When men began to multiply on the surface of the ground, and daughters were born to them, God’s sons saw that men’s daughters were beautiful, and they took any that they wanted for themselves as wives. Yahweh said, “My Spirit will not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; so his days will be one hundred twenty years.” The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when God’s sons came in to men’s daughters and had children […]
⛓ Read Genesis 6 forward — the whole chapter and its afterlife →Where this passage surfaces again, sorted by the strength of the link. Each kind of reuse — formal quotation, deliberate allusion, faint echo, figural pattern — carries its own mark. Follow any reference to read it in place.
Allusion3
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
'God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them down to Tartarus' draws on the sons of God who took human wives before the flood, read in Second-Temple tradition as the rebellion of the Watchers.
High confidenceThe angels who did not keep their first domain but deserted their dwelling allude to the 'sons of God' who took human wives, read in Second Temple tradition as a primeval angelic transgression. Jude takes this episode as the paradigm of beings who abandoned their proper station.
High confidenceThe enigmatic 'because of the angels' (v.10) has long been read against the sons of God who took human women, implying that uncovered women in worship could provoke angelic lust. A major interpretive option but contested; volume is low since Paul gives no quotation, only the cryptic phrase.
Low confidenceEcho2
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
The 'sons of God' who transgressed before the flood (Gen 6:1-4) feed the Second-Temple Watchers tradition (1 Enoch) widely thought to lie behind 'the spirits in prison' to whom Christ preached (3:19). Contested: whether the spirits are fallen angels (Watchers) or the human dead of Noah's generation.
Medium confidenceSecond-Temple traditions read the bound spirits of the Watchers awaiting judgment behind 'before the time'; faint background to the demons' fear of premature torment, contested.
Low confidence