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It is written:
Genesis 6:1-4-Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, 2 that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose. 3 And the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” 4 There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.
Through the years, this passage of Scripture has been the source of much controversy. The identity of the “sons of God” in this passage has been at the head of the controversy. Some believe that the “sons of God” is a reference to angels who rebelled against God, while others believe that they are the “righteous descendants” of Seth who then intermarried with the “wicked women” who were descended from Cain (and here identified as “the daughters of men”). ScripturalLy, the identity of these “sons of God” is not difficult to make. After all, the only other literature in the Bible at this time that used the phrase “sons of God” was the Book of Job, and there they are clearly identified as angels of God (cf. Job 1:6; 2:1-2; 38:4-7). Objections to this usually stem from the fact that we are told angels are spirits (cf. Hebrews 1:14), and that it is then assumed that “spirits” cannot be flesh. However, while the angels are spirits, it is made abundantly clear that they are able to do lots of things in the form of flesh. For example, we are told that angels (cf. Genesis 19:1) can have feet that are capable of being washed (Genesis 18:4), and can eat food (Genesis 18:5-8; 19:3), and can physically touch human beings (Acts 12:7). Furthermore, we are told that Jesus has a glorified body that is “spiritual” (1 Corinthians 15:45). Yet after He arose from the dead, Jesus had feet that could be touched and grasped (Matthew 28:9), wounds that could be examined (John 20:24-28), and food that He could (Luke 24:41-43; Acts 10:39-43).
With this in mind, please consider that the Jewish people for centuries before the time of Christ understood the sons of God in Genesis 6:1-4 to be fallen angels that had rebelled against the Lord.
“Robert Newman has analyzed the history of interpretation of this passage to show that the supernatural interpretation of the Sons of God as being heavenly angelic beings was virtually unanimous in the ancient world until the first century after Christ.[73]…Newman points out that all the ancient Jewish views before Christ understood the Sons of God to be angelic. But by the time of the second century A.D., some of the Targumim, or Jewish commentaries on the Torah, began interpreting the Sons of God as human dynastic rulers or judges. This was most likely because the Rabbinic writers were reacting to the powerful rise of Christianity in their world. They had rejected Jesus as Messiah and the notion of a hybrid god-man coming from heaven and calling himself the “only begotten” Son of God, was too close to that supernatural view of the angelic Sons of God. Their non-supernatural interpretation springs from a theological reaction against Christianity…. The non-supernatural view of the Sons of God as human beings began in the Christian world with Julius Africanus…. There are multiple problems with this interpretation that make it untenable. Firstly, the Hebrew text of Gen. 4: 26 does not say that Seth’s line called upon the name of the Lord, but only that there was a general calling upon the name of the Lord. The Jewish Targumim even interpreted the Hebrew behind “began to call upon the name of the Lord” as actually meaning “began to make idols and calling their idols by the name of the Lord.”[ 77] This is a complete reversal of the typical understanding, as the Brown Driver Briggs Hebrew Lexicon reveals that the word for “began” can mean “pollute, defile, profane, or desecrate.”[ 78] So it is possible that this text is referring to the sinfulness of humanity that will lead to the Flood. If one claims the context is Sethite, then those Sethites were not considered righteous, but wicked. But whether this was a profaning of or a calling upon God, the text does not link it exclusively to Seth’s line, but to people in general. Secondly, the “Sons of God” are nowhere in Scripture ever signified as the descendants of Seth. In fact, every single use of “Sons of God” elsewhere in the Old Testament is always a reference to angelic beings. (We will look at this shortly). In the New Testament, Adam is called a Son of God because he was the only human who was a direct creation of God, like the angels (Luke 3: 38). Every human after Adam comes through Adam and is thus a son or daughter of Adam. Even Eve was not created directly by God, but out of Adam’s own flesh. Paul writes that all unregenerate humanity is cursed “in Adam” (1 Cor. 15: 22). Jesus is called the “unique Son of God” (John 3: 16), because he was part of that heavenly host (Dan. 7: 9-10), but was uncreated (Heb. 1: 3-4). This is why believers in Christ are considered as “sons of God,” because they are born from above with the seed of Christ to become like him (Gal. 3: 26-27; Luke 20: 36; 1 Cor. 15: 49–more on this later). Thirdly, nowhere in the Bible is Seth called a Son of God. He is called a Son of Adam in the New Testament (Luke 3: 38), but he is never called a Son of God. In the Old Testament, his birth was uniquely described as being “in the image and likeness of Adam,” in a reflection of Adam’s own creation (Gen 5: 3). But this means he is distinctly described in terms of being a son of Adam, not a Son of God. Fourthly, nowhere else in the Old Testament are the female descendants of Cain called “daughters of men.” In fact, Genesis 6: 1 defines the daughters of men for us: “man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them.” The Hebrew word for “man” is “ha Adam,” or “the Adam.” So the text itself tells us that the daughters of men are the generic “daughters of Adam,” not the specific “daughters of Cain.” But the daughters of Adam includes the bloodlines of both Cain and Seth. So for the contrast of Sons of God and daughters of men to make sense, the Sons of God cannot be a reference to the human lineage of Cain, but a lineage of something that contrasts with human beings in general. Fifthly, If the bloodline of Seth is considered righteous, and the bloodline of Cain, unrighteous, then there is a major contradiction occurring in Genesis 6, because it now depicts the “righteous” line of Seth as becoming corrupted by their union with the Cainite daughters. Since Noah comes from the lineage of Seth, he would be part of this corruption. But the text goes out of its way to specify that Noah was “blameless in his generation” (Gen. 6: 9). The Hebrew word for “blameless” is tamim, which is a word that everywhere else in the Old Testament is used of physically unblemished sacrificial animals.[ 79] Noah was untainted by the lineage of the Sons of God. But if the Sons of God are the corrupted bloodline of Seth, then the text is at odds with itself in establishing the corruption of Noah’s bloodline then denying it. Sixthly, if one believes that these Sons of God are mere humans, then how is it that their union with other mere human women creates the offspring of Nephilim giants? These giants are not mere random anomalies, but a bloodline of giants that end up inhabiting the Promised Land in giant clans much later (Num. 13: 32-33). We will explain why Nephilim are clearly giants in a later chapter. But the point is that mere human cohabitation with humans does not explain the giant offspring that are the result of that union. If the Nephilim are indeed giants, then the Sethite View crumbles.” (Brian Godawa, When Giants Were Upon the Earth: The Watchers, the Nephilim, and the Biblical Cosmic War of the Seed (Chronicles of the Nephilim), 38-41 (Kindle Edition): Warrior Poet Publishing; http://www.warriorpoetpublishing.com)
The offspring of the fallen angels-identified in Genesis 6:1-4 as the “giants” or the “Nephilim”-are still in the world today, and they are the enemies of the church of Christ. They are identified in the ancient history book of First Enoch as “demons.”
1 Enoch 15:8-12-My judgment for the giants is that since they are born from flesh they will be called evil spirits and will remain on the earth. 9 Because they were created from above, from the holy Watchers, at death their spirits will come forth from their bodies and dwell on the earth. They will be called evil spirits. 10 The heavenly spirits will dwell in heaven, but the terrestrial spirits who were born on earth will dwell on earth. 11The evil spirits of the giants will be like clouds. They will afflict, corrupt, tempt, battle, work destruction on the earth, and do evil ; they will not eat nor drink, but be invisible . 12 They will rise up against the children of men and against the women, because they have proceeded from them.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all. Amen.