As the days of Noah were, so shall the coming of the Son of man be (Matthew 24:37). What a strange and cryptic remark. What was it exactly about the Days of Noah that caused Jesus to single it out as the period of history to put under the microscope to properly understand the truly last days leading up to the Great and Terrible Day of the Lord?
Most people do not fully understand the Flood of Noah because they have no grasp of the real problem it was sent to resolve. There was much more to the Flood of Noah than simply a lot of water: There was a major discontinuity; much greater than simply the sinfulness of man.
Genesis 6: 1 - 2 is a single sentence. It says, "And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, 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 understanding of this passage hangs on the Hebrew term that has been translated "sons of God," Bene HaElohim. In the Old Testament this term refers exclusively to angels. Many similar terms are used for other things, but this specific term always refers to a direct creation of God, and it alludes to angels whom we find in Job chapters 1, 2, 38 and other places. (We also find it in the New Testament, specifically in Luke 20:36).
Perhaps our most authoritative source is the Greek translation of the Old Testament from the 3rd century B.C., known as the Septuagint. Greek is a very precise language, and the seventy scholars who produced the Septuagint (a fancy word for seventy) help us understand the Hebrew from which it was translated. The Septuagint clearly translates this term as "angels."
Another important phrase is "the daughters of men" (benoth adam). They are the daughters of Adam, not just the daughters of Cain.
Genesis 6:4 says, "There were Nephilim in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown." The word "Nephilim" means "the fallen ones." It comes from a verb, "to fall away," "to cast down," or "desert." These were the hybrids that resulted from the mischief between the fallen angels and human women. Another unusual term, "the mighty ones," the HaGibborim, is mentioned here. That was translated into the Greek Septuagint as gigantes, which does not mean "giant" but "earth-born," from the Greek gigas. Although the word is translated into English as "giants"--and they did happen to be very large--it is not true to the original text. This has caused a lot of confusion.
Later, in Genesis 6:9, we read, "These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God." The word perfect is a term to mean "without blemish," "sound," "healthful," "without spot," or "unimpaired." It is always used with regard to physical defects. The Scripture is telling us that Noah was distinctive in that his genealogy was not blemished.
As we begin to put this together, it leads us to the strange idea that there were fallen angels that, somehow, began this strange business of generating a hybrid group called "Nephilim." This bizarre view is confirmed in the New Testament in Jude 6 - 7: "And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto judgment of the great day. Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." Jude made an allusion to these events in Genesis 6 and clearly he was writing about angels who, for whatever reason, went after "strange flesh."
Peter, in his second letter, chapter 2: 4 - 5, also says, "For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; and spared not the old world, but saved Noah…" Peter wrote much the same thing as Jude, but he even tied it specifically to the days of Noah. He also used a term for hell that was only used in the New Testament: tartarus, a term used in Greek literature for "a dark abode of woe" or "a pit of darkness of the unseen world." In Homer's Iliad, it is thought to be as far below Hades as the earth is below heaven. (Learn the Bible in 24 Hours, Missler, pgs. 26 - 27)
My next couple of entries will postulate exactly why understanding the true events of Noah's Flood is so vitally important, especially in the last days.
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