Reflections on Genesis 6

Genesis 06 (Contemporary English Version)
1. More and more people were born, until finally they spread all over the earth. Some of their daughters were so beautiful that supernatural beings came down and married the ones they wanted.
   
2. (SEE 6:1)
   
3. Then the LORD said, "I won't let my life-giving breath remain in anyone forever. No one will live for more than one hundred twenty years."
   
4. The children of the supernatural beings who had married these women became famous heroes and warriors. They were called Nephilim and lived on the earth at that time and even later.
   
5. The LORD saw how bad the people on earth were and that everything they thought and planned was evil.
   
6. He was very sorry that he had made them,
   
7. and he said, "I'll destroy every living creature on earth! I'll wipe out people, animals, birds, and reptiles. I'm sorry I ever made them."
   
8. But the LORD was pleased with Noah,
   
9. and this is the story about him. Noah was the only person who lived right and obeyed God.
   
10. He had three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
    
11. God knew that everyone was terribly cruel and violent.
    
12. (SEE 6:11)
    
13. So he told Noah: Cruelty and violence have spread everywhere. Now I'm going to destroy the whole earth and all its people.
    
14. Get some good lumber and build a boat. Put rooms in it and cover it with tar inside and out.
    
15. Make it four hundred fifty feet long, seventy-five feet wide, and forty-five feet high.
    
16. Build a roof on the boat and leave a space of about eighteen inches between the roof and the sides. Make the boat three stories high and put a door on one side.
    
17. I'm going to send a flood that will destroy everything that breathes! Nothing will be left alive.
    
18. But I solemnly promise that you, your wife, your sons, and your daughters-in-law will be kept safe in the boat.
    
19. Bring into the boat with you a male and a female of every kind of animal and bird, as well as a male and a female of every reptile. I don't want them to be destroyed.
    
20. (SEE 6:19)
    
21. Store up enough food both for yourself and for them.
    
22. Noah did everything the LORD told him to do.
    
    

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    The sin that had started with a simple act of disobedience by Adam and Eve took root and infected all of mankind. Although the descendants of Seth, given in the previous chapter, seemed to include a godly line of people, even their influence must have dissipated over time. This, at least, seems the logical conclusion given the condemnation of mankind in chapter 6: "When the LORD saw that man's wickedness was widespread on the earth and that every scheme his mind thought of was nothing but evil all the time, the LORD regretted that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart." (6:5-6) This blanket statement concerning all of mankind had only one exception, and that was Noah, a man who is described as walking with God. A man who was righteous and "blameless among his contemporaries." (6:9)
    
    God's statement, in verses 5 & 6, regretting that He had made man, was followed with a plan for destroying what He had made. He would destroy not only man, whose every scheme had become evil, but also all of the animals. A number of questions may come to mind concerning this whole scenario, but only God has the answer. The person who trusts God and accepts that He is all-knowing and all-wise and is love, needs no answer for the questions that come to mind. We trust that God will do only what is best. Those who do not trust God and want answers to their questions suppose themselves to be gods and judge of the Creator. That is not the claim they would make of themselves, but is what is suggested when one demands answers from God.
    
    God's remedy for the corruption of what He made was to destroy it with a flood. He would start over, but not from the beginning. He would use a seed of what He had made to 'replant' the earth. Choosing Noah and his family to be the only surviviors of the flood, God would use this righteous man to start over again with mankind. He would also save two of every living creature to begin again with the non-human forms of life. To carry out this plan, God gave Noah the designs for a boat that would house Noah and his family and all of the animals that were to survive the flood.
    
    Being the righteous man he was, "Noah did this. He did everything that God had commanded him." (6:22) Only a righteous man, who trusted God fully, would have been party to such a scheme. So God's desire to start over and have a people who were righteous required a righteous person to father this new beginning, and a righteous person to even agree to the plan.