Chapter five is primarily a genealogy getting us up to
Noah. Chapter six begins by telling us
that life on earth wasn't getting better, it was getting worse, much worse, "every
intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." We have to make some determination about who
are the "sons of God" and the "nephilim." There are many suggestions for this dilemma
and certainly if there had been previous editors they would have dropped out this
passage long ago in order to clean up the text.
One suggestion is that they are angels who believed they could come to
earth and clean up the mess we had made of it by living among us and bringing
glory to God but they were overcome by the evil inclination and sex became the
trap. Jesus, however, says that angels
aren't like us in that way, so on the testimony of Jesus that one seems to be
ruled out. The word we translate sons of
God can otherwise be translated as something like sons of freedom, referring to
rulers and if that is the case, they may have been spiritual rulers who were
overtaken by sexual temptation and became like the rest of us. The word
nephilim seems to have its origins in the word for fall, and that perhaps explains
something about these giants. This is
only a suggestion or a possibility, that there was a race or group of Seth's descendants
who maintained faithfulness but ultimately they too fell and there was no
remaining hope for mankind so God lost patience and determined to wipe out
mankind except for Noah and his family. Noah
found favor with God.
The newly-minted disciples join Jesus at a wedding feast in
Cana in Galilee, His, and their home turf.
It is suggested that the presence of His entourage caused the wine to
run out but that need not necessarily explain why Mary comes to Jesus to help
resolve the dilemma. Mary obviously had
a role in the feast, otherwise why would the steward have taken instruction
from her. Jesus initially demurs at her
request to do something and we should not read his response of, “Woman, what
does this have to do with me?" as dismissive or rude, lacking respect for
His mother, it was a common address.
(Translations attempt to be faithful to the words, dynamic equivalents
like the Message or the Living Bible, have freedom to translate thought, so the
ESV we are using translates the word literally, the Message substitutes the
word "Mother.") Jesus resolves
the problem unusually, by asking the steward to dip some water from the huge
urns used for ceremonial washing after filling them to the brim with wine. Amazingly, that water is now the finest wine
yet served at the feast. The purpose of the
urns is no longer necessary, washing is fulfilled in Jesus.
The other place in Scripture where the nephilim appear is in
the account of the spies going into the land to make a report on the possibility
of conquest. That, in itself, was sin,
disbelief in God, and it was unlikely that they would then come back and enter
the Land since the mission was based in sin rather than faith and obedience to
do what God had commanded in entering and conquering the Land. The "deceitfulness of sin" calls us
to unbelief, wavering in confidence in the sacrifice of Jesus once offered,
tempts us to hedge our bets in some way or to give up hope altogether. The one who found favor with God is the one
who believed a hard rain was gonna fall and obeyed the command to build the
ark. In faith, we get inside the ark
that is Jesus, knowing that in Him alone we find safety. Where there was no way He made a way through His
sacrifice. We need to heed Mary's words,
“Do whatever he tells you.”
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