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 ¹ When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, ² the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. ³ Then the LORD said, “My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal ; his days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

 ⁴ The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.

When did men begin to increase in number?  In context, it would seem to mean sometime during the years broken down in Genesis 5.  However, another aspect of this verse is troubling.  It would also seem to be a reference to Day 6, where God blessed mankind and told them to subdue the earth.  It would seem from this verse that mankind was in fact beginning to see the benefit of God’s blessing, but for one thing… the earth was already subdued.

If Day 6 was creation of mankind, and Adam and Eve were after that, then either verse 1 is reference to all of mankind, or only a reference to Adam’s and Eve’s descendants.  How to tell?

Verse 1 refers specifically to when mankind “began to increase in number”.  Now, this happened for all modern man 60,000 years ago when homo sapiens first left Africa to populate the rest of the world.  For Adam’s and Eve’s descendants, their own line “began to increase in number” some time after Cain built the first(?) city of that area.  However, that was 6,000-10,000 years ago.  Which increase does verse 1 refer to?

The choice is between “physical” man vs. “spiritual” man.  Perhaps there is a clue in verse 3.

³ Then the LORD said, “My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal ; his days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

Let us look at the translation from the NKJV:

³ And the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.”

Interesting observation, huh? Mankind is fleshly, and so God obviously will not be striving with them forever.  A more accurate translation for “strive” or “contend” is “strife”.  Basically, God has been “strifing” against mankind forever, or more accurately, they will not be causing God strife forever.  They cannot, for being fleshly, they will eventually die.  But still, they probably acted like they would be alive forever… did you see those life spans in Genesis 5?  They were living to between 600 and 900 years old!  They must have been grieving God something awful… especially when “the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.”

To connect this back up to the narrative prior, from Adam’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden until he was 235 years old, no one was calling on the name of the Lord.  Whatever people knew of God, they knew He cursed the ground for Adam’s sin, and they knew that Cain’s curse was worse than that… but they couldn’t kill him.  In fact, they built a city under his command… fear factor?  Perhaps, with mark on his head, placed there by God to keep people from killing him.  This strikes me as a very dark time at the beginning of man’s spiritual reign on the earth.

Then, Enosh was born and men began calling on the name of the Lord… but the Nephilim (i.e., the ”sons of God”) were also coming to earth and mating with the people.  The contention between their offspring, and those who called on God must have been tense.  Well, it clearly was, because of the strife they caused God as a whole in verse 3.  Given the obvious connection, it would seem at this point, that as far as spiritual man was concerned, only spiritual man appeared to matter.  Physical man, who was also alive had subdued the world, but was not spiritually aware of God, and so was of no consequence in this chapter.

One last observation with verse 3… a heaviness, almost like God was contemplating man as if he were immortal, but he is not… thankfully, due to the strife they were causing Him.  Regardless, he reduced their life spans to only 120 years.  But, as we will see, it will not be enough.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010 at 7:12 am and is filed under Bible Commentary, The Flood. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.