familial lines (Cain, Abel and Seth) now effects all of humanity: “when people began to multiply on the face of the ground” (Gen 6:1). But the narrator extends the storyline one step further by including the “sons of God”—perhaps suggesting that the entire cosmos has been engulfed by, and enshrouded in, the destructive nature of sin. The emphasis on sin in the passage is intensified as language of Genesis 6:2 recalls the Garden scene in Genesis 3. The sons of God saw (rāʾāh) that the daughters