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Adam would die, for that he also is flesh, like the others; then the length of Adam's days
is given as 120 years.
One other reference to this question of the article must be given. In verses 7, 8 the
Lord said:--
"I will destroy (wipe off or blot out) man whom I have created from the face of the
earth; both man and beast and creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth Me
that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord".
The Lord did not "destroy" Adam. Chapter 5: 5 records his death in exactly the same
terms as it does that of Seth. God did destroy man and beast with the flood, and these
were "made" by Him, which is parallel to the word "create". The statement also is
definitely contrasted with the case of Noah, and it must be remembered that Adam had
been dead over 120 years before Noah was born, or over 720 years before the flood came.
Again, in 8: 21 "man" in both cases is "Ha-Adam"--yet, though the article is there,
this cannot mean Adam himself. We can now come back to the opening verses of
chapter 6: and render it as follows:--
"And it came to pass, when Adam began to multiply on the face of the ground, and
daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of Adam, that
they were fair: and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the Lord said, My
spirit shall not always remain in Adam (the article is not used here, even as it is omitted
in the words `in the earth' in verse 4) for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an
hundred and twenty years".
Who are the sons of God? Adam himself is so called in Luke 3: 38, but none of his
descendants as such are afterwards so called. "The sons of God" are in exact contrast
with "the daughters of Adam". Adam here is literal, it carries with "the daughters", and
the words "of God" are in contrast with "of Adam". If the sons of God were men, they
were sons of Adam, and to contrast the sons of Adam with the daughters of Adam by
calling them sons of God must lead to error. Scripture does not mislead.
Job 1: 6; 2: 1; 38: 7 speak of the sons of God, and in these passages whatever
else the "sons of God" may mean, certainly they do not mean any of the sons of Adam.
In Psa. 29: 1 and 89: 6 reference is made to the sons of the mighty, the changed
word being Elim instead of Elohim; the second reference places these sons "in heaven".
another legitimate parallel is that of Dan. 3: 25. As the language of Dan. 3: is Syriac
and not Hebrew, we have the word bar instead of ben for "son", but the meaning is the
same. Nebuchadnezzar's words recorded in Dan. 3: were not inspired, nevertheless,
seeing that he explains what he meant when he used the expression, "son of God", his
explanation must carry more weight than that of those who live in the present time. In
verse 28 Nebuchadnezzar explains his meaning of a son of God by saying that God had
sent "His angel".
We know that angels fell, for Jude 6 speaks of the angels which kept not their first
estate, but left their own habitation. The word for habitation is oiketerion and occurs
nowhere else except in II Cor. 5: 2. Their sin is likened to that of Sodom and Gomorrah
in its essential feature, viz., "going after strange (heteros) flesh". The time of their fall is