Angels We Have Heard From On High???

Angels We Have Heard From On High???

Brett A. Todd

One of the most fascinating verses in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) is found in Genesis 6:1-2, it reads:

When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair, and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose.

Who were these sons of God?  Some have suggested these were the offspring of Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve (Genesis 1:15).  But such a suggestion fizzles when in the Bible we read that these sons of God were in heaven (Job 1:6).  How could the son of Seth, human beings, be in heaven if they were here on earth?  Such a theory is not plausible.

It is more plausible to understand that these “sons of God” were gods, which we will talk about later in another article, or angels who came from heaven and had sexual relations with the daughters of men.  In the Job reading mentioned above, this seems to be the case.  The sons of God were heavenly beings (angels) and some of them were good angels and some of them were bad.   

One might ask how spiritual beings (angels) could have sexual relations with human beings.  This is a good question.  What we must understand is that for the ancient people, the idea of an angel or demon or a god having sexual relations with a human being was not such an absurd idea as it is for modern 21st-century people.  Spiritual beings were always having sexual relations with human beings, this is how they got demigods, and yes, even their heroes and warriors (Genesis 6:4).  In the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, this is how Jesus was conceived.

In our last study, we mention how the Book Of Enoch?” significantly influenced the thinking and writings of Jews and early Christians. Such is the case with Genesis and the sons of God.  Here’s how Enoch reads (Enoch 6:1-2, 8): 

And it came to pass, when the sons of men had increased, that in those days there were born to them fair and beautiful daughters. And the Angels, the sons of Heaven, saw them and desired them. And they said to one another: “Come, let us choose for ourselves wives, from the children of men, and let us beget, for ourselves, children…” These are the leaders of the two hundred Angels and of all the others with them.

Enoch continues the imaginative story, a very long story of how their offspring, the Nephilim, giants, brought havoc on the earth by eating nearly all the human beings and vegetation, and even each other, that God is forced to destroy them by bringing forth a flood.  More than likely, you know the Noah and the Ark story.

In our next study, we will ask the question, “Did God have a family?  You know, a mother and father as well as siblings?”