*Updated on April 29, 2019
*Chapter 4 begins with the births of Cain and Abel. There is an interesting argument here that is worth knowing. Some believe that Satan, when he “beguiled” Eve back in Genesis 3, actually seduced her and got her pregnant. The result of that pregnancy is Cain, of whom Eve declared “I have gotten a man from the LORD” in verse 1. We know that a woman can have twins where two separate eggs are fertilized by two separate sperm from two separate men. This process is called “heteropaternal superfecundation.” Did that happen here? Did Adam fertilize one egg and Satan the other? I suppose it is possible, and we know that Satan can produce children through his seed (Genesis 3:15). However, I actually believe this is a bridge too far and lacks any strong scriptural basis.
Abel was a good man and a shepherd. Many shepherds throughout the Bible were good men – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, David, Moses, and, of course, Jesus Christ who is the ultimate shepherd. Cain, who was charged to till the cursed land (thanks to Adam), became jealous of his brother after God respected Abel’s offering over Cain’s. Cain reacted by getting angry and committing the first murder in history, setting a historical precedent that continues to this day. How many murders occur in this age due to anger and jealousy? I’d wager that almost all of them do.
Also notice that God hears “the voice of thy brother’s blood” (v. 10) – as if there is life in the blood (Leviticus 17:11). This reminds me of Edgar Allan Poe’s Telltale Heart which thumped noisily under the floorboards of a murderer’s home.
As a punishment, God cursed Cain and made him a “fugitive and a vagabond” (v. 12) and “set a mark upon Cain” (v. 15) so that all who saw him would not murder him. Some say that the “mark of Cain” is black skin, thus, equating Cain with the black race and using the sinful “sign” of black skin as an excuse to murder and enslave blacks from around the world. I do not subscribe to this idea, and those who would enslave a people based on ethnicity or by implying that they are “cursed” are racists. I believe that Cain, himself, received a mark – most likely a black spot of some kind on his forehead, which would foreshadow the “mark of the beast” in Revelation. Notice there was no mention of Cain’s children receiving the mark, but Cain alone.
In v. 25, Seth was born. Eve again attributed the birth of her son to God. Because of Seth’s children, men began “to call upon the name of the LORD” – indicating that the worship of God began with Seth. This has, wrongly, convinced many good people to believe that the “sons of God” in Genesis 6 are “sons of Seth.” I will deal with that later.
Chapter 5 is “the book of the generations of Adam” (v. 1). Verse 2 shows us why God never named Eve (see my notes on Genesis 1-3). He “called their [plural] name Adam [singular],” indicating that when two are “one flesh,” God no longer sees us as individuals.
Notice that Adam’s line begins with Seth. There is no mention of Cain or Abel, yet we know that they existed. This is a gap, and it in no way changes the future generations of Adam leading to Jesus Christ. This provides a precedent for The Gap which wrote about in my notes on Genesis 1-3 as well as here.
An interesting note is that Cain had a son named Enoch (Gen 4:17) whose great-great-grandson was Lamech (Gen 4:18). Seth had a descendent named Enoch (Gen 5:18) whose grandson was Lamech (v. 25), the father of Noah (v. 28-29).
The Sethite Enoch “walked with God” and “was not; for God took him” (v. 24). This is a picture of the Christian rapture that will likely occur sometime in the next decade or two. His grandson, Lamech, lived to be a lucky 777 years old (v. 31).
Genesis 6 is one of the strangest and possibly most important chapters in all the Bible. It also contains one of the most hotly debated and controversial passages in the Book.
Verse 2 says, “That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.”
The debate over who the “sons of God” were is still raging. I wrote about it in greater detail here. Some say they were the “sons of Seth” – a view that has absolutely zero Scriptural backing. Some believe they were kings and rulers – again, I see very little if any Scriptural backing for this view, and there is no logical reason why God would destroy the earth in a flood because kings started marrying women. I, like many others, believe that the “sons of God” were/are angels, fallen angels in this case.
Adam was a “son of God” (Luke 3:38), angels are “sons of God” in Job 1:6, 2:1, and 38:7, and Christians are “sons of God” in Romans 8:14. None of them are BORN, which is why Jesus Christ is God’s “only BEGOTTEN son” (John 3:16). Adam and the angels were created beings. Christians are physically born, but become “sons of God” as they are SPRITUALLY reborn. Therefore, the sons of God in Genesis 6 cannot be human offspring.
They are fallen angels, and in verse 4 these fallen angels mated with human women to produce offspring who were “giants,” “mighty men” and “men of renown.” In other words, this unholy offspring were powerful giants who became famous rulers in those days. I believe they were the original “gods” who we would later know as Zeus, Apollo, Neptune, Thor, etc. Many died in the flood to come, but we will see in later chapters that giants remained after the flood (Anak, Goliath, etc.) and remained quite powerful. Whether they survived the flood, angels again came and mated with human women, or if their bloodline was carried by one of Noah’s daughters-in-law I cannot say. I lean toward Ham’s wife being tainted, but that is pure speculation on my behalf.
Satan, as he tends to do, attempted to pervert humanity and end the Adamic bloodline that would lead to Jesus Christ, the “seed” of “the woman” who would one day defeat the Devil (Gen 3:15) by intermixing human and angelic DNA. This led to the destruction of humanity by God through the flood. Notice that Noah “was perfect in his generations” (v. 9). Noah was not only a “just man” who “walked with God,” but his entire bloodline remained untainted by the mixed blood of fallen angels. That is why he was given grace by the LORD as the bloodline worthy of survival and the perpetuation of the human race.
We all know the story of the flood – that Noah took two of every animal and seven of the clean ones, the rain poured down for 40 days and 40 nights, and God promised to never flood the earth again – marking his promise with a rainbow.
I do not believe that the ark was filled with every single breed of every type of animal. Doing so would have been logistically impossible. I think it is entirely reasonable to believe that there were two dogs – more accurately the genus “canis” or canines – rather than two bulldogs, two German Shepherds, two pugs, two Akitas, two Great Danes, etc. The canines on the ark could have, over time, produced the various breeds that we know, as well as wolves, coyotes, etc. We get bogged down by trying to use our modern understanding to describe a 5500-year-old event.
Another thing to note, is that almost every culture on earth contains a story about a great deluge or global flood. These “myths” occur in South America, Asia, Europe, the Middle-East, Africa, and North America. They did not generate from one location and spread to the rest of the globe through trade, as there are writings in ancient cultures that pre-date global trade and colonialization. We also have scientific evidence of a global catastrophic event that occurred between 5,000-7,000 years ago. By using mathematical data on population growth, I made the scientific case for the flood here. Plus, we know that the Grand Canyon was most likely caused by a sudden deluge of water that eroded away what would become the walls of the canyon.
There is a lot of interesting stuff in these chapters. Many of you might disagree with some of my assessments, and that is okay. Just know that the Bible is a supernatural Book and supernatural things. Just because an event seems implausible or even impossible, does not mean it is. “with God, all things are possible” (Matt 19:26). When God spoke a few words, the entire universe was created. If you do not think that angels that “kept not their first estate” (Jude 6:6) and can be completely mistaken for human men (Gen 19; Hebrews 13:2) could not father human children, why not? If the idea of a great flood covering every square inch of the earth above the highest mountain tops is too much for you to believe, why not? Can the LORD not make these things so?
I believe he can, and I believe he did.
Simmons' Opinions 