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Chapter XXIX.—The Giants: the Flood.
“All things therefore being completed which are in heaven, and in earth, and in the waters, and the human race also having multiplied, in the eighth generation, righteous men, who had lived the life of angels, being allured by the beauty of women, fell into promiscuous and illicit connections with these; 549 and thenceforth acting in all things without discretion, and disorderly, they changed the state of human affairs and the divinely prescribed order of life, so that either by persuasion or force they compelled all men to sin against God their Creator. In the ninth generation are born the giants, so called from of old, 550 not dragon-footed, as the fables of the Greeks relate, but men of immense bodies, whose bones, of enormous size, are still shown in some places for confirmation. But against these the righteous providence of God brought a flood upon the world, that the earth might be purified from their pollution, and every place might be turned into a sea by the destruction of the wicked. Yet there was then found one righteous man, by name Noah, who, being delivered in an ark with his three sons and their wives, became the colonizer of the world after the subsiding of the waters, with those animals and seeds which he had shut up with him.”
Gen. vi. 2. [Compare with this chapter Homily VIII. 12–17, where there are many more fanciful details.—R]
85:550The writer here translates the words of the Septuagint, of οἱ γίγαντες οἱ ἀπ᾽ αἰῶνος οἱ ἄνθρωποι οἱ ὀνομαστοί, illi qui a seculo nominantur. We have given the translation of our authorized version. It is likely, however, that the writer believed the name to imply that they lived to a great age, as is maintained by Diodorus quoted by Suicer on the word, or he may have traced the word to γῆ.