Hey, Good-lookin’ (Gen 6:2)

Adam’s Aftermath

² The sons of the gods saw that the daughters of the humans …

וַיִּרְא֤וּ בְנֵי־הָֽאֱלֹהִים֙ אֶת־בְּנ֣וֹת הָֽאָדָ֔ם כִּ֥י

And now, the missing words from the Hebrew in our last post, plus some lagniappe.

The words I left out last time were …

• the first word of the verse, וַיִּרְא֤וּ va-yir’u ‘they saw’; and

• the grammatical word in between those “sons” and “daughters,” אֶת et, used to mark the direct object of the verb.

I try to tell students of Hebrew, even very close to the beginning of their studies, to notice that the Bible likes repetition. Even when we are reading prose and not poetry, it’s natural for certain patterns to repeat:

• sons                    of         the       gods

• daughters           of         the       human

In this case, these are the subject and those are the object: “The sons of the gods saw the daughters of the humans.” I must, however, point out to those who are not paying attention to the Hebrew text that I have run a stop sign. Look back at the top of the post and you will see that the ד of הָֽאָדָ֔ם has a mark atop it that looks like a colon (:). It’s marking that word as the end of a phrase. Under the כ of the next word, כִּ֥י, you see a little 90º angle open to the left, where the verse will continue. That’s saying, “Keep moving! Don’t stop here!”

So why did I stop there?

The answer is back in Gen 1:4, where we read this: