Verse explainer

What does Genesis 6:2 really mean?

"Sons of God" marrying "daughters of men" sounds supernatural — but the oldest reading is a human story about a holy line abandoning its call.

KJV

That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.

BSB

the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they took as wives whomever they chose.

The plain meaning

The flood narrative in Genesis 6 opens with a catastrophic blurring of boundaries. The phrase "sons of God" has generated three main readings across history: angels or divine beings, the line of godly Seth, or royal/ruling-class men. John Gill and most Reformation-era commentators land firmly on the Sethite reading: the descendants of Seth (the line that, from the days of Enos in Genesis 4:26, had been publicly identified with the worship of God) began crossing into the Cainite community, drawn purely by physical beauty. The phrase "all which they chose" is the tell — it signals unchecked appetite, not covenant discernment. The result was not a biological catastrophe but a moral one: the last boundary between devoted and corrupt humanity dissolved. The wickedness that follows in verses 5–6, grieving God to the heart, is the direct consequence of this indiscriminate mixing.

The common misreading

"Sons of God" means fallen angels who had sex with human women. This is genuinely the oldest alternative reading — it appears in 1 Enoch and echoes in some early church fathers — so it is not a fringe view, and it shouldn't be dismissed as ignorant. The honest answer is that scholars have debated it for two millennia. But the Sethite reading has strong contextual grounding: Genesis 4–5 has spent two full chapters tracking two distinct human lines, one named after God (4:26), one associated with violence and pride. The angel reading requires importing a mythology the Genesis narrator never signals, and it raises the question of why marriages — not some more dramatic transgression — trigger the flood. The phrase 'all which they chose' points to moral failure, not a supernatural invasion: people who should have known better let appetite override calling. Most Reformation and post-Reformation commentators — Gill, Henry, Barnes, Calvin — read it this way. The difficulty of the verse is real; the supernatural reading is not crazy. But the plainest contextual reading is a story about the last godly line dissolving into the surrounding culture, and that reading makes the flood narrative coherent without requiring angelic biology.

What the commentators say

John Gill18th c. · PD

Gill firmly rejects the angel interpretation — incorporeal beings cannot marry or generate offspring. He identifies the sons of God as Seth's posterity, who had been called by God's name since Genesis 4:26, living separate from the Cainites on higher ground. When they descended and chose wives solely on the basis of physical beauty, without regard to godly character or parental counsel, the last moral boundary collapsed — setting the stage for the universal corruption described in verses 5–6.

Matthew Henryearly 18th c. · PD

Henry reads the passage as a solemn warning about religiously mixed marriages driven by physical attraction. The sons of God — professors of true religion — should have sought partners who shared their devotion, but they let their eyes govern their hearts. The phrase 'all which they chose' marks the abandonment of godly counsel in favor of unchecked desire, and Henry sees this as the root cause of the corruption God surveys in the very next verses.

Albert BarnesBarnes' Notes · PD

Barnes acknowledges the angel interpretation has ancient support but finds it untenable on contextual and theological grounds. He favors the Sethite view: the contrast between 'sons of God' and 'daughters of men' mirrors the earlier contrast between the two lines in chapters 4 and 5. The sin is not the act of marriage itself but the motive — beauty alone, chosen without regard to the covenant community — making the verse a diagnosis of spiritual decline rather than a supernatural episode.

The word behind it

בְּנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים bənê hāʾĕlōhîm

"Sons of God." The identical phrase appears in Job 1:6 of heavenly beings, giving rise to the angel reading. But in Genesis the surrounding narrative concerns two human lineages, Seth's and Cain's. Gesenius notes the construct phrase can mark covenant relationship or divine calling, not only ontological nature. The contrast with 'daughters of men' (bənôt hāʾādām) reinforces a human distinction: a line set apart by devotion versus the broader human population outside that calling.

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