, I think, rightly, that those aren't angels proper. Nonetheless, they still challenge this neat dichotomy between the spiritual and the physical. But to get to angels proper, let's go to Genesis 19, where we have two

angels that appear to lot, and they are, again, capable of eating a meal. Now, just think about that. An angel can eat. It can digest the food somehow. That's what Genesis 193 seems to entail. And then, after this, the men of Sodom crowd around his house and say they want to know the visitors. Now, the verb, no here overwhelmingly carries sexual connotations. So at a minimum, the angels appear, in a fully embodied human form that can be perceived as a viable sexual target. And that's why this passage is so evil, you know, what these men are wanting to do. And this is why the angels, and then the angels are capable of grabbing lots and pulling him back into the house before they strike the men of Sodom with blindness.

Now, from all these kinds of stories, we need to be careful about building a whole metaphysics of angels, right? But we can safely conclude this much, at least, that in the biblical, narrative, angels don't function purely as immaterial, non-interactive figures. If they can eat and touch you, they're capable of assuming a body that interacts physically. And that doesn't prove they can be biologically reproductive, but it reduces skepticism about that possibility since embodied interaction with angels happens in scripture. When Jesus says angels neither marry nor are given in marriage, he's describing the normal state of the faithful heavenly angels to answer a

question about the resurrection. That doesn't necessarily eliminate the possibility of a particular rebellion early in human history that involves angelic embodiment. So what do we do with all this? You know, final part of the video, we can say, if that view is right, if a supernatural interpretation of the Nephilim and the sons of God is correct. So the sons of God are fallen angels, the Nephilim are the resultant offspring of a union between these fallen angels and human women, what would that entail if it were correct, or even if you're just thinking about it as a possibility, what might it do for your mind? Three things that we can work through as consequences of this. The first is, such a reading encourages more attunement to the supernatural.

And I want to be clear that I'm not saying a Sethite view or a royal view is necessarily incapable of this either. But even just wrestling with this question reminds us that we modern readers often unconsciously bring a kind of enlightenment legacy worldview to the pages of scripture where we flatten out the weird and supernatural parts. So a lot of times it's like this. We affirm God and he's a spirit, he's invisible. And then we affirm the physical. And then we affirm the physical world, and then we affirm angels, but they're sort of an afterthought, right? And they just fit in somehow. And we don't appreciate how layered and complicated pre-modern ways of looking at the world were, and this is true for pagan thought as well in the pre-modern world, where angels and

the physical realm are intricately interwoven in all manner of interesting ways. I talked about this a bit. I've already referenced my video on the stars. Or maybe that was a video I recorded earlier today. I can't remember. At any rate, I've done a video about... the interplay between angels and stars in the history of Christian tradition. And in my video on Lewis and Tolkien, I even talked about the spiritual significance of trees, which is fascinating. And Lewis and Tolkien both talked about that a lot. See that video.

But we could put it like this. If an angelic view is right, one implication is that we need to be more open to the possibility that the spiritual realm of the Bible is more textured and nuanced and complicated than our flattened modern categories can't allow. So, you know, as we consider the possibility of what exactly are unclean spirits in the New Testament, for example. And you've got people like Joel who are describing this possibility that some people think this is the spirits of the deceased Nephilim, seeking, you heard Wes describe this at the beginning of the video. Now, I'm not 100% sure what to make of that idea. I'm not endorsing that.

I think Wes was right to say, let's be careful where the Bible's not clear. But the appeal here is just to be open. the Bible is supernatural and strange, and let's allow it to pull us into its strangeness rather than try to lop off the rough edges, so to speak. Hope you understand the point I'm trying to make there. Second implication, this came into my heart, especially as I was considering the Inocchic tradition, and that's the goodness of divine judgment. Even if we don't, and by the way, a lot of these implications,

they don't require you to take any particular view of the book of Enoch. We're not saying this is inspired or something like. that. Nonetheless, one of the big points that it makes about Genesis 6 through 8, you know, this is a passage, the flood of Noah, this is one of the toughest passages apologetically. Many people look at this and it seems so harsh and overwrought and, you know, you're saying, why is God killing everybody and this kind of thing? It starts to make a little more sense if you understand the scale of human boundary transgression prior to the flood, which is what the text is trying to depict. The world has become utterly grotesque, like something out of a horror film prior to the

flood. And so one of the details that struck me as I'm reading through the book of Enoch is that the flood was portrayed in terms of healing and cleansing and even blessing. So for example, when God is announcing a series of judgments against the watchers, including the flood of Noah, he says to Raphael and heal the earth, which the angels have corrupted. And it continues for a bit there. Later, when he's speaking to Michael, God describes judgment in terms of bringing about blessing and cleansing to the earth, which is fascinating. It's like you almost might think of this as like, you know, the magic and the forbidden knowledge that the watchers have introduced is this sort of contaminant, and God is needing to heal the earth. I don't want to put it too sillally, but think of it almost as like

giving the earth a bath, you know, cleaning off the contaminants and the germs and so forth. Now, that doesn't mean that we don't want to take divine judgment and reduce it. to make it any less terrifying. To fall under God's judgment is absolutely terrifying. The point is, God's judgment as a reflection of his good character. It's serving his good purposes with respect to creation. You can think of it as a straightening out of what has become crooked. God is not going to let his good creation get perverted and broken.

And he's not going to let evil triumph. And understanding divine judgment in that framework is really helpful. Last point is to just speak of our ultimate hope in Christ. This passage should point us to Jesus. If we find it strange that there could be an angelic human union, it is infinitely more amazing that there could be a divine human union. Because angels are not the total opposites of humans. We're both rational creatures.

Our difference is finite. But the difference between God and man is infinite. And yet we believe Jesus was both fully God, fully man, two natures united in one person, each preserved in its own integrity, and yet one person, not two different persons. And unlike the unnatural unions of Genesis 6, which distorted human nature, the union of God and man perfected human nature. The angels of Genesis 6 came and saw humanity and came to destroy and degrade. The Son of God came to humanity to serve and to say.

save. The angels were debased by their action, brought down. But when God became a man, he was not brought down to our level. Rather, he elevated us up to his own divine glory. I love how Athanasius puts, or this is Ansel who puts it and says, there was not any degradation of God in his incarnation. Rather, we believe that human nature was exalted. Or, of course, you think of the famous Athanasius quote, God became man so that man might become God. More on that in my video on the atonement. So that's my summary of this topic. I'm not trying to nail down everything and say you have to think of it this way. This is my suggestion for why a supernatural reading of the Sons of God is a plausible one,

response to a big objection, and some pastoral consequences. Let me know what you think in the comments. I'd love to keep the conversation about this going, and let's keep studying this fascinating topic.