A Symbol of Authority

I think we have settled the question “who were the sons of God?” They were clearly, the fallen angles of Jude 1:6 and 2 Peter 2:4. In the Good News Bible (GNB) version of Jude 1:6 we told to “Remember Sodom and Gomorrah, and the nearby towns, whose people acted as those angels did and indulged in sexual immorality and perversion.” (Jud 1:7) That is, these fallen angels left their “habitation”[1] or bodies[2], casting them aside to come to earth because they “saw the daughters of men that they were fair” (Gen 6:2).

In 1 Corinthians 11:10 Paul says “For this cause ought the woman to have power” that is, “a symbol of authority,” which is understood to be a veil, “on her head because of the angels.” Is Paul alluding to the fact that the angels can be enticed by women? In chapter 11, he first makes the point that men are to be under authority to Christ and the women should be under authority to their husbands. This is a divinely ordained hierarchy designed to ensure that all things might “be done decently and in order.” (1 Cor 14:40)

In his article titled The Woman's Headcovering [3], Michael Marlowe explain that, “Paul is about to explain one of the basic traditional practices of the Church more fully so that the Corinthians might understand and observe it more willingly, not merely as a traditional custom but as a teaching.” He points out that “We may infer that some irregularities had occurred or objections raised concerning women's headcoverings.” It is not clear just what the issue is with which Paul is dealing but Marlowe believes that problem may have been that women in the church at Corinth were abusing their Christian liberty and “had cast off their headcoverings in some kind of demonstration of sexual equality.”

Marlowe does not believe that Paul is addressing either a Roman, Greek or Jewish custom here. Rather, says Marlowe, “he is urging the Corinthians to observe an established custom of the Church.” (emphasis is Marlow’s) Marlowe, who has written extensively on the subject, says, “This custom was established by Paul in his Gentile congregations, probably after the example of the Jewish custom, but it was somewhat more liberal in its requirements than the stricter Jewish custom. Christian women were expected to cover their heads—but not their faces—in religious exercises, and especially in meetings. It is very doubtful that in this matter Paul would have cared much about what pagan women happened to be wearing in Corinth at the time.”

But what does Paul's reference to angels mean? Tertullian (160-225AD) of Carthage understood Paul to have Genesis 6:1-9 in mind when he writes that women should be covered “because of the angels.” Many commentators agree with Tertullian.  Author, Bryan T. Huie says, for example, that, “Without an understanding of what took place anciently [in Genesis 6] between the fallen host and women, this verse is cryptic at best.”[4] However, this interpretation of Paul’s statement is not widely accepted today. B. W. Johnson speaks for the overwhelming majority of commentators when he writes that what Paul is saying is that, "There should be no violation of decorum, such as a bareheaded woman in a public assembly would be, lest it offend the ministering angels which are always present, though unseen."[5]

So the jury is still out on the exact interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11:10, but what we do know is that fallen angles “saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.” When these angels “saw the daughters of men” we are told that they saw that “they were fair.” The word “fair” is “ṭôb” which is pronounced “tov.” This is the same word that is used in Gen. 1:4 where we read that, “God saw the light, that it was good.” The word “good” here  is “ṭôb.” Strong’s defines this as “good” and thus it is translated at least 365 times in our KJV Bible. However, teacher and translator Jeff Brenner points out that, “It should always be remembered that the Hebrews often relate descriptions to functionality.” In his Mechanical Translation of this verse he translates “ṭôb” as “functional.” So we read that God saw the light that it was “functional.” That is, it did that for which God had created it. As we have pointed out before, the ancient Hebrews thought in concrete terms while we Greco-Romans think in abstracts. Concrete concepts are those that can be seen, touched, smelt, heard, or tasted. But “good” is abstract. So what is the concrete concept behind the Hebrew word “ṭôb?” When we use words like “good” or “fair” they have more to do with how something looks. The fallen angels, we are told, “saw the daughters of men that they were fair.” From this we assume that they were pleasant to look at or that they were “beautiful.” However the ancient Hebrew, unlike the Greeks, were more concerned about whether something worked then how it looked. In the Hebrew mind, the idiom “beauty is only skin deep” was to be taken seriously. Just because a woman was “pleasant” or “fair” did not mean she was “functional.”

In Genesis 1:28 we are told that God created male and female and told them to populate the earth. Their function was to reproduce and populate the earth. In Genesis 3:20, Adam names his wife “chavvâh” (Eve) meaning “life giver” “because she was the mother of all living.” Her function was to be the “mother of all living.” The word translated “daughters” in Genesis 6:2 is the Hebrew word “bath.” This is from a root word “banah” meaning “to build.”  This is the same root word from which the word “ben” meaning “son” comes from. The function of the daughters (and the sons) is to build the family. What the fallen angels had in mind when they saw that the daughters of men were “functional” was that they would serve the purposes for which they wished to use them. What was it these fallen angles whished to accomplish? Was it simply to satisfy their lust? Perhaps, but I think that their purposes were more sinister than this.

After Adam and Eve lost their right to rule over the earth, Satan became the “god of this world.” (2 Cor. 4:4) He had taken dominion over what had been given to Adam. In Matthew we are told that Satan took Jesus to the top of “an exceeding high mountain” and “sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them.” He then told Christ, “All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.” We read in Luke’s version of this event that Satan says, “for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.”  Jesus does not deny Satan’s claim. In fact, Jesus himself refers to Satan as “the prince [or ruler] of this world” (John 12:31; John 14:30; John 16:11). In Ephesians 2:2, Paul says that Satan is “the prince of the power of the air.”[6]

Welch says that, “When considering the teaching of Scripture concerning man, we are necessarily brought face to face with the truth that dominion was given to him at his creation.”[7](Gen 1:26) When he was placed in The Garden he was to “dress (cultivate) and keep (guard over) it” (Gen 2:15). The Companion Bible says that the meaning of this verse is that Adam was charged with keeping it safe and preserving it. It would appear that God expected an enemy to attack and attempt to take control of that which had been entrusted to Adam. And in fact as Welch points out, “As soon as man was given dominion, Satan saw his rival and plotted his downfall.”

Soon, we learn that Eve is deceived by the Nacash; the shinning one; “that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world” (Rev 12:9). Welch tells us that “By the deception of Eve, Satan caused Adam to miss the mark, to come short of the glory of God expressed in this image, and he who had been given dominion himself came under the twofold dominion of sin and death.”

But God had a plan to redeem fallen man. In verse 15 of Genesis 3 God reveals that plan. He promises “a seed” which will bruise the serpent’s head. The Companion Bible says that this blow to the serpent’s head denotes "the complete destruction of Satan and his works.” Satan was in the garden that fateful day and heard this promise of a coming deliverer and of his own final demise.  James Montgomery Boice says that it was at this point that Satan “conceived the plan of corrupting the entire race by the intermarriage of demons and human beings. The Savior could not be born of a demon-possessed mother. So if Satan could succeed in infecting the entire race, the deliverer could not come.”[8]

Ray C. Stedman writes that Genesis 6, “strongly suggests that demonic possession has the ability to affect genetic structure. The chromosomes are changed so that the progeny are markedly different; a sort of mutation takes place and the result is a pronounced change in the children of such a union.” 

Now, we understand what “function” the “daughters of men” were to fulfill. They were to be used by Satan and his minions (i.e. fallen angels) to corrupt the bloodline through which the Savior was to come. If Satan had succeeded in corrupting the human race, he would have prevented the coming of the perfect Son of God, the promised "seed of the woman," who would defeat Satan and restore man's dominion (Genesis 3:15). If Satan had, by any means, prevented that birth, he would obviously have averted his own doom.

Stedman quotes Time Magazine as reporting that “a new theory to the effect that ‘a genetic abnormality may predispose a man to antisocial behavior, including crimes of violence...’ A normal male baby has an XY chromosome pattern, but occasionally one is found with an XYY pattern. According to an all-woman team of researchers in Scotland, this ‘may be a supermale, overaggressive and potentially criminal.’ It was further noted that ‘the XYY (males) averaged 6 ft 1 inch tall whereas the average for (others tested) was 5 ft 7 inches.’” We will find as we continue our study that the union between fallen angels and “daughters of men” did indeed lead to “a genetic abnormality” which produced a breed of “supermales” who were “overaggressive and potentially criminal.”[9]   

-Allen