(92) On what principle it was that giants were born of angels and women? (#Ge 6:4). The poets call those men who were born out of the earth giants, that is to say, sons of the Earth.{11}{the Greek name Gigas is said to be derived from geµ and gennaoµ, “to bring forth.”} But Moses here uses this appellation improperly, and he uses it too very often merely to denote the vast personal size of the principal men, equal to that of Hajk{12}{hajk is an addition of the Armenian translator; it is the name of a fabulous patriarch of the Armenian nation.} or Hercules. But he relates that these giants were sprung from a combined procreation of two natures, namely, from angels and mortal women; for the substance of angels is spiritual; but it occurs every now and then that on emergencies occurring they have imitated the appearance of men, and transformed themselves so as to assume the human shape; as they did on this occasion, when forming connexions with women for the production of giants. But if the children turn out imitators of the wickedness of their mothers, departing from the virtue of their fathers, let them depart, according to the determination of the will of a depraved race, and because of their proud contempt for the supreme Deity, and so be condemned as guilty of voluntary and deliberate wickedness. But sometimes Moses styles the angels the sons of God, inasmuch as they were not produced by any mortal, but are incorporeal, as being spirits destitute of any body; or rather that exhorter and teacher of virtue, namely Moses, calls those men who are very excellent and endowed with great virtue the sons of God; and the wicked and depraved men he calls bodies, or flesh.
(93) What is the meaning of the expression: “God considered anxiously, because he had made man upon the earth; and he resolved the matter in his mind?” (#Ge 6:6).{13}{the translation of our Bible is, “It repented God that he had made man upon the earth.”} Some persons imagine that it is intimated by these words that the Deity repented; but they are very wrong to entertain such an idea, since the Deity is unchangeable. Nor are the facts of his caring and thinking about the matter, and of his agitating it in his mind, any proofs that he is repenting, but only indications of a kind and determinate counsel, according to which the displays care, revolving in his mind the cause why he had made man upon the earth. But since this earth is a place of misery, even that heavenly being, man, who is a mixture compounded of soul and body, from the very hour of his birth to that of his death, is nothing else but the slave of the body. That the Deity therefore should meditate and deliberate on these matters is nothing surprising; since most men take to themselves wickedness rather than virtue, being influenced by the twofold impulse mentioned above; namely, that of a body by its nature corruptible, and placed in the terrible situation of earth, which is the lowest of all places.
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