THESE verses follow up the subject of that mysterious fact already stated, adding the expression of Jehovah's mind on the one hand, and on the other the far different thoughts of man.
And Jehovah said, “My Spirit shall not strive within man forever, for that he also [is] flesh, and his days shall be a hundred and twenty years. The Nephilim (giants) were on the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare to them. These [are] the heroes, mighty men who [were] of old, men of renown (the name)” (vers. 3, 4).
We may see from Job 1:6; 2:1, that various documents have nothing to do with “Jehovah” occurring here along with “sons of Elohim.” The moral question in both scriptures require “Jehovah” as such, whilst the designation of the angels as “sons of Elohim” was equally correct. Further, in the same context we have repeatedly one that feared Elohim (Job 1:1; 2:3), and the kindred language in Job 1:5, 16, 22; 2:9, 10, where Jehovah is emphatically used in that moral trial both by the inspired writer and in the mouth of job (chaps. 1:6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 21, 2:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), so as to demonstrate the vanity of the hypothesis. The reason for one or other lies in the due requirement of the case, wholly independent of any imaginary change of authors. So, in our chapter of Genesis, verses 1-8 demand “Jehovah,” save in the name of the offending angels, as 9-22 call for “Elohim” without exception.
Translators and commentators differ considerably as to the rendering and scope. Onkelos and Saadiah, the Septuagint, the Syriac, and the Vulgate substantially agree in the sense of “remain” for “strive.” But the force is moral rather than physical existence, and fairly given in the A. V. Some prefer “in his wandering” instead of “for that,” which may well be. So it is said in Isa. 31:3, that Egypt is man and not God, and their horses flesh and not spirit. Man had now proved himself no better. But if Jehovah warn that His Spirit will not always plead, He sets a term of patience. For the hundred and twenty years refer, not to man's span of life, but to the space given for repentance.
This verse it is, and especially it would seem “My Spirit,” to which the apostle Peter refers in his first epistle (chap. 3:18-20). He speaks of Christ put to death in flesh, but made alive in [the] Spirit, in which also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, once disobedient when the long-suffering of God was waiting in Noah's days. The second epistle too (chap. ii. characterizes Noah as a preacher of righteousness. Thus, among other ways, for he prophesied also (Gen. 9), did the Spirit of Christ which was in him point out, testifying beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow them. It was this testimony, which made the days of God's longsuffering and of Christ's Spirit preaching through Noah so apt an allusion for the apostle. For Jews ask for signs of power, as Greeks seek wisdom, the wisdom of the age; but Christ is God's power and God's wisdom, Christ crucified to Jews a stumbling-block and to Greeks foolishness, but made to us that believe wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. Believers from among the Jews (and to such the epistle was addressed) stood peculiarly exposed to the taunts of their unbelieving brethren after the flesh, who would hear only of the visible Messiah exalting Israel and putting down the nations in power and glory; as they scorned the little flock that confessed Him dead and risen and glorified in heaven, and that claimed through Him salvation of souls. Hence, of all the Jew owned true in O.T. story, nothing more suggestive than the few souls saved through the flood, when the mass perished in unbelief. Yet God sent men testimony by Noah, as He does now in the gospel. If that generation paid the penalty of slighting Christ's Spirit in the preaching then, let them beware of resisting the same Spirit still; for, though Christ be not present bodily but, in heaven and at the right hand of God, He is ready to judge living and dead; for which those who rejected the warning in Noah's day are reserved in prison, as are all unbelievers.
It might seem incredible, were it not fact, that anyone could say, “Not a word is indicated by Peter on the very far off lying allusion to the fact that the Spirit of Christ preached in Noah: not a word here, on the fact that Noah himself preached to his contemporaries.” No person has ever shown in the O. T. a case more germane to the apostle's aim, which was to strengthen the believing remnant against Jewish or any other mockery of an absent Deliverer and a spiritual deliverance only enjoyed now by faith. The allusion was strikingly near in its bearing: “very far off” in time is nothing to one who ranges through all scripture, in this very passage expressly introducing Noah, and the Spirit; as he elsewhere styles Noah “preacher of righteousness,” and those who disobeyed in his days “spirits in prison,” awaiting (as we all know) far more than a temporal judgment. Did not all this lie very near those surrounded by unbelievers who jeered at the fewness of Christians and rejected Christ's present testimony by the Spirit? The fact is that not a word connects the time of the preaching with the imprisonment of the spirits. Peter does not say that Christ went into the prison and there preached to the spirits, but that He went in the power of His Spirit and preached to the spirits that are there, disobedient as they once were in Noah's days. So the Jews were in danger through despising the Spirit of Christ now. What the text means is that their imprisonment is because they disobeyed once on a time when the longsuffering of God was waiting out in Noah's days, while an ark was being built for the few that entered and were saved. The nicest and strictest interpretation here lends not the least support to any preaching in Hades, which is foreign and opposed to the rest of God's word.
The superstitious view in effect denies and uproots the gospel, and is wholly baseless in either the O. T. or the New. Nor is the fancy inconsistent only with the testimony of scripture in general; it is opposed to the plain drift of the apostle's reference to Noah in each of his epistles. For how unmeaning, not to say inexplicable, that, if Christ be supposed to have gone in person to preach to the imprisoned spirits, those only should be singled out who had once been disobedient in Noah's days during the preparation of the ark! What revealed principle of either grace or righteousness applies to such a dealing with them in particular? Especially as the original text, Gen. 6:3, implies just the contrary—that the striving of Jehovah's Spirit was with man in this life, and that the limit to His patience with those in question was tied to the hundred and twenty years of their days on earth? To imagine the spirits of those very persons appealed to afterwards seems to annul the scripture in hand and therefore so much the less credible as an inspired comment on it. For it would involve the strange doctrine of Jehovah's striving after death, and with those exclusively who had been the objects of the longsuffering of God for an allotted period previously.
Again, the reference in 2 Peter 2 equally shuts out the notion as the dream of the untaught and unstable. For the apostle speaks of God's not sparing, not only angels when they sin and reserving them extraordinarily for judgment, but the ancient world also, though He preserved with seven others Noah, a preacher of righteousness, when He brought a flood on a world of ungodly persons (and afterward He dealt similarly with Sodom and Gomorrha); as proofs of His rescuing godly ones out of trial and keeping unrighteous people under punishment for judgment day. The heterodoxy we are considering treats these very persons, if not all the wicked dead, as kept for hearing Christ to save them from judgment! Can one conceive grosser ignorance, and, what is worse, more arrant trifling with solemn scriptures, or a more evident desire to bring their meaning to naught?
As to ver. 4, the construction is not without difficulty. It appears to distinguish between the Nephilim or giants in those days, as afterward also, and the Gibborim, mighty ones or heroes, who were the fruit of the union of the sons of God with men's daughters. In fact, notwithstanding the dark confusion of the old heathen remains, traces of this distinction are not wanting; though nothing can be more marked than the superiority of scripture in the very little it says on this painful subject over the traditional lore respecting the Giants and the Titans, which the later poets jumbled inextricably. Num. 13:33 of itself easily accounts for the clause here parenthetically marked. It may run, without parenthesis, “And also after that the sons of God....these [are] the mighty ones which were of old, men of the name,” thus distinguishing the giants and these heroes. One shrinks from boldness in speaking of such a phrase; but the latter part distinguishes a class which was not found afterward: “These [are] the heroes, who [were] of old, men of renown.” These, as being of quite a different source and character, had a fame peculiar to themselves for might. The reputation they acquired of old was not founded on mere stature, like that of the Nephilim.
In result it is clear that the bounds of creation were wickedly traversed by certain angels, and thus a peculiarly evil corruption introduced among men, where evil in its ordinary character grew apace as we are afterward shown. But that unnatural amalgam touched the rights of Jehovah, though outwardly He had left man to himself since his expulsion from Paradise; as it played its grave part in calling for divine intervention in the governmental act of the deluge of which Genesis speaks, but in those deeper, lasting, and unseen ways which the epistles of Peter and Jude reveal in unison with N. T. truth for eternity. The evasive reading of the passage which many pious ancients and moderns have adopted to escape its only fair interpretation, because it conveys what is to us beyond measure strange, if not incomprehensible how it could be, is nothing but a makeshift of unbelief. Received simply, it gives the sure, though purposely reserved, revelation on the darkest scene of old, the true source of what was expanded, after its wonted fashion in Jewish tradition and Pagan mythology. In scripture the evil was dealt with in holy judgment; among men it became the basis of fame for beneficent might on man's behalf in vain struggle against envious but superior gods: no untrue description of beings who were really demons. “Jehovah, what is man that Thou takest knowledge of him? or the son of man, that Thou makest account of him? Man is like a breath, his days are as a shadow that passeth away. Bow Thy heavens, Jehovah, and come down.”