Did Angels Mate with Human Women?

Genesis says the ’sons of God’ meet the ‘daughters of men,’ how do we interpret it?​

Recently, I’ve been looking at a mysterious passage in Genesis 6, at the beginning of the Flood narrative. In this passage, the “sons of God” marry “the daughters of men,” and the passage mentions a group of people known as the Nephilim.

I’ve been considering the following questions:

1) Who are the “sons of God” in this passage?

2) Who are the “daughters of men”?

3) Why does God say that man’s “days shall be 120 years”?

4) Who were the Nephilim?

5) What is the relationship linking the sons of God, the daughters of men, and the Nephilim?

6) Why does the text say the Nephilim were on the earth “in those days, and also afterward”?

7) Do these events have anything to do with the Great Flood, which this passage introduces?

In my first post, we answered Question 4 and saw that the Nephilim were a group of “giants” or unusually tall people (at least by ancient standards, when people were a lot shorter than they are today).

In a second post, we answered Questions 3, 5, and 6: it looks as though the 120 years was a grace period before God sent the Flood, the Nephilim were the children of the sons of God and the daughters of men, and they were on the earth both before and after the Flood because these groups mated twice.

Continued below.