Sons of God

The phrase 'sons of God' (bene ha-elohim in Hebrew) appears in Job 1:6, 2:1, and 38:7 as a designation for the heavenly court — angelic beings who appear before God. In Genesis 6:1-4, 'the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose,' producing the Nephilim. Three main interpretations of the Genesis 6 passage have been proposed: (1) the 'divine being' or 'angel' view — that supernatural beings intermarried with humans, reflected in 1 Enoch, Jubilees, and Jude 6/2 Peter 2:4 (which speak of angels who 'did not keep their proper domain'); (2) the 'Sethite' view — that the 'sons of God' are the godly line of Seth who intermarried with the ungodly line of Cain; (3) the 'ruler/dynastic' view — that powerful human rulers took multiple wives.

The ancient view (1) was dominant in Second Temple Judaism and among early church fathers but was questioned by Augustine and subsequent medieval interpretation (view 2). Modern scholarship has generally returned to view 1 as the most natural reading of the Hebrew idiom and the most consistent with its parallel use in Job. 1 Peter 3:19-20 and 2 Peter 2:4-5 may allude to these spirits in the context of Noah's time. The NT use of 'sons of God' (huioi Theou) is distinctively different, referring to human believers adopted into God's family through Christ (John 1:12; Rom. 8:14; Gal. 3:26) — indwelt by the Spirit, crying 'Abba, Father,' in a relational intimacy entirely different from the Genesis 6 connotation. The eschatological 'sons of God' will be revealed at the resurrection (Rom. 8:19, 23; 1 John 3:2).