Were the sons of God in Job chapter 1 verse 6 the same group as mentioned in Genesis chapter 6 verse 4?

Answer 1

The "sons of God" in the Book of Job are clearly the angels. The "sons of God" in Genesis 6:4 can have many interpretations. Here the "sons of God" come to notice "the daughters of men" and take them as wives.

One view is to regard the sons of God as in the smae way as the descendants of Zeus in Greek mythology. Leon R. Kass (The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis) says that given the context, a simpler and more reasonable assumption (also favoured by many traditional commentators) is that the two lines that meet and merge are the line of Seth (Genesis 5 ) and the line of Cain (Genesis 4). He says that some evidence supports the view that it is the line of Cain that are the sons of God, and the line of Seth that carries the daughters of men. This is supported by the parallel names in the genealogies of Seth and Cain and by the fact that the line from Adam and Seth to Noah is introduced by the chapter heading "This is the book of the generations of Man ['adam]." In contrast, the line of Seth contains Enosh (whose name means "mortal"), and it alone mentions the deaths of men, suggesting that this is the line of mortals, not gods or sons of gods. And apropos the identity of the daughters of men, it is only in the generations of Seth that we hear constantly of the birth of daughters, daughters, reminders of birth and hence of man's dependence on woman.

Kass goes on to say that there is equal if not greater evidence on the other side - that the descendants of Seth are the sons of God. This view acknowledges that the line of Seth is given in "the book of the generations of Man ['adam]," but man is made in the likeness of God and is created by God (Genesis 5:1). Further, Man begets Seth in his image and likeness: Seth is thus a likeness of a likeness of God. ln contrast, the line of Cain makes not even the slightest reference to God; humanist through and through, it is characterised by pride, the city, and the arts, in pursuit of full self-sufficiency. Kass suggests that the more god-like sons of the line of Seth, their world now shattered due to the death of Adam and Seth, are drawn to and seduced by the beauty of the daughters of the line of Cain.

As Kass tells us, it makes little difference whether we accept the one view that the mighty descendants of Cain began mixing with the naturally beautiful daughters of the line of Seth or the other view that the less impious sons of Seth began mixing with the adorned daughters of the line of Cain. One way or the other, in the Book of Genesis these were the children of the ill-advised cross-cultural inter-marriage of the descendants of Seth with the descendants of Cain.

Verse 6:4 in many English translations refers to 'giants' in the earth. Kass gives the original Hebrew as Nephilim, which he says comes from the root naphal, meaning both "to fall" and "to cause to fall." There is nothing in the Hebrew to lead us to calling these fallen descendants of Seth and Cain 'giants'.

In summary, the 'sons of God' in the two books come from very different traditions and are widely interpreted as being quite different.