Bible-Center
РУ
EN
FR
Bible
Notes
FAQ
Links
About

Search

Search Search
search in current section [Notes]

NOTES for Gen 6:1-22

Printable version
1 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
3 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.
4 There 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.
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.
6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
7 And 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.
8 But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.
9 These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.
10 And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
11 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
13 And 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.
14 Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.
15 And 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.
16 A 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.
17 And, 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.
18 But 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.
19 And 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.
20 Of 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.
21 And 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.
22 Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.
Hide

The story of the corruption of the human race before the flood raises an extraordinary number of questions; few passages of Holy Scripture can compare with it in this respect. Yet here is what is surprising: at first glance these questions seem obvious, but on closer examination they turn out to be largely idle. Indeed, we are very interested in who the sons of God were who went in to the daughters of men; we almost cannot live without finding out who the giants were, the men of renown from of old. Yet what would change for us depending on one answer or another?

Here, as in many other places, the biblical narrative uses marriage as a symbol of a person's relationship with God, and this is a highly meaningful symbol. Religious worship turns out to be akin to the essential union of different beings that marriage is. It is characteristic that the human person appears here as the feminine principle, needing protection and needing the object of worship to take responsibility for him. Therefore the matter concerns events of religious history. In a figurative sense, the Bible most often calls "sons" those who share in the nature of someone or something. This is the meaning of many biblical expressions, from "Son of Man" to "sons of disobedience." The sons of God mentioned at the beginning of Genesis 6 are beings who share in an immaterial, spiritual nature; simply put, bodiless spirits. Thus before us is a story about the emergence of paganism, about how the human person, "becoming futile in his thinking," as the apostle Paul puts it, began to worship created spirits instead of worshiping the one God. From this the giants appeared on the earth: people who, thanks to union with these spirits, possessed abilities unusual for human beings and not intended by the Creator. That, essentially, is all. But this is by no means the only thing that matters in the narrator's story.

Reading about what led to the flood, one cannot fail to notice the words that the narrator of Genesis puts into the Creator's mouth. "My Spirit shall not forever be disregarded by human beings," He says when paganism arises. This is a grand, astonishing promise in which the great mercy of God is revealed to us. For when the Lord says that the seduction of the human race into a great deception will be temporary, He thereby promises to conquer and end this madness. More than that, His will is that a union of love should bind the human person with the very source of the world's life, with the Holy Spirit. And the Almighty sets a limit to people's earthly life in order to give us the possibility of meeting Him face to face. What an unexpected thought. Scripture says that God did not create death; here it also says that He desires to return to eternity the person who has fallen away from it.

One also cannot fail to notice the words: "...the Lord regretted that He had made man..." Usually we think that God, like an unfortunate engineer, regretted what He had "made"; no, of course that is not the point. Even human betrayal is not able to surpass God's will to grant us life. The key words in this phrase come later, where the narrator says that the Lord "was grieved in His heart." In the prayer attributed to King Manasseh (2 Chron. 36:22a ff.), it says of God: "You are the Lord Most High, good, long-suffering, and greatly merciful, and You repent over human evils"; this quotation entered one of the prayers of the sacrament of repentance. This is what Scripture is saying: the Lord grieves over the evil that we commit. The grief and repentance "over human evils" of which the narrator speaks in chapter 6 are a prophecy of the prayer from the Cross, in which the Lord says: "Forgive them, Father, for they do not know what they are doing." This mystery of mercy is the main thing in today's passage. The human understanding of repentance, characteristic both of us and of the narrator, must not prevent us from touching it.

Other notes

 
For Gen 6:1-22
1 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
3 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.
4 There 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.
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.
6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
7 And 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.
8 But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.
9 These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.
10 And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
11 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
13 And 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.
14 Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.
15 And 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.
16 A 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.
17 And, 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.
18 But 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.
19 And 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.
20 Of 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.
21 And 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.
22 Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.
Hide
The parable of Noah, which many Bible readers perceive as the story of the flood, is mysterious in many ways, although its most interesting riddles are not obvious. Still, there is one riddle that has drawn the attention of commentators for more than one century...  Read more

The parable of Noah, which many Bible readers perceive as the story of the flood, is mysterious in many ways, although its most interesting riddles are not obvious. Still, there is one riddle that has drawn the attention of commentators for more than one century: who are the "sons of God" mentioned in the parable, who "came in" to the "daughters of men"? Different interpreters sometimes build very ingenious theological schemes here, but the answer may turn out to be much simpler than it appears.

It has to do with historical realities connected with the cult of the Great Goddess, whose roots really do reach far back into prehistory. An essential part of this most ancient cult was ritual prostitution, and the priestesses of the goddess usually practiced it in a state of erotic and orgiastic ecstasy. In that state they really thought that they were uniting not with people but with spirits who took on human form.

For the readers of the age when the Prologue of Genesis was written, this was perfectly clear: the cult of the Great Goddess remained in the Near East right up to the final Christianization of the region. That is precisely why the prophets called paganism fornication: their definition was both literal and symbolic, since in the case of the cult of the Great Goddess, spiritual fornication was accompanied by physical fornication. It is no surprise that this cult became the symbol of the worst elements in pagan religiosity, and the sacred writer uses it to describe the spiritual situation in which humanity found itself before the flood.

Against this background, Noah is portrayed as the only righteous man in his generation, one who, as it says of him, "walked before God." What his "walking" means and what it was like can only be guessed; the parable gives no details. What matters, however, is that this very "walking" of Noah before God allowed the world not to perish completely.

The story of the flood itself is presented by the author of the Prologue somewhat schematically, and even symbolically. The details mattered so little to him that, as biblical scholars have long noted, he used two different accounts of the flood and joined them into one, in such a way that in some places the "seams" separating one version of the story from the other are still visible. These "seams" do not trouble the sacred writer: he is writing the parable of Noah, not a report about the flood.

The parable makes it clear that human beings have had a choice in every age. Today historians of religion have already moved away from the primitive linear schemes of humanity's religious development that were once popular. It is now clear that monotheism, once considered a historically very late phenomenon, actually has roots that reach as far back into history as many pagan cults. This means that even in prehistoric times a person could choose whether to worship the One or prefer someone else.

In that case Noah becomes a collective image. He becomes a symbol of all righteous people who have walked before God from the most ancient times down to our own day, righteous people who did not know, and perhaps still do not know, the tradition that goes back to Abraham. God never abandons anyone who seeks Him, regardless of where and when that person happened to live.

Hide
 
For Gen 6:5-6
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.
6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
Hide
It is hardest for us to understand the words that the Lord can repent. It seems to us that this is purely human. But some interpreters urge us...  Read more

It is hardest for us to understand the words that the Lord can repent. It seems to us that this is purely human. But some interpreters urge us not to take this anthropomorphism too literally. Yet there is much in it that truly is real, and we feel this: the Lord is very tenderly and heartfully concerned with everything that happens on earth. And this is an unchanging side of love: anger. As a rule, we do not become angry with someone who is indifferent to us.

We must not picture God as a kind magician. The drama of the world is much more complex than the contents of most world epics and sagas, and simply fairy tales, where good magicians fight evil ones. For what could be more severe than sending His Son to the Cross? The word "good" has become worn down; perhaps it is better to say it this way. Yet God is the highest good.

Hide
 
For Gen 6:13-14
13 And 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.
14 Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.
Hide
When people in their godlessness and inner emptiness generate chaos around themselves, such that the earth can no longer...  Read more

When people in their godlessness and inner emptiness generate chaos around themselves, such that the earth can no longer bear it and catastrophe comes, what remains for the one who is able to hear the Creator? The answer is paradoxical: in the midst of the chaos of the flood, to give oneself over to the will of the unknown. Noah must not look for shelter, but enter the heart of the elements in order to overcome it: to build a ship and hope in God. This is perhaps the first biblical example of faith, when a person does not rely on himself, does not build a house or city on solid ground, but constructs his home without any visible foundation so that at the necessary moment it can leave the earth and find itself in the hands of God. Faith, in essence, is the building of a house on a firm foundation (compare Matt 7:24), firmer than which there is nothing either on earth or in heaven.

Hide
 
For Gen 6:1-7:10
1 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
3 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.
4 There 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.
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.
6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
7 And 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.
8 But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.
9 These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.
10 And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
11 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
13 And 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.
14 Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.
15 And 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.
16 A 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.
17 And, 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.
18 But 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.
19 And 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.
20 Of 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.
21 And 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.
22 Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.
1 And the LORD said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.
2 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.
3 Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.
4 For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.
5 And Noah did according unto all that the LORD commanded him.
6 And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth.
7 And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood.
8 Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth,
9 There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.
10 And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.
Hide
When reading the parable of Noah, the reader's attention is usually drawn first of all to the description of the worldwide flood. Meanwhile...  Read more

When reading the parable of Noah, the reader's attention is usually drawn first of all to the description of the worldwide flood. Meanwhile, the sacred writer, it appears, was interested in that story least of all. It interested him so little that he did not even consider it necessary to remove the quite obvious repetitions and parallel passages found in the parable when it comes to the description of the flood itself. Scholars and commentators of the Bible have often noted that the biblical author used two different versions of the tradition about the flood. The first is reflected in Gen 6:5-22 and in Gen 8:1-22, and the second in Gen 7:1-24. This clearly became possible only because the sacred writer considered the traditions about the flood merely a background for a story about something else, something far more important to him. And that more important thing was undoubtedly the figure of Noah. The most remarkable thing in Noah's life story turns out to be precisely the absence of that life story. In essence, the description of Noah's whole life fit into one sentence: "Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God" (Gen 6:9). The parable contains no details of this "walking," which is not surprising: the events are understood to belong to times that even historians today picture only vaguely. Something else is important: righteousness and righteous people have existed in the world in every age, and God has never abandoned them. In a certain sense, Noah becomes a collective image of all the righteous people of the pagan world who have ever lived on earth. And not only of those who "walked with God" in ancient times, but also of those who "walk with God" today. There are many people in the world who have not yet heard of the God of the Bible, and still more who have not heard in the Bible the voice of the One who led its authors. And if any of these people seeks God, God Himself leads that person after Him by paths known to Him alone. Whether such a righteous person will hear God in the words of the Bible, or whether they will remain for him only words, depends in part on us, who consider ourselves Christians.

Hide
Bible
Notes
FAQ
Links
About
Site map
Design and development:  © 2001–2026 W-M v:2.0.3.107

After registering, you can subscribe to any Bible reading plan.

Personalized settings and other services for registered users are planned, so we recommend registering now. Registration is free.