Genesis 6King James Version
Wickedness fills the earth. God grieves that He made humanity and decides to start over. He tells Noah to build an ark of gopher wood, three hundred cubits long, with three floors and rooms inside. Two of every kind of living thing will come aboard. The flood is coming.
Corruption spreads across the earth. The sons of God take human wives; giants appear. God sees that human wickedness is total and grieves that he made them. He decides to send a flood. Noah alone is righteous in his generation. God speaks to Noah, tells him exactly how to build an ark, and commands him to bring two of every creature. Noah obeys completely.
God's grief over human violence leads to judgment, but his commitment to goodness means one man and one family are preserved.
5: "And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." The diagnosis before the flood: not occasional sin but total corruption of the will.
Noah is living in a world described as full of violence. The Hebrew word for violence here is the same word used in later prophets when they describe cities falling apart. The author wants the reader to feel a familiar catastrophe building. Around 2400 BCE by some chronologies, possibly much later by others.
God, who grieves and decides; Noah, righteous and obedient; the sons of God, mysterious figures whose identity has been debated for millennia.
The flood narrative here runs parallel to Mesopotamian flood stories like Gilgamesh, but the differences are pointed: in Genesis the flood is moral judgment, not divine caprice. God is not hiding the flood from humanity out of jealousy but responding to real evil. The chapter opens the question of what justice and mercy look like together.
For when the world feels irredeemably broken and you wonder if anyone in charge notices. The chapter says God notices, and that grief is part of the response.
1And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
2That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
3And 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.
4There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
5And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
6And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
7And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.
8But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.
9These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.
10And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
11The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
12And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
13And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
14Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.
15And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.
16A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it.
17And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.
18But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee.
19And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.
20Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.
21And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them.
22Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.