Many modern pastors avoid Genesis 6:1–4 because the text is short and the debates are long.
The late John MacArthur does the opposite. He affirms a supernatural reading of the “sons of God,” then proposes that the unions took place through possession of men rather than through angels taking bodily form.
That combination invites a close look at what he argues, why it matters, and how it compares with the older angel view held by many Jewish and early Christian writers.
MacArthur’s candor about the difficulty of the passage
Here is how he frames the research challenge and the importance of the four verses:
“…the only thing worse than a migraine headache is having to spend two weeks in Genesis 6:1 to 4.
There are a number of interpretations of this particular passage, and people pile up under all varying interpretations. To try to sort through the voluminous journal articles, commentaries, and treatments of this passage is no small task.”“Why, out of all of the things that must have gone on during that sixteen hundred and fifty-six years does God inspire Moses, the writer of the law, the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, as we call them, why does He inspire Moses to record this? What is the significance of this?
Now we want to remember that the book of Genesis is the book of what? Of beginnings, isn’t it? So this is the beginning of something that is very, very important. There are no trivial things here, there are no secondary things here. If you have to be very careful in selecting material because you’re making a brief treatment of a very, very important period of time, then you’re going to choose very selectively what is critical to understand, and I believe there is a very critical nature to this information.”John MacArthur | Demonic Invasion
MacArthur’s pastoral point is simple. Genesis is brief, so nothing included is trivial. Genesis 6 marks the beginning of something weighty that helps explain the moral slide before the Flood.
Who are the “sons of God” according to MacArthur
He states the identification up front and without hedging:
“The key identification in this entire passage is to find out who the sons of God are, and I’m going to give that away at the very beginning because there’s no point in hiding the fact.
I am convinced that these are demons. These are demons. You can write that down in capital letters if you want, I’m not going to move off of that understanding.”John MacArthur | Demonic Invasion
He then argues that the contrasting terms in the narrative push readers toward a nonhuman identity:
“That’s the first thing. All theological, all philosophical, all rational perspectives aside, the contrast then is between creatures of God and creatures of men. That’s the point. The contrast is between sons of God and daughters of men, creatures of God and creatures of men.
Sons of God can’t be sons of men. Nor can sons of God refer to righteous men or to some righteous line of men since there is no such thing as a righteous line of men, and there is no way that men in the Old Testament are ever designated as sons of God. So we want to stick with the language.
The oldest interpretation of this passage, by the way, the oldest one, the traditional Jewish one, the view of the rabbis and modern Jewish commentators like Umberto Cassuto, the view of the church fathers is that the sons of God refer to demons, fallen angels.
Why do they say that? Because, very simply, every time you have an Old Testament reference to sons of God, it refers to angels.”John MacArthur | Demonic Invasion
MacArthur is right to note that the most ancient stream treats “sons of God” as heavenly beings. In Job 1 and 2 and in Job 38, the phrase refers to the divine council.
Many Second Temple texts and several early Christian writers also read Genesis 6 that way. Where MacArthur is distinctive is in how he thinks the unions occurred.
MacArthur’s mechanism: possession rather than embodiment
MacArthur rejects the idea that angels themselves took bodies or sired children directly. He argues that demons possessed men and entered marriage that way:
“There was an actual marital transaction. The question then comes: How can this be? How can an immaterial spiritual being, a fallen angel, a demon marry a woman? How can they chose a wife and have a legal ceremony? How can they engage in a marriage?
Only one way, folks. They have to take the body of a man. And I think that’s so obvious that it doesn’t even need to be said.
…the demons (defined as the sons of God) have moved into men with the purpose of cohabitating with women.
…their strategy was to move into the bodies of males and then to marry beautiful women and to produce children. This would be a demon-dominated union, and a demon-dominated family.”John MacArthur | Demonic Invasion
He also frames demon interest in women with examples of crossing realms:
“But what is interesting here is that these sons of God, these spiritual beings who exist in their own realm, saw the daughters of men were beautiful, and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.
Now you have the perversity here of these spiritual fallen angels, these demon beings, overstepping the boundaries of their realm. They defy God by leaving the defined realm that God has placed them, their spirit world, and they enter the human realm.
We know they can do that. Satan has already entered the realm of animals and showed up indwelling a snake in the garden.
Now, these demons, it says, are motivated because they saw that the daughters of men were beautiful.
…Wicked spirits attracted to female creatures; wicked, perverted demons able even to appreciate the beauty that God has placed in women in some perverse and twisted way.”John MacArthur | Demonic Invasion
In short, MacArthur affirms the supernatural identity, but shifts the means to possession. That move avoids questions about angelic embodiment and procreation, while keeping the warning about boundary crossing.
A brief comparison with the older angel view
The ancient angel reading does not usually add a possession step. In Jewish material like 1 Enoch and Jubilees, the rebel angels descend, take wives, and produce offspring remembered as giants or mighty men. Early Christians such as Justin, Athenagoras, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Clement usually assume that story world when they cite Genesis 6. That stream sees the unions themselves as the transgression, not a possession that returns the story to standard human marriages.
If the Genesis 6 unions were simply demon-dominated marriages of human men and women, readers must ask what makes that different from many other evils in Scripture.
The older view linked Genesis 6 to the ancient memory behind pagan myths of gods, goddesses, and demigods. A possession-only model struggles to explain that memory with the same force.
How MacArthur uses the New Testament
MacArthur appeals to 1 Peter 3, 2 Peter 2, and Jude to support a supernatural reading of Genesis 6 and to show that certain spirits were judged for sins tied to the days of Noah:
“How do you know this interpretation is right? Turn quickly to 1 Peter 3. We have New Testament interpretations of this passage, fortunately, by God’s goodness. We believe the sons of God were angels, fallen angels, demons, and here is evidence.”
“In His living Spirit, He went to the prison, and it was not a human prison, it was a spirit prison. …The spirits that are in this prison are the spirits who were disobedient to God to the limits, to the boundaries that God had set for them in the time of Noah.
And you can believe that when He was dying on the cross and when He died on the cross, the news came down, Jesus is dead. And they were having a party, celebrating that, when He showed up and He announced His triumph over them. Why would they care? Because this is a long battle, a long battle.”John MacArthur | Demonic Invasion
He also addresses the alternate claim that Peter meant human spirits:
“‘Spirits’ as a term is never used for humans in the New Testament unless it is qualified by a genitive, the spirits of just men or something. It’s never used to speak of humans, we’re never called spirits. These are spirit beings, these are angels who are in a prison where they have been because they disobeyed God, they overstepped their boundaries in the days of Noah, prior to the flood. That ties perfectly in with Genesis 6.
…If God didn’t spare angels when they sinned but cast them into hell, or literally into pits of darkness reserved for judgment, and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, so forth and so forth. Wait a minute. What do we have here? God didn’t spare the angels that sinned but put them in some prison. First Peter calls it a prison, this calls it a pit of darkness. And these were some angels at the time of that ancient world of Noah, again, here they are again.”John MacArthur | Demonic Invasion
MacArthur then draws a moral parallel with Sodom and Gomorrah:
“But again, 2 Peter 2:4 and 5 connects the judgment of angels sent to pits of darkness with Noah and its parallel. A parallel sin, listen to this carefully, a parallel sin and a parallel condemnation to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Let me ask you a question. Why did God destroy Sodom and Gomorrah? What sin? What is it? Homosexuality. That’s why God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because of the sin of homosexuality.
That’s the closest human parallel to what these demons did. They went after strange flesh, they stepped out of their appropriate realm when they came into man and polluted marriage.”John MacArthur | Demonic Invasion
His use of 1 Peter, 2 Peter, and Jude supports a supernatural reading. Those texts speak of sinning angels, chains, and a Noah context. The question that remains is the mechanism. The New Testament does not describe possession as the way those sins occurred, and Jude’s phrase “went after strange flesh” was often taken in antiquity to mean unnatural unions rather than merely influence through possession.
What MacArthur says about motives and meaning
MacArthur reads the purpose of the event through the lens of deception rather than lust alone:
“And so these wicked people in that pre-flood society just embraced the demonic lie. They welcomed the demons into their lives because the promise says we’re going to escape death, we’re going to beat this obituary process, and we’re going to get eternal life and be like God.”
John MacArthur | Demonic Invasion
That pastoral emphasis is important. Whatever we decide about the mechanism, Genesis 6 sits in a story of deception, violence, and judgment, and the New Testament uses it to warn the church about rejecting God’s order.
Where his view is strong, and where it raises questions
Strengths
- He keeps the supernatural identity of the “sons of God,” which matches the oldest reading many Jews and early Christians knew.
- He uses 1 Peter 3, 2 Peter 2, and Jude to anchor the Noah context and the judgment of angels.
- He stresses the moral purpose of the text for the church.
Questions
- Genesis 6 says they took wives and went in to them. A possession model tries to preserve ordinary human marriage forms, but the older reading sees the unions themselves as the transgression.
- The mythic memory in the ancient world, where gods have children with women, is easier to explain if the unions were understood as angelic rather than as possessed men.
- The New Testament’s “went after strange flesh” was often heard as a direct boundary violation. Possession does cross a boundary, yet it does not obviously explain the unique offspring idea that Genesis 6 and later traditions remember.
How this fits the broader field of interpretations
- Angel view (ancient Jewish and many early Christian writers): “sons of God” are heavenly beings who took wives, sired mighty men, and were judged.
- Sethite view (later and very influential): “sons of God” are the line of Seth who married Cainite women, leading to moral decay.
- MacArthur’s view: affirms the supernatural identity, but the unions are through possession, not angelic embodiment.
Readers should weigh each view by the wording of the text, the use of the phrase sons of God elsewhere, and the New Testament’s brief yet pointed allusions.
Terms at a glance
- Sons of God: in MacArthur’s reading, demons as fallen spiritual beings who act through human possession
- Daughters of men: human women who became wives
- Nephilim: remembered as mighty ones or giants, the notable figures on the earth in those days
- Strange flesh: Jude’s phrase that marks unnatural desire and boundary crossing
My thoughts
MacArthur does important work by keeping the supernatural reading on the table and by drawing the church back to Jude, 2 Peter, and 1 Peter. His possession mechanism tries to protect other doctrines about angels and embodiment, yet it seems to solve a problem the text does not require us to solve.
Genesis 6 speaks in plain family terms, which the older angel reading takes at face value, while also admitting we do not know how.
The New Testament confirms that angels sinned and were judged without describing technical steps. In that sense, the ancient reading may be both simpler and closer to how early audiences heard the story.
Conclusion
John MacArthur reads Genesis 6 with a supernatural lens, aligns it with Peter and Jude, and uses it to warn the church about deception and desire. His distinctive proposal is that the unions happened through demonic possession of men rather than through angels taking bodily form. That move raises fair questions when set next to the older angel tradition that many Jews and early Christians assumed.
The shared ground is still large. Genesis 6 marks a crossing of God’s boundary, a surge of corruption, and the approach of judgment, which the New Testament treats as a sober warning for every generation.
