Chapter 5 of Genesis is well known for its long lists of who was father to whom, and the fantastic life spans noted there.
The chief reason for the family trees which crop up so often in the Bible is the concern the Bible writers had to trace God's faithfulness from generation to generation in keeping His promise to redeem mankind. It is not always the firstborn who is named, it should be noted. What governs the choice is who among the children gave God their trust and obedience. It was they through whom God carried forward His purpose, like Enoch, who walked with God.
Always it has been God's way to work through the few for the benefit of the many. The challenge these genealogies presents to us therefore is whether we, by our response to God will take our place in similar Rolls of Honour.
As to the fantastic ages recorded, their significance is not fully appreciated until other passages are reckoned in with them. Soon we learn that the average life span has been reduced to 120 years (6:3), (See Note 1 below) and later still, in the time of Moses, this has been further reduced to 70 years. (Ps. 90) This note of a steadily reducing life span is surely a startling way of stating a grim truth - that as sin increases in strength, fastening its grip ever more firmly, humanity's horizons are steadily narrowed, its powers weakened, and the reach of its control over life foreshortened.
Evil is a parasite. It lives by feeding on the good, sapping it of its life blood. Like all parasites, it enfeebles the source on which it feeds and finally destroys itself. From its very birth the seeds of self-destruction are present in every form of evil.
The opening verses of Genesis 6 read like a strange intrusion into the narrative. One's first reaction is to say, "What on earth have we here?" We seem abruptly to have been transported into a fairy-tale world of legendary giants. It sounds suspiciously like many ancient mythologies - the story of Leda and the Swan, or of Zeus and Danäe, for example. The Sons of Elohim - supernatural creatures - produce as a result of their irregular union with beautiful earthly women, a race of giants, of supermen like Hercules or Jason, who were the mighty men of ancient legend and saga. Must we write this off as a fragment of ancient myth? (See Note 2 below)
We should hesitate to jump to any such shallow conclusion. We have learned that the writer of these chapters was a man of profound theological insight, who made these stories bearers of truth too deep and penetrating for us to able to write any of them off as mere fable. If up till now we have found that he has used them to make us look into ourselves and our human society with such realism, and so incisively that we have been deeply disturbed, and if at the same time he has enabled us by means of them to see also into the heart of God so profoundly that we have been stirred to a marvellous hope, we shall not be tempted to brush aside this passage as irrelevant legend.
Clearly we are intended to see it as a prelude to the story of the flood which he is about to introduce. It paints in a sombre backcloth to the themes of ruin and rescue, of judgment and salvation with which that story will deal so profoundly.
With this in mind, we should take account again of the dark hint which this fragment gives of some uncanny dimension behind the appearance of things. It strikes an ice-cold chill into our hearts. Are we not being told here that the state of the world - ripe as it is for destruction - is due to something more than merely human waywardness? The cosmos, beyond the boundaries of the world we know, is infected with a spirit of perversity, and our world is open to invasion from realms beyond it whose inhabitants may spawn monstrosities upon our race.
"The sin of the world is not fully explained as being simply the sum total of the sins of its inhabitants. Evil has become an overarching pollution, as though the very heavens were defiled with it. There is a poison suffused through the whole fabric of creation." (William Neil, 'One Volume Bible Commentary', Hodder & Stoughton, p. 29)
This is an affirmation which the Bible makes again and again. There presses in upon us from the wings of the world's stage a dimension of evil more menacing than any which we brew ourselves. Does this really need to be argued? Are there not times in history when men en masse follow a course so headlong in its path to destruction that it is impossible to find any other explanation than that they are driven somehow by a power outside themselves, as the Gadarene swine were driven headlong into the Sea of Gennesaret? It is easy for us in a time of relative peace and security to shrug off such thoughts with a superior smile. But it is not so easy in a time of war - nor was it so easy when the Cuba Crisis sent an involuntary shudder of naked fear around the world.
It is to a demonic influence upon our world that this story testifies. "It is not simply that mere human waywardness spoils our life; our state is far more perilous. We are caught up in a mystery we are powerless to explain - and what is worse, powerless to resist - which corrupts literally every human endeavour. We must spend our days, make our plans, and build our brave new world in the certainty that our best endeavours will end in disaster because of demonic forces which threaten at every turn to engulf us." (ibid.)
A demonic element rears its menacing head over the world's horizons and breathes hot upon us - as though whatever doom awaits it, it is determined to seduce and drag humanity down with it into the pit as a last gesture of defiance against God.
It is to man in this frightening dilemma that the Bible speaks. It demands first that we recognise ourselves as we are, and then the world as it really is, and see the hopelessness of our case. The world cannot save itself. No human remedies, educational, scientific or social, can ever hope to cure our case, for our struggle is "not with flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the upper realms." (Eph. 6:12)
We can no more remake our broken world than we can hope to build an enduring city in an earthquake zone; forces that destroy our endeavours lie outside our control.
But happily this is not all the Bible has to say on the matter. It goes on to tell us that into this world which Satan and his legions have made the arena of their conflict with God, God has sent His Champion to fight for us. Like David of old who went into the valley alone to fell the giant and free Israel from his thrall, so our Prince Emmanuel drew the hosts of darkness into the Valley of Death and there inflicted on them a defeat so crushing that He has wrested mankind out of the devil's clutches.
"This is your hour," Jesus had said as He yielded Himself to His captors among Gethsemane's gnarled olive trees, "and the hour of darkness." "The Ruler of this world is coming," He had earlier warned the disciples in the Upper Room, "but he has no power over me. Now shall the Ruler of this world be cast out." (John 12:31, 14:30) Something more brought Jesus to the Cross than the power of organised religion corrupted by worldliness, and the power of the state gone rotten with godlessness, and the power of the mob gone blind in ignorance. All that was true, and it is an insight which must always inform our preaching of the Cross. But the New Testament sees deeper. Behind all those forces stood the 'rulers of this age', the spiritual forces of wickedness in the upper realms. It was they who masterminded the sinister alliance that encompassed the Lord's death.
But in that death He disarmed them. When He yielded up His body to their will, they destroyed the only weapon they had ever had to use against Him, and since His resurrection they have been utterly powerless against Him. To quote a splendid phrase of P. T. Forsyth's, "The arch-fiend who held the world in thrall is now but a bull in a net, kicking himself to death."
This is not all the Christian has to say of course on the dreadful dilemmas of our time at international, or social, or even personal levels. More is required of us than to fold our hands and sink into complacent slumber, sighing, "God is on the throne, our enemies are all defeated, and I shall waken to God's glory in the morning." But unless we can say this thing, and say it first, last and all the time, all else we have to say is empty chatter. Unless God Himself, in the Person of His Beloved Son has gone into action for us against the mystery of iniquity, all our stratagems are no better than useless models we build in a house that is already falling about our ears and will bury us alive. All endeavour that is not inspired by God and done under His direction is bound to fail.
But in the Cross and Resurrection, we have seen the eternal break through into this temporal order and shatter all the powers that blight it. In that flash across our midnight we have seen God's invincible purpose to bring forth righteousness to victory, and make Christ Lord of all.
But remember this: no-one who has not run for refuge to the shadow of the Cross is safe from the evil powers. Only the followers of the Lamb may have confidence in His protection. It behoves every last one of us to pray, "Hide me, Jesus, in Thy Name."
Note 1:
"My Spirit shall not abide in man for ever, for he is flesh, but his
days shall be a hundred and twenty years." is either a note of the
time interval remaining to the onset of the flood, or a note of
reducing longevity in man. The first is attractive because it is
simpler, but leaves unanswered the question: "120 years from when?"
So the second is to be preferred. The words 'abide' or 'remain' seem
textually to be more assured than the A.V. 'strive.' (With the
rendering 'strive' the verse has been grossly misused in evangelistic
appeals - it carries no hint of impatience on God's part. Even if it
did, it would mean that God will strive with unrepentant man for 120
years at least!) It is best understood as referring back to the
breathing of God's breath (Spirit) into man at the creation, and
simply indicates that his life span is of limited duration (a regular
Biblical feature of 'flesh' as opposed to 'spirit').
Note 2:
The phrase 'sons of God' - sons of Elohim - would, in accordance with
its general usage in the Old Testament, refer to angels (Job 1:6,
2:1, 38:7, Dan. 3:25), so these 'sons of God' have been identified as
angels. It is objected that Jesus said angels "neither marry nor are
given in marriage," and are therefore sexless; yet these 'sons of
God' cohabited with women. The objection ignores the obvious
implication that these are fallen angels. II Peter 2:4-5 supports
this view by associating the mention of fallen angels and the flood
together. Whatever may be the origin of evil spirits, the N.T.
evidence shows that they have an unnatural desire for a body; whether
they desire sexual experience in it is a question the Bible does not
address.
The word 'giants' - 'Nephilim' - occurs elsewhere in the Bible only
in Num. 13:33 where they are identified as men of impressive physical
stature among the Canaanites. The literal translation of the word is
'fallen ones'; the passive adjectival form implies that they were
made to fall. The natural reading of the text is to see them as the
progeny of the union between the 'sons of God' and earthly
women.
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