Sons of God (, literally: "the sons of Elohim")The lexical item in , means “God” but uses the Hebrew plural morpheme -im. Although ʼĕlōhîm is plural in form, it is understood in the singular sense. Therefore the English translation is "God" rather than "Gods". or sons of gods, also rendered as divine beings,Speiser, E. A. (1982) . Genesis. The Anchor Bible. Vol. 1. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. p. 45. ISBN 978-0-300-14025-5.
"vi 2. divine beings. Literally "sons of God/gods." The term elohim is here clearly differentiated from Yahweh (vs. 3). Elsewhere E employs the former in the sense of "Fate, Providence," and the like (see NOTE on xx 13). Here, however, the main stress is on "immortals" as opposed to "mortals." is a phrase used in the Tanakh or Old Testament and in Christian Apocrypha. The phrase is also used in Kabbalah where bene elohim are part of different Jewish angelic hierarchies.
The root for this phrase may have originally referred to a group of supernatural beings ("sons of the gods"), and lesser divinities in Canaanite religions. They would be interpreted as angels or watchers in the later periods of Second Temple Judaism, or instead as god kings, as well as the righteous offspring of Seth by others starting from the 2nd–4th century CE.
Hebrew Bible In the early writings of the Hebrew Bible, both bene elohim () as well as the malak () are aspects of God.Russell, Jeffrey Burton. The devil: Perceptions of evil from antiquity to primitive Christianity. Cornell University Press, 1987. p. 197 In the earliest records, the Bənē hāʾĔlōhīm are in heaven. They are depicted as the heavenly court or the pantheon of religious belief-system of their time.
The phrase is a possible survival of Hebrew Polytheism, in which the Elohists refer to the Divine in a plural (ʾĔlōhīm).Russell, Jeffrey Burton. The devil: Perceptions of evil from antiquity to primitive Christianity. Cornell University Press, 1987. p. 184 In the Pentateuch, the Bənē hāʾĔlōhīm form the Divine council, comparable to the "sons of God" in Canaanite religion.Russell, Jeffrey Burton. The devil: Perceptions of evil from antiquity to primitive Christianity. Cornell University Press, 1987. p. 184 In the latter, the "sons" are gods or manifestations of the Divine.Russell, Jeffrey Burton. The devil: Perceptions of evil from antiquity to primitive Christianity. Cornell University Press, 1987. p. 184
As such, the Bənē hāʾĔlōhīm reflected the transcendent aspect of the Divine, but became progressively differentiated from the good aspect of God when the Hebrew religion shifted towards monotheism. In contrast to the mal’āḵ, the Bənē hāʾĔlōhīm do not express a mediator between God and humanity.Russell, Jeffrey Burton. The devil: Perceptions of evil from antiquity to primitive Christianity. Cornell University Press, 1987. p. 197 The fusion of the Bənē hāʾĔlōhīm with the mal’āḵ is evident in the Book of Job. Here, Satan is both one of the Bənē hāʾĔlōhīm in the heavenly court, as well as a mal’āḵ expressing God's interaction with humanity.Russell, Jeffrey Burton. The devil: Perceptions of evil from antiquity to primitive Christianity. Cornell University Press, 1987. pp. 201–202.
Book of Genesis The "Sons of God" are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible at Genesis 6:1–4.
The Book of Genesis tells that the "Sons of God" lusted after the daughters of men and begot a race of giants (Nephilim). These offspring were identified with "the heroes of old, men of renown." Then, God sent the deluge to purge the earth of these giants.Russell, Jeffrey Burton. The devil: Perceptions of evil from antiquity to primitive Christianity. Cornell University Press, 1987. p. 184
The Book of Psalms refers to God delivering judgement among the gods and causes them to fall for their sins, as God declares that "Gods you may be, sons you all of the Most High, yet you shall die as men die; princes fall, every one of them, and so shall you.". However, there is no indication what the sin was and the Psalms are at least five hundred years after Genesis was composed, thus written in a different intellectual context. Yet, both refer to the existence of a pantheon and that some of its members sinned. During the Apocalyptic period, these ideas were developed further.Russell, Jeffrey Burton. The devil: Perceptions of evil from antiquity to primitive Christianity. Cornell University Press, 1987. p. 185
According to Chris Seeman Genesis 6:1–4 depicts literal sexual unions between divine beings and human women, a narrative motif with potential origins in Mesopotamian or Greek mythologies, that was incorporated into Yahwist (J) primeval cosmology.
Ronald Hendel similarly interprets the passage as a lost mythic tradition. In Hendel's analysis, the "sons of the gods" were originally divine beings rather than Sethites or rulers, and the Gibborim of verse 4 are demigod offspring identical to the Nephilim. He argues this intermixing caused cosmic imbalance by crossing human-divine boundaries, making Yahweh restrict human life, preventing the hybrids from full divine status or immortality. Hendel identifies parallels with the Hesiodic traditions, where Zeus uses a deluge to wipe out demigods and end divine-human intermingling. Another is the pre-flood Mesopotamian Apkallu. While Hendel says 1 Enoch expands on Genesis 6, Seeman believes that both are drawing from the same underlying tradition. David Clines also identifies them as celestial beings, but ties the reference to the entire Genesis 1-11 framework. Clines demonstrates that this breach of boundaries between heaven and earth is the climax, representing the final culmination of sin and cosmic disorder which results in the flood.
Ugaritic text Claus Westermann claims that the text of Genesis 6 is based on an Ugaritic urtext.C. Westermann, Genesis, BKAT 1/3. (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1982), p. 42. In Ugaritic, a cognate phrase is bn 'il. This may occur in the Ugaritic Baal Cycle.Mark S. Smith The Ugaritic Baal cycle 1994 p249 "all the divine sons" (or "all the sons of God"). ESA sources may support this point."
KTU² 1.40 demonstrates the use of bn il to mean "sons of gods".M. Dietrich, O. Loretz, J. Sanmartin Die keilalphabetischen Texte aus Ugarit 2d ed. (Munster: Ugarit-Verlag, 1995) KTU² 1.65 (which may be a scribal exercise) uses bn il three times in succession: il bn il / dr bn il / mphrt bn il "El, the sons of gods, the circle of the sons of gods / the totality of the sons of gods."
The phrase bn ilm ("sons of the gods") is also attested in Ugaritic texts,Jesús-Luis Cunchillos, Juan-Pablo Vita, A concordance of Ugaritic words, 2003, p. 389.Jesús-Luis Cunchillos, Juan-Pablo Vita, The texts of the Ugaritic data bank, 2003, p. 82.Marvin H. Pope, El in the Ugaritic texts, 1955, p. 49.Rahmouni, A., Divine epithets in the Ugaritic alphabetic texts, 2008, p. 91.Young G. D., Concordance of Ugaritic, 1956, p. 13. as is the phrase phr bn ilm ("assembly of the sons of the gods").G. Johannes Botterweck, Helmer Ringgren, Theological dictionary of the Old Testament, 2000, p. 130.
Elsewhere in the Ugarit corpus it is suggested that the bn ilm were the 70 sons of Asherah and El, who were the titulary deities of the people of the known world, and their "hieros gamos" marriage with the daughters of men gave rise to their rulers. There is evidence in 2 Samuel 7 that this may have been the case also in Israel.
Simon B. Parker highlights the linguistic and comparative context of the phrase bene ha-elohim. He notes that it is a Semitic idiom where "sons of -" denotes being in membership and within the same category, thus the phrase refers to a group of divine beings (elohim). This expression is found in Northwest Semitic mythology in the Ugaritic texts (KTU² 1.62:7, KTU² 1.23, KTU² 1.17, KTU² 1.10) like the Tale of Aqhat, where the bn il are the sons of El, an assembly of minor deities within a pantheon associated with stars. Parker considers that post-exilic and 2nd Temple period monotheism demoted these beings into subordinate angels, while the older context reflects myths of human women mixing with minor gods to create heroic beings, seen in the Epic of Gilgamesh and Hattic myth of Illuyanka.
Late text J. Scharbert associates Genesis 6:1–4 with the Priestly source and the final redaction of the Pentateuch. On this basis, he assigns the text to later editorial activity.Scharbert, J. Traditions- und Redaktionsgeschichte von Gn 6 1967 Rüdiger Bartelmus sees only Genesis 6:3 as a late insertion.
Józef Milik and Matthew Black advanced the view of a late text addition to a text dependent on post-exilic, non-canonical tradition, such as the legend of the Watchers from the pseudepigraphic version of the Book of Enoch.
Translations
Different source versions of Genesis 6:1–4 vary in their use of "sons of God". Some manuscripts of the Septuagint have emendations to read "sons of God" as "angels". Codex Vaticanus contains "angels" originally. In Codex Alexandrinus "sons of God" has been omitted and replaced by "angels". This reading of Angels is further confirmed by Augustine in his work City of God where he speaks of both variants in book 15 chapter 23. The Peshitta reads "sons of God". Furthermore the Vulgate goes for the literal filii Dei meaning Sons of God. Most modern translations of Christian bibles retain this whereas Jewish ones tend to deviate to such as Sons of Rulers which may in part be due to Shimon bar Yochai who cursed anyone who translated this as "Sons of God" (Genesis Rabbah 26:7).
Beyond this in both the Codices Job 1:6 and Deuteronomy 32:8 when the phrase "angels of God" is used in place of where the Hebrew says "sons of God". For the verse in Deuteronomy the Masoretic Text does not say "sons of God" but "sons of Israel", however in 4Q37 the term "sons of God" is used. This is probably the root reading for the reading we see in the Septuagint. Chrissy M. Hansen argues that the lost Septuagint's original transmission was likely "sons of God", which was also the version used by several medieval theologians in Latin (filiorum dei).Chrissy M. Hansen, A Note on the “Sons of God” in Latin Quotations of Deut 32:8d Open Access, November 01 2025
TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism (2025) 30: 127–135.https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/sblpress/tc/article/doi/10.15699/tc.30.2025.06/404791/A-Note-on-the-Sons-of-God-in-Latin-Quotations-of
Other mentions The phrase "sons of the Elohim" also occurs in:
Job 1:6 bənê hāʼĕlōhîm (בְּנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים) the sons of Elohim. Job 2:1 bənê hāʼĕlōhîm (בְּנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים) the sons of Elohim. Job 38:7 bənê ĕlōhîm (בְּנֵי אֱלֹהִֽים) without the definite article - sons of Elohim. Deuteronomy 32:8 both bənê hāʼĕlōhîm (בְּנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים) and bənê ĕl (בני אל) the sons of Elohim or sons of El in two Dead Sea Scrolls (4QDtj and 4QDtq); mostly "angels of God" (αγγελων θεου) in the LXX (sometimes "sons of God" or "sons of Israel"); "sons of Israel" in the MT.
Closely related phrases include: Psalms 29:1 bənê ēlîm (בְּנֵי אֵלִים) without the definite article - sons of elim (a similar expression). Psalms 82:6 bənê elîon (בְּנֵי עֶלְיוֹן) without the definite article and using ‘Most high’ instead of ēl. Psalms 89:6 bənê ēlîm (בְּנֵי אֵלִים) - sons of elim A closely related Aramaic expression occurs in Daniel 3:25: bar elahin - בַר אֱלָהִֽין - son of gods.
Second Temple Judaism (c. 500 BCE – 70 CE)
The Book of Enoch, the Enochic Book of Giants, and the Book of Jubilees refer to the Watchers who are paralleled to the "sons of God" in Genesis 6. The Epistle of Barnabas is considered by some to acknowledge the Enochian version.James Carleton Paget, The Epistle of Barnabas: outlook and background 1994, p. 10, "The quotation finds no precise equivalent in Enoch, which is probably explicable on the grounds that B. is inspired by something he remembers from Enoch at this point (see for a parallel to I Enoch 89:61–64; 90:17f.)"
Interpretation Judaism