INTERESTING COMMENTS ON GENESIS.
The following comments are from Prof. Bush and others; and I send them, thinking they may be of interest to the readers of the REVIEW. M. E. CORNELL. The subjoined, on Gen. 6:3, is from Prof. Bush: “The Lord said,” i. e., to himself, purposed, resolved,—‘My Spirit shall not always strive with man.’ Heb., shall not judge, i. e., contend in judgment, as the word signifies, Eccl. 6:10. As if he should say, ‘My Spirit shall not perpetually keep up the process of judgment, rebuke, conviction, and condemnation.’ The Gr. translates it, ‘My Spirit shall not continue in these men.’ Chal., ‘This evil generation shall not continue before me forever, because they are flesh, and their works most wicked; and an end shall be given unto them, an hundred and twenty years, if perhaps they may be converted.’ “The language plainly implies that ample time and opportunity had been already afforded for this purpose; ‘the longsuffering of God has waited,’ but all to no effect, and now an end is determined to the divine forbearance. Still, as the justice of Heaven is reluctant to take its course, it shall not be immediately executed; a limited respite is granted, which, once expired, no further indulgence is shown.” “There is a time, and Justice marks the date,
For long-forbearing clemency to wait;
That hour elapsed, th’ incurable revolt
Is punished, and down comes the thunderbolt.”
—Cowper. “For that he also is flesh.” Chal., “for that they are flesh, and their works evil.” Had the sons of God kept themselves separate, and preserved their purity, God would have spared the world for their sakes, but they mingled together, and became in effect one people. God therefore, seeing they had become virtually one, called them all by one name, and that is man (Adam), without distinction; and in giving the reason why his Spirit should not always strive with man, special reference is had to their having become degenerate. It was “for that he also,” or these also, were flesh; even his own professing people, those who had been denominated and deemed the “sons of God,” even they too had become fleshly, corrupt, profligate. The original is peculiarly emphatic, as if such a result would not have been to be wondered at in regard to the Cainites, but that it was a matter of astonishment and regret that the pious stock of Seth should have thus grievously apostatized; but seeing that they had in fact joined themselves to the opposite party and become the promoters of the general iniquity, they must expect nothing else than to share in the bitter consequences. Men are worse than others, just in proportion as they ought to be better, and are dealt with accordingly.” “There were giants in the earth.”—Gen. 6:4. Jacobus says:—“The nephilim, rendered ‘giants,’ are literally the fallen, or those who fall upon or violently assault others.” Haremic understands the term to mean fallen ones—apostates. Prof. Bush: “A term descriptive probably not so much of great strength and stature as of great cruelty, rapine, and violence; though the first, as a secondary sense, may still be included. Heb., nephilim, fallers, i. e., apostates fallen from God and the true religion, and by violence and cruelty falling upon their fellow-men, injuring their persons, and invading their rights; usurpers, oppressors, tyrants, monsters of wickedness, and lust. . . .” “By the Greeks, this class of men are termed Giantes, from two words signifying to be born of the earth; a term from which we learn both the origin and the import of the English word ‘giant.’ The giants of the ancient mythology are fabled to have sprung from the earth; from some broken traditions respecting these antediluvian apostates, who, in the sense of being earthly, sensual, vile, despising heavenly things, might be justly denominated, ‘earth born.’ There are more frequent allusions to them in the original Scriptures than are obvious in our translation or any other. Thus, Prov. 9:18, speaking of the young man enticed into the abodes of the adulterous woman, ‘He knoweth not that the dead (Heb., the giants, the rephaim) are there;’ i. e., he does not consider that it was by this sin that the renowned rebels before the flood perished, and that he is in danger of meeting the same fate. Prov. 21:16. ‘The man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead (Heb., of the giants);’ i. e., shall be in imminent peril of being joined to that wretched society. Job 26:5: ‘Dead things (Heb., the giants, rephaim) are formed from under the waters, and the inhabitants thereof.’ This conveys no intelligible meaning. It is probably more correctly rendered in the Lat. Vulgate, ‘The giants groan (Heb., shake, or tremble) under the waters with the inhabitants thereof.’ The clue to this is to be found in the fact that it was this class of men who were buried in the waters of the deluge.” Dr. Adam Clarke says: “Nephilim from naphal, ‘he fell.’ Those who had apostatized or fallen from the true religion. The Septuagint translates the original word by γηγενεῖς, which literally signifies earth born, and which we, following them, term giants, without having any reference to the meaning of the word which we generally conceive to signify persons of enormous stature. But the word when properly understood makes a very just distinction between the sons of men and the sons of God; those were the nephilim, the fallen earth born men, with the animal and devilish mind. These were the sons of God born from above.”