Genesis — Chapter 6

Authorship & Background

Map & Geography

• No specific geography in this chapter — the focus is on universal human wickedness and God's command to build the ark.
• The flood narrative is global in scope; no particular region is named.

Deep Dive

Setting: Ten generations have passed since Adam (ch 5). People are multiplying as God told them to (1:28), but sin has spread with them. Cain's murder (4:8) became Lamech's boast (4:23–24), and now violence fills the earth. Lamech of Seth's line has just named his son Noah, hoping he would bring "relief" from the curse (5:29). Chapter 6 shows why relief was needed. It opens with one of the strangest passages in the Bible, moves to God's grief over the human heart, and then narrows to one man who "found favor in the eyes of the LORD." From here the story is about how God judges the world and saves it at the same time. People across the ancient Near East told flood stories, most famously in the Babylonian Atrahasis and Gilgamesh epics. Genesis tells the story very differently: the flood comes from a holy God's moral judgment, not from gods annoyed by human noise, and it ends in a covenant of mercy.

Increasing Corruption on Earth (vv1–8)

• "The sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took" (v2). The verbs echo the fall: Eve "saw that the tree was… a delight to the eyes" and "took" (3:6). The same pattern of seeing, desiring and taking is at work again. Who the "sons of God" (bene ha'elohim) were is one of the most debated questions in Genesis. Faithful readers hold three main views: - Fallen angels. Elsewhere in the Old Testament "sons of God" means heavenly beings (Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7). This is the oldest recorded reading, found in Jewish writings before Christ (1 Enoch 6–7) and in early Christian writers such as Justin Martyr. Some manuscripts of the Greek Old Testament render the phrase "angels of God." Many think the New Testament points this way: "angels who did not stay within their own position of authority" (Jude 6–7; see 2 Pet 2:4; 1 Pet 3:19–20). The Tyndale notes say this view has generally been held. Guzik favors it. - The godly line of Seth. On this view, Seth's descendants, who "called upon the name of the LORD" (4:26), married into Cain's ungodly line and lost their faith. It fits the two family lines of chapters 4–5 and avoids the problem of angels having children, which some think Matthew 22:30 rules out. Augustine, Luther and Calvin held it, and so do Henry and JFB. Its weakness is that "daughters of man" in v1 seems to mean women in general, not only Cain's daughters. - Powerful rulers. Some Jewish interpreters read "sons of God" as kings or nobles, who in the ancient world often claimed divine descent. On this view they built harems by force, taking Lamech's polygamy (4:19) further. - All three agree on the point: boundaries God set were crossed, and the result was a world ripe for judgment.
• "My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh" (v3). "Abide" is a rare verb, and translations vary: "strive with" (KJV), "contend with," "remain in." "Spirit" (ruach) can also mean "breath," the life God breathed into Adam (2:7). "Flesh" stresses human weakness and mortality. God is setting a limit.
• "His days shall be 120 years" (v3). There are two main readings. Some think God shortened the human lifespan. But people after the flood still lived far longer (Shem lived 600 years, 11:10–11), so many, including Guzik and the Tyndale notes, read it as 120 years of grace before the flood. Peter speaks of "God's patience" that "waited in the days of Noah" (1 Pet 3:20). Notice that Moses, who wrote Genesis according to tradition, died at 120 (Deut 34:7).
• "The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward" (v4). The word appears only here and in Numbers 13:33, where Israel's spies see huge men in Canaan and feel like grasshoppers. The Greek Old Testament translated it "giants." Many link the word to naphal, "to fall," and read "fallen ones," but BDB calls its origin "dubious" and all guesses "very precarious." The grammar doesn't make it certain that the Nephilim were the children of these marriages; they may simply have lived at the same time. "The mighty men who were of old, the men of renown" sounds like the heroes of ancient legend. Genesis treats them not as heroes but as part of what went wrong. "Afterward" is a reminder that the flood didn't end human pride and violence.
• "Every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (v5). The sentence piles up words: every intention, only evil, continually. In Hebrew thinking the heart is the center of thought, choice and will, not just feeling. The problem isn't only what people did but what they were. God repeats almost the same words after the flood (8:21), which shows the flood couldn't cure the heart. "Intention" (yetser) is the word later Jewish teachers used for the "evil inclination" in every person.
• "The LORD regretted that he had made man… and it grieved him to his heart" (v6). "Regretted" is nacham, the same root as Noah's name in 5:29, where Lamech hoped Noah would bring "relief" (nacham). The word can mean to be sorry, to relent, or to be comforted. Elsewhere Scripture says God "is not a man, that he should have regret" (1 Sam 15:29), and the same chapter says he "regretted" making Saul king (15:11, 35). Most readers take both as true: God doesn't change his nature or purpose, but he responds personally to what people do. "Grieved" (atsab) shares a root with the "pain" of the curse on Eve and Adam (3:16–17). Human sin causes God pain. He is not a distant judge.
• "I will blot out man… man and animals and creeping things and birds" (v7). "Blot out" means to wipe away, as when writing is wiped off a tablet. The list reverses the order of creation in chapter 1. The animals share the judgment because humans were given rule over them (1:28), and when the ruler falls, his realm suffers with him (Rom 8:20–22).
• "But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD" (v8). This is the hinge of the chapter. "Favor" is chen, "grace," and this is its first use in the Bible. In Hebrew chen (חן) is Noah's name (נח) with the letters reversed, a wordplay that ties the man to the grace he received. The text says Noah found grace before it says he was righteous (v9). God's favor comes first.
• Commentators: Henry holds the Sethite view. The "sons of God" were "the professors of religion," the "daughters of men" were those "profane, and strangers to God," and he warns, "The bad will sooner debauch the good than the good reform the bad." JFB agrees, calling Seth's family "professedly religious," and says the Hebrew word for the giants conveys "not so much the idea of great stature as of reckless ferocity." Guzik argues the opposite case, for fallen angels, on the grounds that intermarriage between believers and unbelievers can't explain so severe a judgment or such unusual offspring. He also suggests Satan was trying to corrupt the human line before the promised offspring of 3:15 could come. That is his own reading, not something the text states. On God's regret, all three agree it is language suited to human understanding. Henry says it implies not "any change of God's mind" but "a change of his way." Guzik adds that God is never caught by surprise, but he is never indifferent to sin.

Noah and the Flood (vv9–22)

• "These are the generations of Noah" (v9). This is the third toledot heading in Genesis (after 2:4 and 5:1), opening the account that runs to 9:29.
• "A righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God" (v9). "Righteous" (tsaddiq) means living rightly toward God and people. "Blameless" (tamim) means whole or complete, the word used for an unblemished sacrifice. It doesn't mean sinless, as chapter 9 will show. "Walked with God" is the phrase used of Enoch (5:22, 24). Ezekiel names Noah with Daniel and Job as a model of righteousness (Ezek 14:14), and Hebrews says he "became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith" (Heb 11:7).
• "Noah had three sons" (v10). Shem, Ham and Japheth are repeated from 5:32, because the whole human race will descend from them (9:19).
• "The earth was corrupt… filled with violence" (vv11–13). "Corrupt" (shachat) appears three times in vv11–12, and then God says, "I will destroy them" (v13), with the same verb. Humanity has already ruined the earth, and God's judgment confirms what they have done. "Violence" (chamas) means cruelty and lawless harm, the spread of Cain's and Lamech's spirit. "All flesh had corrupted their way" (v12) makes the problem universal. "I will destroy them with the earth" (v13) means judgment on the whole created order that humans have spoiled.
• "Make yourself an ark of gopher wood" (v14). "Ark" is tebah, a box or chest. The only other place it appears is the basket that carried baby Moses on the Nile (Exod 2:3, 5). Both times God saves his chosen one from death in the water in a small, pitch-covered box. "Gopher wood" appears nowhere else, and no one knows what it was. Cypress is a common guess.
• "Cover it inside and out with pitch" (v14). "Pitch" is kopher, and "cover" is the related verb kaphar. Elsewhere kaphar means "to atone" and kopher means "ransom" (Exod 30:12). Some preachers draw a link: the ark was "atoned" inside and out. The lexicon, though, treats "pitch" and "ransom" as separate words that happen to sound alike, and most scholars think the verb here simply means "smear." The connection is a nice picture, but it shouldn't be built on.
• "300 cubits… 50 cubits… 30 cubits" (v15). A cubit was the length from elbow to fingertip, about 18 inches. That makes the ark about 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high, with three decks (v16): a floating barge built to stay afloat, not to sail. The Tyndale notes estimate it displaced about 43,000 tons of water, like a large modern cargo ship. The proportions, 6 to 1 in length to width, are very stable. The Babylonian flood hero's boat in Gilgamesh is a cube, which would spin and roll.
• "Finish it to a cubit above" (v16). The Hebrew is unclear. It probably describes an opening for light and air running around the top, just under the roof. "The door of the ark in its side": there is one door, and God himself will shut it (7:16).
• "I will bring a flood of waters" (v17). "Flood" is mabbul, a word used almost only for this flood (and Ps 29:10). Christians differ on whether it covered the whole planet or the whole known world of the region. The Tyndale notes argue for a worldwide flood from the stated purpose to destroy "all flesh" and the way it undoes creation. Others note that "all the earth" can mean the known world (41:57) and see a regional flood that destroyed all of humanity. Both views hold that it was a real judgment that God sent.
• "But I will establish my covenant with you" (v18). This is the first time "covenant" (berit) appears in the Bible. It is a binding commitment, and here God makes it on his own initiative. It looks ahead to the covenant God spells out after the flood (9:8–17). Before the rain falls, God has already promised to save.
• "Two of every sort… male and female" (vv19–20). The words "according to their kinds" repeat the language of creation (1:21–25). God is preserving creation in order to start it again. The animals "shall come in to you" (v20): Noah doesn't have to hunt them down. Chapter 7 adds seven pairs of clean animals (7:2), needed for sacrifice and food later.
• "Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him" (v22). This is the first of several such statements (7:5, 9, 16). Noah says nothing in the whole flood story. He just obeys, for years, building a boat on dry land with no rain in sight. Peter calls him "a herald of righteousness" (2 Pet 2:5). Moses later builds the tabernacle in the same spirit, "as the LORD had commanded" (Exod 40:16).
• Commentators: Henry reads Noah's perfection as "not with a sinless perfection, but a perfection of sincerity," and says Noah "walked with God, as Enoch had done before him." On the covenant he writes, "When God makes a covenant, he establishes it, he makes it sure." He praises Noah's obedience as "ready and resolute," done "without murmuring and disputing," and notes that he "did not leave off till he had finished it." JFB takes gopher wood as "probably cypress," the pitch as asphalt that would make the ark "perfectly watertight," and, using a longer cubit, gives the ark as about 547 feet long. Guzik stresses that Noah found grace rather than earning it, and that he obeyed before he knew all the details. He also notes that Noah's long years of warning seem to have won no one outside his family, and he points to Jesus' words that the days before his return will be "as were the days of Noah" (Matt 24:37). Guzik mentions reported sightings of the ark on Mount Ararat. They remain unverified.

Pointing to Christ

The world in Noah's day was under judgment it had earned, and the only safe place was inside the ark God designed, through the one door God would shut. Jesus said, "I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved" (John 10:9), and he pointed to the days of Noah to warn that judgment comes suddenly (Matt 24:37–39). Peter sees the ark as a picture of salvation through Christ, with baptism as its sign (1 Pet 3:20–21). Noah's name meant "rest," and his father hoped he would lift the curse. Noah could carry his family through the judgment, but he couldn't change the human heart (8:21). Christ bore the judgment himself and gives a new heart (Ezek 36:26), and in him believers find the rest Lamech longed for (Matt 11:28).

Commentary

• Enduring Word (David Guzik): enduringword.com Guzik covers the "sons of God" debate, the Nephilim, total depravity, God's grief, Noah's grace, and the ark's construction.
• Jamieson-Fausset-Brown (1871): blueletterbible.org A critical and explanatory commentary on the whole Bible, more concise than Matthew Henry and closer to the Hebrew and Greek, with attention to historical and geographical detail. Public domain.
• Matthew Henry's Exposition (1710): blueletterbible.org A devotional verse-by-verse commentary in the Puritan tradition, still among the most widely read three centuries on. Public domain.

Videos

Articles

• BibleProject: bibleproject.com On the whole book: how its opening chapters work as literature and how they set up everything that follows.
• GotQuestions.org: gotquestions.org On the whole book: an overview of the book of Genesis -- who wrote it, when, why, and how it fits the rest of Scripture.

Links open on the publisher's own site. Nothing here is reproduced on this page.

Reflection

• A Heart Given Over to Evil (v.5) — Every inclination of humanity's thoughts had become continually evil, showing what people look like without restraint. What does your unguarded thought life actually look like, and are you letting it run unchecked?
• Grace Found in a Dark Generation (v.8) — Scripture's first mention of grace comes in the worst moral climate in history, when Noah finds favor with God. No matter how dark your circumstances feel, is grace something you're actively seeking?
• Walking With God in a Corrupt Culture (v.9) — Noah is described as righteous and walking with God even while surrounded by total corruption. Do you believe you can walk closely with God regardless of how ungodly the culture around you becomes?
• One Way to Safety (v.16) — The ark's design included a single door, the only entrance into the place of safety God provided. Have you entered through the one way of salvation God has made, or are you looking for another door?
• Complete, Not Partial, Obedience (v.22) — Noah does everything God commands him, exactly as instructed, without editing or skipping the hard parts. Is your obedience to God complete, or do you follow only the commands that are convenient?