Genesis 6

Did Jesus have Godly brothers?

In the second verse the sons of God are mentioned. Since wo don't have much information on who they are three main theories have been brought forward.

1. Princes or kings
2. The godly male descendants of Seth
3. Fallen angels

1: Princes or kings

In the Ancient Near East some kings claimed to be the son of (a) God or (a) God himself. Looking at this a possible, but unlikely answer. It talks about the daughters of men, and the kings and princes are also men. Why would there be a separation between the two of them that isn't there. There are more reasons why this is a very unlikely answer but I won't go in to them here.

2: The godly male descendants of Seth

In this case the sons of God are the descendants of Seth and the daughters of men are the daughters of Cain. All the descendants of Cain appear to live godless, but only a handful of Seth descendants live a godly life. By the time the flood came only Noah and his family could be called righteous. And again, we are faced with the same problem of separation of men(kind) as mentioned above.

3: Fallen angels

The most likely answer is that it refers to fallen angels taken the form of masculine human-like creatures. This offers the best explanation why their offspring is called the Nephilim. The Nephilim where giants that where psychically superior to mankind. This race of half-humans would have been wiped out by the flood. Another reason why this seems the most likely is because the term sons of God also is used at later points in the Bible, in Job for instance. The male population of Sodom was also attracted to the angle that visited Lot. But also the new testament supports this. In II Peter 2:4 and Jude 6 it is mentioned that God also punished angles when they sinned.

Why did the flood happen?

In verse 5-7 it state of mankind is described. Mankind has become wicked and their hard was filled with evil. God decided to wipe the earth clean, press the reset button. But in verse 8 we read that Noah found favour in the eye of God. So God uses him to create a new start. God did not take pleasure in doing this. It may not say it literally here but if you look throughout the Bible that is the only conclusion you can come to. God prefers repentance, but if you don't want to, sin comes at a price.

Is the ark realistic?

God tells Noah to build a ship that is 135 meters long, 23 meters wide and 14 meters high. It has to have lower, middle and upper decks and it also has to have room below the roof for ventilation purposes. In the Netherlands there is a guy who build an ark at this scale. God also only send animals to the ark according to their kind. So not every type of dog, horse, cat etc would have been present. The internet is filled with calculations about this so I'm not also gonna copy paste them here. An interesting question is where Noah and his family learned how to create a ship like that. It could be that God thought them everything but it also might be possible that the people back then where more skilled than we give them credit for.

Note

I might not have answered all your questions about this. I also don't know all the answers but feel free to ask any further questions in the comments. This post took me a rather long time to publish because I couldn't really choose what to write about. Chapter 6 and 7 alone are enough to write books about but this isn't the place for that so I picked some things to write about.