The Human Desire to Become Like God—and Its Dangers

Through careful examination of the first eleven chapters of Genesis, James A. Diamond identifies several instances of humans who strive to be like God, and are punished for their hubris. This pattern begins with Adam and Eve, who eat the forbidden fruit after the serpent tells them that “the day ye eat thereof . . . ye shall be as gods” (3:5) and continues through the story of the Tower of Babel. Diamond argues that one of the more mysterious passages in Genesis should be read as yet another example of such behavior:

And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God [b’nei elohim] saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the Lord said, “My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.” (6:1-3)

Diamond, without trying to interpret the exact meaning of the ambiguous phrase translated here as “sons of God,” explains these verses thus:

I suggest . . . fathers were making use of their daughters’ [beauty] for their own empowerment, presenting them in such a way as to be attractive to these powerful b’nei elohim, to increase the power and prestige of their families. It therefore is another attempt to trespass into God’s domain and become godlike. . . . Whether the girls wished to marry these b’nei elohim did not concern the fathers (or the b’nei elohim), and neither did the fact that this kind of marriage subverts Lord’s plan for human procreation.

The b’nei elohim story is often described as a fragment or narrative standalone, since it is immediately followed by the flood story which seems to have no patent connection to it. . . . Read in this larger context of “beginnings,” however, which presents instances of human beings overreaching to become like God, this prelude to the flood story may offer an example of a specific evil that human beings pursue that pushes the Lord to wish to bring their society to an end.

The story then is not simply a mythic tale of b’nei elohim abducting human women, but rather another instance of human beings longing to achieve some form of godlike status. Fathers exploited their daughter’s beauty to entice the b’nei elohim into marrying them and propagating demi-gods instead of marrying their daughters to human men and propagating the human species as God intended.

Read more at theTorah.com

More about: Garden of Eden, Genesis, Hebrew Bible

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF