Genesis 6:4 Commentary and Bible Study

Well, they lived very long lives, and there may have been a very low rate of disease, and therefore that would give rise to greater development. If someone lived for nine centuries, we surely do not think that at 100 years of age, they were deteriorating in the same way as we are at 100 years of age, and that they spent the next 8 centuries pottering about as though they were people near the end of life. No, their deterioration would have been stretched over the 900 years. So if you imagine the growth of somebody (and this is only speculation) and how people put on weight and develop (especially if they are involved in physical activity and labour) between the ages of twenty to thirty, there is growth. Well, you have may have been growing like that all the way from early twenties to five or six hundred. So you would be rather on the large side. They say development of the long bones stops soon after the age of 17. Well, it may not have stopped until you were 200 with these kinds of time spans. Who knows? It is just speculation. So you may have grown and grown. Equally, there may have been some genetic abnormality responsible for this.‘And also after that’ – this is a separate statement. The text is not saying that the giants were the offspring that resulted from the church and the world joining together. Their existence was a separate matter. What came from this union of disobedience was something separate. When the sons of God, the descendants of Seth, came in unto the daughters of the descendants of Cain, ‘they bare children to them, the same [these children] became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.’ But it turns out that is not meant in a good sense. As you read on, you find that they were mighty men and men of renown in the sense that they were mighty in aggression. They became conquerors, war lords. Ambition came and flowered. And as the years passed, they developed lusts and desires for land and estates. They became oppressors. They did what they wanted. It was a lawless society. People admired the most violent, those who became the richest, who oppressed others the most. So they were mighty men in that sense.