1–4. This whole passage is obviously archaic and mythological. The idea of male gods coupling with mortal women whose beauty ignites their desire is a commonplace of Greek myth, and E. A. Speiser has proposed that both the Greek and the Semitic stories may have a common source in the Hittite traditions of Asia Minor. The entourage of celestial beings obscurely implied in God’s use of the first-person plural in the Garden story (compare 3:22) here produces, however fleetingly, active agents in the narrative. As with the prospect that man and woman might eat from the tree of life, God sees this intermingling of human and divine as the crossing of a necessary line of human limitation, and He responds by setting a new retracted limit (three times the formulaic forty) to human life span. Once more human mortality is confirmed, this time in quantitative terms.

2. man. Here it seems better to render the generic haʾadam as “man” both because in the patrilineal imagination (compare the immediately preceding genealogy) males are seen as the begetters of daughters and sons, and because the term “daughters of man” is played against “sons of God.”

comely. The Hebrew also means “good” but it very often occurs in the sense of goodly appearance, and is sometimes explicitly paired with the word for “beautiful.” The same term is used for Eve’s perception of the tree of knowledge (3:6).

3. abide . . . is but. Both pertinent Hebrew terms are cryptic, and the translation is somewhat speculative.

4. Nephilim. The only obvious meaning of this Hebrew term is “fallen ones”—perhaps, those who have come down from the realm of the gods; but then the word might conceivably reflect an entirely different, un-Hebraic background. In any case, the notion of semidivine, heroic figures—in Numbers the Nephilim are thought of as giants who are offspring of miscegenation between gods and women—again touches on common ground with Greek and other mythologies.

come to bed with. The Hebrew idiom is literally “come into,” that is, “entered.” It involves a more direct reference to the mechanics of the sexual act than “to know” and thus has a more carnal coloration, but at the same time it seems to be perfectly decorous. The English “entered” would be too clinical, and, in any case, the Hebrew idiom refers to the whole act of intercourse, not merely to penetration. Of the three expressions used for sexual intercourse in Genesis—the other two are “to know” and “to lie with”—this one is reserved for sexual intimacy with a woman with whom the man has not previously had carnal relations, whether or not she is his legitimate wife. The spatial imagery of the idiom of “coming into” appears to envisage entering concentric circles—the woman’s private sphere, her bed, her body.

heroes of yore. The Hebrew style of this entire clause reflects a certain epic heightening, hence the archaizing turn in the translation. One suspects that these words are either a citation of an old heroic poem or a stylistic allusion to the epic genre.

5. was great. With a minor change in vocalization, this adjective could be read as a verb, “multiplied”: in any case, the whole phrase echoes the “multiply over the earth” of verse 1. The nature of the evil, distinct from the preceding tale of human-divine miscegenation, is not specified, and God’s subsequent indictment uses only general terms (“corruption” and “outrage” / “lawlessness”). It is noteworthy that the sundry Mesopotamian Flood stories, on which this account draws heavily, present the Deluge as the gods’ response to overpopulation or as an arbitrary act, whereas here it is evil, not humankind, that multiplies and fills the earth.

heart’s devising. In the Bible the heart is usually thought of as the seat of intelligence, only occasionally as the seat of emotion; thus many modern translators use “mind” here. But man’s evil heart is pointedly meant to stand in contrast to God’s grieving heart (the same Hebrew word) in the next verse.

6. grieved. The same verbal root, ʿ-ts-b, is reflected in Eve’s pangs, Adam’s pain, and “the pain of our hands’ work.”

9. lineage. The listing of Noah’s three sons in the next verse supports this sense of toledot, but it might also mean “story.”

11. filled with outrage. Humankind had been enjoined to multiply and fill the earth, but the proliferation of human population leads to a proliferation of lawless behavior. This is one of several verbal echoes of the Creation story, suggesting, first, a perversion of creation by man and, then, a reversal of creation by God.

13. destroy. The Hebrew verb is identical with the one used three times above in the sense of “corrupt” and so inscribes a pattern of measure for measure.