Seder 4: Gen 5:1-6:8

Genesis 5:1 begins by reaffirming that humans are created in the image of God and are blessed by God.  The commission that God gave to man, to "be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth" still stands, even after the Fall.  Without the tree of life this commission is harder to carry out, but at this point God seems to be granting Adam and his descendants some pretty long lifespans.

Genesis 5 gives a genealogical listing of 10 generations from Adam to Noah.  A midrash on Ps 139:16 says that God knew about all of these in advance, with the details recorded in his book.

In the Masoretic Text these 10 generations cover a total of 1656 years, a fairly large chunk of human history.  Some of the numbers in the LXX are different, and the total number of years is about 600 years more than in the MT.  For more on the numbers, see here.

The entries in the Gen 5 list the generations in a set format with this structure:

"And X lived a years, and begot Y.  And X lived after he begot Y for b years, and begot sons and daughters.  And all the days of X’s life were (a + b) years, and he died."

The seventh entry is a little different.  With Enoch there is emphasis that he was one who "walked with God," and instead of saying "and he died" in 5:21, the text says that "God took him".  This tantalizingly brief discussion has led to lots of speculation about what happened to Enoch, including legends about his being taken to heaven, being shown wonderful things, and prophesying.  At any rate, we count him as a hero of faith (Heb 11:5).  

In Gen 6:1-8 we read about the sins of mankind increasing, leading to God deciding to send a flood as a judgment upon the earth.  These verses have also been the subject of much speculation.  Here is how Gen 6 begins:  

"When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive.  And they took as their wives any they chose." 

The earliest understanding of this passage (and as far as we know, the only understanding prior to 100 AD), is to identify the "sons of God" as angelic beings who rebelled against God, manifested themselves as humans, and married human women, violating a boundary that God had put in place.  

This identification of the "sons of God" is consistent with the use of that term elsewhere in the Tanakh (e.g., Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7).  

Chapter 6 goes on to say in verse 4, "The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them.  These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown." 

In the LXX, "Nephilim" is translated "giants".  So the implication is that the offspring of the "sons of God" and the "daughters of men" were giants.  The Nephilim are mentioned again in Num 13:33, and apparently one of the reasons that God commanded the Israelites to wipe out the inhabitants of Canaan was to deal with those giants (Joshua 11:21-22).  

If we had asked Jews during the time of Jesus about the meaning of Gen 6:1-4, they would have filled in some more details based on 1 Enoch 6-16.  (They didn't consider 1 Enoch to be scripture, but they believed that it contained accurate history on this point.)  According to 1 Enoch, the angels who married the human women also brought forbidden knowledge to mankind, including sorcery and how to make weapons of war.  These angels were then put in a condition of restraint to await final judgment in the future.  

We see these beliefs in a few places in the New Testament, especially Jude 6-7:

"And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day---just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire."

Jude 14, by the way, quotes a prophecy of Enoch from 1 Enoch 1.

Another place in which the I Enoch account is assumed is in 2 Peter 2:4-5:

"For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to
chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world, but
preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;" 

I also want to say something about Gen 6:3:  Then the LORD said, "My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh:  his days shall be 120 years."  

This verse has been interpreted in two different ways.  One is that human lifespans were going to be shortened, down to around 120 years.  Another is that God was giving mankind 120 years to repent before sending the flood.