The sons of God, the giants and the announcement of the flood — Gen 6:1-22

Meaning

Genesis 6:1-22 articulates two distinct yet theologically coherent narrative units: the cosmic crisis provoked by the bnè ha-Elohìm and the Nefilìm (vv. 1-4), and the divine response that culminates in the commission given to Nòach (vv. 5-22). The account is not an abstract cosmological myth: it is the narrative of a structural collapse of the created order, one that calls into question the heart of biblical anthropology — the yètzer, the inner impulse — and a divine response that is not vengeance but ordering judgment.

The opening of the chapter («when men began to multiply on the face of the earth») resumes the mandate of Gen 1:28, but the multiplication, instead of producing shalom, generates the condition for the violation of the boundaries between distinct ontological spheres. The bnè ha-Elohìm — the celestial messengers of the divine assembly — look toward the daughters of men and «take» wives according to their own choosing: the verb laqach resounds as unilateral appropriation, a transgression of the limit between heaven and earth that creation had established. The sequence «they saw… that they were fair… they took» (wa-yir'ù… tovòt… wa-yiqchù) reproduces exactly the grammar of the transgression of Gen 3:6 (Eve «saw… good… took»): it is a deliberate wordplay that inscribes the episode within the chain of broken limits.

The theological center of the passage is verse 5: «great was the ra'àh — the wickedness — of man on the earth, and every yètzer machshevòt libbò — every formation of the thoughts of his heart — was only evil continually». The formula is absolute and all-encompassing: raq ra' kol ha-yòm, «only evil, all the day». The response of the Tetragrammaton in v. 6 — wa-yinnachèm YHWH, «he regretted» — is a prophetic anthropomorphism typical of the tradition that presents God in concrete and popular language: it does not contradict divine immutability, but expresses the historical judgment of YHWH upon human conduct, his personal reaction to the moral degradation of creation. The text adds wa-yit'atzèv el-libbò, «he was grieved in his heart»: the grief is not that of the punished man, but of God who suffers the corruption of his own work.

Within this catastrophe, v. 8 introduces the decisive counterpoint: «but Nòach found chen in the eyes of the Tetragrammaton». The chen — grace, gratuitous favor — is not acquired merit but a gift that opens a breach. Nòach is tzaddìq tamìm, «righteous and blameless in his generations», and «walked with God» (et-ha-Elohìm hithallèkh): the very same formula used for Chanòkh (Enoch) in Gen 5:22,24. The righteousness of the individual becomes the point of suture through which history can continue.

The second unit (vv. 9-22) articulates the project of the tevàh — the ark — with precise technical details: dimensions (three hundred by fifty by thirty cubits), materials (gòfer and kòfer, wood and pitch), structure in storeys. In the Jewish tradition these data are not ornament but attestation of the concreteness of the divine command. Verse 18 introduces the first explicit occurrence of the term berìt — covenant, pact — in the Torah: «I will establish my covenant with you». The covenant precedes the flood, it does not follow it: Nòach enters the ark already within a relationship of faithfulness. Verse 22 closes with the formula of total obedience: «Nòach did according to all that God had commanded him: so he did».

Why it differs from current translations

The Italian rendering of bnè ha-Elohìm as «sons of God» is literally correct, but the exegetical note often omits that in ancient Jewish exegesis — 1 Enoch 6ff, the book of Jubilees, and the concordant literature of the Second Temple — these beings unequivocally designate the angels, the celestial messengers of the divine assembly. The alternative reading «descendants of Seth» is a minority one, later, and motivated by theological concerns derived from an already Hellenized context. The Hebrew text, read within its literary horizon and in its most ancient receptions, does not authorize this reduction.

At v. 3, the syntagm lo yadòn rùchi ba-adàm presents significant textual difficulties. The root dùn/dìn can mean «to contend, to judge, to abide»: the LXX renders ou mē katameinē to pneuma mou, «my spirit shall not abide», orienting itself toward the sense of permanence. Current Italian oscillates between «shall not remain» and «shall not contend». The Hebrew-first reading prefers the juridical-prophetic sense: the spirit — rùach — of YHWH does not «strive» indefinitely in the man of flesh. Basàr is not only «flesh» in the physical sense, but a condition of fragility, corruptibility, creaturely dependence: the rendering «flesh» in most versions impoverishes this semantic density. The «hundred and twenty years» are read by the Jewish tradition not as the maximum span of individual life, but as a deferment granted for repentance before the flood.

Verse 6 shows the weightiest divergence between MT and LXX. Where the Hebrew says wa-yinnachèm YHWH — «the Tetragrammaton regretted, repented» — and wa-yit'atzèv, «he was grieved in his heart», the Greek version deliberately attenuates the anthropopathism: it renders dienoēthē («he pondered, considered») and enethymēthē («he reflected in his mind»), transforming the affliction of the heart into a purely mental act. At v. 7 the Greek adds ethymōthēn («I have grown angry»), motivating the judgment with wrath where the Hebrew spoke of regret. It is a Hellenizing tendency to safeguard divine impassibility: faithfulness to the MT instead recovers a God who suffers the corruption of creation without thereby changing in his essence.

At v. 13 the Greek renders kairós («the decisive moment») where the Hebrew has qètz, «the end»; and it restricts to «every man» (pantòs anthrṓpou) what the Hebrew extends to kol basàr, «all flesh», that is, the entire living order. The chamàs of v. 11 — translated «violence» — is a technical term for oppression, rapacious injustice, the wrong that seizes by force: not generically «evil», but the collapse of right among creatures.

Layered receptions

The tannaitic reception of the passage is clear-cut and carries halakhic and penal weight. The Mishnah, treating of those who «have no part in the world to come», places the generation of the flood (dor ha-mabbùl) among the excluded communities: a baraita preserved in the Talmud, b. Sanhedrin 108b, develops the debate over what the decisive sin was, identifying it in the chamàs — robbery, generalized oppression — rather than in sexual immorality, because «their decree was sealed only on account of robbery». This tannaitic reading roots the judgment of vv. 11-13 not in a cultic sin but in the collapse of social right: the chamàs is what «fills the earth» and provokes the qètz, the end.

In parallel, b. Sanhedrin 56a derives the Noachide commandments — the universal precepts given to humanity before Israel — from the very structure of these chapters: among them the prohibition of shedding blood and the injunction of right (dinìm, the obligation to establish courts of justice). The generation of the flood thus becomes the negative limit-case: humanity that, by abolishing right, abolishes the very condition of its own survival. The judgment upon the dor ha-mabbùl is the reverse of the Noachide berìt.

The literature of the Second Temple — 1 Enoch and Jubilees — amplifies vv. 1-4 into a veritable angelology of the fall: the Watchers ('irìn) descend, teach men forbidden arts and beget the Nefilìm, and from this transgression of boundaries derives the corruption that the flood must cancel. This tradition, pre-Christian, is taken up in the New Testament: 1Pet 3:19-20 and 2Pet 2:4-5 and Jude 6 speak of the «spirits» and of the «angels who did not keep their dignity», explicitly anchoring Christian preaching to the angelic reading of Gen 6. Here there is no substitution but fulfillment: Nòach, «herald of righteousness» (2Pet 2:5), and the flood become a type of judgment and of salvation through water (1Pet 3:21), without the Jewish reading of sin as chamàs being abrogated. The Hebrew root of the account — sin as the breaking of right, righteousness of the individual that saves — remains load-bearing even in the Christian reception.

Historical reconstruction (aggadah)

Against the backdrop of the ancient Near East, the flood account engages critically with the great Mesopotamian narratives: the Epic of Gilgamesh and the poem of Atrahasis know a universal flood, a hero saved in an ark, the bird sent out on reconnaissance. But the Torah rewrites the motif: where the Mesopotamian gods send the flood because they are irritated by the noise of an over-numerous humanity, here the mabbùl is the moral response to the chamàs, and Nòach is saved for his tzedaqàh, not by capricious favoritism. The same cultural context that produced the Sumero-Akkadian symbols of origins furnishes the narrative material that Hebrew revelation transfigures into a theology of the covenant.

Rabbinic aggadah elaborates the figure of Nòach with nuances that are not always apologetic. The qualification of v. 9 — tzaddìq tamìm be-dorotàv, «righteous in his generations» — opens a celebrated debate preserved in the exegetical tradition: for some «in his generations» is praise (in so corrupt an age he remained righteous), for others it is a limitation (he would have been righteous only in comparison with his contemporaries). The hundred years spent building the tevàh are read as time given to humanity for teshuvàh: the construction site of the ark is itself a visible appeal to repentance, and Nòach a preacher unheeded. The Nefilìm, whose name is connected to the root n-f-l («to fall»), are at once «the fallen» and the anshè ha-shem, «men of the name», the heroes of renown: aggadah reads in them the hubris of a power that lays claim to the «name» — the very claim that will reappear at Babel (Gen 11:4: «let us make a name for ourselves»).

On the chronological plane, the exegetical context places these traditions of reinterpretation within the horizon of Hebrew wisdom and the narrative scheme of the covenant, sometimes reread in the light of the experience of the exodus. The Enochic literature, datable between the Maccabean era and earlier phases, testifies to how ancient and widespread the angelic reading of the bnè ha-Elohìm was, well before any «Sethite» downsizing.

Practical observance

For the Jewish tradition, these chapters are the scriptural source of the seven Noachide commandments (sheva' mitzvòt benè Nòach), the universal moral law that binds every human being as such: b. Sanhedrin 56a derives them precisely from the structure of Genesis, including the prohibition of murder, of robbery (gezel), of idolatry, of blasphemy, of incest, the prohibition of eating a limb torn from a living animal, and the positive obligation of the dinìm: to establish courts and administer justice. Whoever observes them, concretely, builds and makes function an equitable judicial order — because it is precisely the abolition of right, the chamàs that «fills the earth» (v. 11), that seals the decree of the flood according to b. Sanhedrin 108b. The praxis derived from the passage is therefore first of all social rectitude: to restore what has been wrongfully taken, not to oppress the weak, to guarantee just trials.

The second praxis is teshuvàh, active return. The long construction of the ark is read as time offered for repentance: the practical dimension is the conversion that translates into works, not mere inner remorse. This category finds documented continuity in the New Testament in Spiritual Vigilance and in Seek the Kingdom: just as Nòach «walked with God» while the world did not see the judgment coming, so the New Testament praxis of vigilance is carried out concretely in recognizing the signs of the times and in not deferring conversion (the flood as paradigm of vigilance in Mt 24:37-39: «as in the days of Nòach»).

The third dimension is tzedaqàh as integrity of conduct: Nòach is tzaddìq tamìm. On the practical plane this means doing «according to all that God had commanded» (v. 22) — exact obedience, without discount, which the tradition sees in the technical details of the ark scrupulously executed. In the New Testament register this integral execution connects to Stand Firm in the Faith and to Rectitude and Justice: the active faithfulness that brings to completion the task received, even when the surrounding environment is corrupt. Jewish liturgical memory, finally, preserves the generation of the flood as a warning (the synagogal readings of the parashàh Nòach): to remember the dor ha-mabbùl is a praxis of moral sobriety, an exercise of yir'àh before the seriousness of judgment.

Textual notes

• v. 2 — bnè ha-Elohìm: «sons of God», in the most ancient usage = members of the heavenly assembly, angels (cf. Job 1:6; 38:7). The verb laqach («to take [as wife]») here connotes unilateral appropriation.
• v. 3 — lo yadòn: root dùn/dìn, ambivalent between «to contend/judge» and «to abide». Be-shaggàm hu basàr: «for he is also flesh», basàr = creaturely fragility, not only physical matter.
• v. 4 — Nefilìm: from the root n-f-l, «to fall»; «the fallen». Ha-gibborìm… anshè ha-shem: «the mighty ones… men of the name/renown», with an ironic resonance of shem (name).
• v. 5 — yètzer machshevòt libbò: «the formation of the thoughts of the heart». Yètzer (root y-tz-r, «to shape») = inner shaping impulse; raq ra': «only evil».
• v. 6 — wa-yinnachèm: niphal of n-ch-m, «to repent/regret/comfort»; wa-yit'atzèv: «he was grieved», root '-tz-b, the same as the «pain» ('itzavòn) of Gen 3:16-17.
• v. 8 — chen: «grace, favor» (root ch-n-n); inverted wordplay with Nòach (n-ch ↔ ch-n): Nòach «found chen».
• v. 9 — tzaddìq tamìm: «righteous, blameless/without defect»; tamìm is also a sacrificial term («without blemish»). Hithallèkh et-ha-Elohìm: reflexive form, «he walked constantly with God».
• v. 11 — chamàs: «violence, oppression, robbery»; technical-juridical term for rapacious wrong. Wa-tishachèt (root sh-ch-t): «it became corrupt, went to ruin» — the same root used three times across vv. 11-13 and then in the verb «I destroy» (mashchìt): whoever corrupts (shichèt) is destroyed (mashchìt): measure for measure.
• v. 14 — tevàh / gòfer / kòfer: «ark» (the same rare term Ex 2:3 will use for the basket of Moshè); gòfer, unidentified wood; kòfer, «pitch» — root k-f-r, homophonous with «atonement» (kippèr).
• v. 17 — mabbùl: «flood», a term almost exclusive to this account (and Ps 29:10).
• v. 18 — berìt: «covenant, pact»; first occurrence in the Torah, here «I will establish/cause to stand» (wa-haqimòti) my berìt.