And Jehovah saw that the wickedness of Man was great on the earth, and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart only evil continually.
Before the flood, God reads the human race — not its behaviour alone, but the hidden springs behind it. Does that verdict cover one wicked generation, or every one of us? (Where the writers quote the older wording "imagination," the ESV reads "intention.")
The verse works in layers. Each one goes deeper than the last:
How piercing verse 5 is! Man's wickedness became great, or abundant, for he was wholly evil in the deepest springs of his being. His heart was evil; the thoughts of his heart were evil, and the imagination, which lay behind and prompted his thoughts, was evil. And all this was only evil — not one trace of good — and that continually. So before the flood we have the very same verdict about man that Romans 3:10-18 gives us. That passage quotes Scriptures which describe the condition of men after the flood.
God's judgment did not rest on one ground alone:
The Spirit of God has been pleased to state two grounds on which God brought the judgment of the flood on man. First, because of what he had done: "The wickedness of man was great in the earth." Further on we read that this took two forms, corruption and violence. They are the parent sins of Genesis 3 and 4... Second, because of what he was: "Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." Or, as the margin reads, "The purposes and desires of his heart" were such.
One writer weighs each word of the verdict in turn:
"Every imagination" — without exception. "Only evil" — without any mixture of good. "Continually" — without a pause. What a picture!
The verdict weighs more because of who reached it:
It would be hard to find a more solemn verdict. "Every imagination" of them was before Him. He loves to credit the least thought or feeling that is good, yet He saw nothing but evil all the day. He is surely the God of judgment, and after due testimony He will not be slow to carry it out.
If the evil lies in the nature itself, effort cannot reach it. One writer answers the obvious objection:
There is nothing good at all in our sinful nature. Even the most advanced believer said, "I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh" (Romans 7:18). But can it not be improved by diligence in prayer and watchfulness? No, never: it is wholly incurable... We may not be able to bend a bar of iron, yet it may be beaten out until it becomes quite flexible, but it is the same iron still. Its appearance has changed, but its nature is the same.
Does this describe only the people of Noah's day?
Was it true then? Is it true today? What does God see in the men of this day? What is the difference between the men of that day and this day? There is none. Man is man. You cannot change him. "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?" (Jeremiah 13:23). No, and you cannot change man either. Take a drunkard, an unsaved man. Reform him and polish him up. He is still an unsaved man... There must be a work of God in his soul. Note the force of Scripture. Man is wrong at heart. "Out of the heart come evil thoughts" (Matthew 15:19). Men can read what is outside, but God reads the heart.
Sin ran its course, yet one man stood in a different relation to God. Where this writer says Noah "found grace," the ESV reads that he "found favor in the eyes of the LORD":
But "Noah found grace in the eyes of Jehovah." That is, God's favour rested on him. He was righteous himself, no doubt, but it all came through grace... But the earth was completely filled with violence. Every imagination of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually; if sin comes in, it is sure to ripen up.
- Sight — God's verdict starts with what He sees. He sees the wickedness on the earth, and behind it every intention of the heart. He would credit any good He found there, and He found none.
- Source — The verdict moves inward through three layers: heart, thoughts, and the imagination behind them. The problem is what man is, not only what he does.
- Sweep — "Every," "only," and "continually" leave no exception, no mixture of good, and no interval of relief.
- Stubbornness — Polish cannot change a nature like this. Iron beaten flexible is iron still. Only a work of God in the soul changes a man.
- Salvation — In the same dark chapter, Noah found favour in the eyes of the LORD. That favour rested on him as a gift, not as a reward.
And Jehovah repented that he had made Man on the earth, and it grieved him in his heart.
Genesis 6 turns from man's spreading wickedness to how that wickedness struck God Himself. Can the God who knows everything regret what He made, and can a creature's sin really grieve his Creator?
God brought the flood for two reasons, not one. One writer sorts them into what man did and what man was:
The Spirit of God has chosen to tell us two grounds on which God brought the judgment of the flood on man. First, because of what he had done: "the wickedness of man was great in the earth." Further on we read that this took two forms, corruption and violence. Second, because of what he was: "every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually"; or, as the margin reads, "the purposes and desires of his heart" were such.
The verse names the LORD, not God considered in the abstract. He watches His creatures, and here He finds nothing to credit them with:
This is not God simply in His nature, but the God who concerns Himself with the ways of His creatures... He who loves to credit the least good thought or feeling saw nothing but evil all the day.
Older translations say God "repented." The ESV reads that He "regretted." Either way, the word does not mean what it usually means for us:
Much depends on grasping the meaning of the word "repent." In Scripture it does not usually mean remorse or sorrow, as so many think. It means a change or turnaround in the attitude of the mind... In any sense of regret or remorse about His personal actions, we are assured that God "is not a man that He should repent."
So God speaks here in terms we can feel. Writers note that these early chapters often speak this way:
No doubt, as is so typical of these early revelations, grace shapes the words in a childlike way for the heart and conscience of man. The LORD felt deeply what man ought to have felt but did not.
Words fitted to us are not words emptied of truth. One writer weighs what this grief must have cost God, then asks a hard question:
God is infinitely great, and His holy nature is spotless and pure. So His grief must have been infinite. Yet He must have known in advance that this great grief would come to Him through the fall and corruption of mankind. Why then did God make man, and then let him stay on earth after causing Him such untold grief?
Set beside the opening chapters, the verse reverses God's own verdict on His work:
At the end of Genesis 2 God called everything, man included, "very good." Once man had been very good in God's eyes. Now he was nothing but grief to look at. The break was complete.
If God can repent of making man, a believer might wonder whether He can repent of saving one. The distinction drawn is between an act and a gift:
The gifts of God are without change of mind on His part. When it is not a gift or a calling of God, He may repent. So He repented of creation (Gen. 6:6), as we are told; and He destroyed it. That was not a gift; but simply an act, however immense. But in sovereign love He calls poor guilty men to Himself to make them His own. He gives eternal life, for instance, or forgiveness of our sins, or the place of a child. Such gifts are the gifts and calling of God, and they come without any change of mind.
Grief is not God's last word about man. The delight He lost is found again in Christ, the child born at Bethlehem:
All this delight was changed; God repented that He had made man on the earth. But in the Child of Bethlehem man is recovered and set up again. God delights in this man, and no such change of mind is possible. No other object in all His creation could awaken the same delight.
- Seen — God judged what man did and what man was: corruption and violence outside, evil thoughts within.
- Felt — God found nothing good to credit in man. He felt what man should have felt and did not.
- Worded — "repented" means a changed attitude, not remorse. Scripture uses childlike terms so our hearts can take it in.
- Unchanged — God may repent of an act like creation. He never repents of a gift: eternal life, forgiveness, the place of a child.
- Restored — the delight God lost in the first man returns in Christ, and nothing can reverse it.
And Jehovah said, I will destroy Man, whom I have created, from the earth -- from man to cattle, to creeping things, and to fowl of the heavens; for I repent that I have made them.
God here decides to wipe out the human race He had made, along with the animals, birds and creeping things. The verse raises two hard questions: can God feel grief, and can God change His mind?
Scripture here speaks of God in human terms. One writer explains why:
Verse 6 tells us how all this affected the Lord. Here for the first time Scripture gives God human feelings. Only in this way could we understand such a matter, and there is nothing out of place in it, since God made man in His own image and likeness. But God's thoughts and feelings must be far deeper and far higher than any man knows. How great His grief must have been! All was good at the start. Now all was so detestable that nothing could meet the case but the total destruction of mankind, apart from a few, and of the living creation God had entrusted to man.
The verse also uses God's personal name, "the LORD" — Jehovah in older translations — and not the general word "God." One writer explains what that name signals:
The name Jehovah is needed where the point is not nature but relationship — the feelings and the position it brings.
The verse ends with God saying He is sorry He made them. That sounds like God admitting a mistake, and one commentator draws a careful line here:
But here we must make a distinction, or we will certainly go badly wrong. Scripture says here that the LORD repented of mankind, whom He had made on the earth. His work is a thing quite different from His purpose. Corruption spread all through it, and He had no duty to keep in existence what existed only to His dishonour. On the other hand, when a prophet cried out against a great city because of its wickedness, and its people repented at the preaching, God repented of the harm He had said He would do to them, and He did not do it… But here we are not told of the slightest effect.
Another writer contrasts God's creation with God's calling:
God did repent of creation, in the state it had reached… But God's calling is His purpose. He has sworn in His holiness, and He will not repent.
God does not describe the doomed race as strangers. He calls them the ones He created. Some deny that unconverted people are God's creatures at all. One writer answers that teaching from this verse:
Genesis 6:7: God says, "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land." But according to this teaching, He had not created at all what He was going to destroy.
The sentence reaches past people to beasts, creeping things and birds. One writer draws out what that says about sin:
Yet animals, creeping things and birds fall under this awesome destruction too, for man's sin has involved the rest of the earthly creation. People may say that when they sin they have damaged only themselves. But man's sin always affects others too, even creatures that cannot reason.
The story does not end there. The same writer points to what waits for that fallen creation:
The creation fell with the first man. But God's word says all its groaning waits for the triumph of the Second man, when the sons of God are revealed. What joy to know it!
Notice who hears this sentence. God does not just announce it from a distance. One writer traces how personally He acts here:
How much interest the Lord God takes in the whole state of things in that day! Just as we all feel, His eye affects His heart. And then, just as we all do, He takes counsel with Himself… And after all this, just as we ourselves would do, He settles His mind and tells it to a friend. He passes it to the ear, the heart and the sympathies of another.
Noah's response shows what the warning was for:
His faith accepted God's warning, and that warning moved him to fear. Fear moved him to act.
- Grief — for the first time, Scripture gives God human feelings. His grief runs far deeper than any grief we know.
- Regret — God repents of His work in its ruined state, never of His purpose. He has sworn to His calling and will not repent of it.
- Created — the people He judges are still the ones He made. Judgment does not cancel His place as their Creator.
- Reach — the sentence spreads from man to beast and bird. Sin never stays inside the sinner, and creation's groan waits for the Second man.
- Result — God tells the decision to a friend. Noah's faith turned that warning into fear, and fear into action.
But Noah found favour in the eyes of Jehovah.
God has just announced the flood. The whole race is to be wiped out. Then the record turns on a single word: but. One man stands outside that verdict, and his name carries the first mention of grace in the Bible — the word older translations use here, where the ESV says "favor."
The verse sets one man against a whole population.
One man alone found favor in the eyes of the Lord (v. 8). Noah was righteous in his dealings with people and blameless in his own character, because "he walked with God." The earth's population had grown so large, and it is a tragedy that only one man walked with God. In this he is a picture of the Lord Jesus. Yet he also shows that a believer can walk in true, godly separation from an evil world, even when no one else joins him... a lonely path with God is infinitely better than having many friends without God's presence.
The phrase is not special wording kept for Noah. It is the ordinary way of saying that one person stood in another's favour.
But "Noah found grace in the eyes of Jehovah" — that is, God's favour rested on him. He was righteous himself, no doubt, but it all came through grace. Moses says, "If I have found grace in your sight"; it is a common expression. In the next chapter God says of Noah, "I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation."
Verse 8 stands before verse 9, and the sequence is deliberate. Grace is not the wage paid for a good life; a good life is what grace produces.
It is written: "Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord." This comes before the statement, "Noah walked with God" (Gen. 6:8-9). This is always God's order. No man can walk with God until he has tasted the grace of God.
One writer pushes back hard on the idea that Noah's character earned God's favour:
The very way Scripture tells the story should have stopped anyone from thinking that Noah's character in verse 9 is the reason for God's favour to him. Reason of grace! What an idea and expression! Scripture flatly denies any such thought: "If it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace." Noah's righteous ways, his walk with God, flowed (as always) from God's favour.
Here the divine name is the LORD — Jehovah in some translations. In the next verse Noah walks with God. Scripture picks each name on purpose.
The phrase "walked with God" is not casual but deliberate. It suits plain historical mention, and it also sets a moral contrast with those marked by the violence and corruption of all flesh on the earth. The name Jehovah is required where the point is not nature but relationship — feelings and position toward another.
Faith is what set Noah apart, and it put him on a different side of the verdict from everyone else.
The first time the word grace occurs in the Bible it is bound up with Noah — "But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord" (Gen. 6). He believed God when the whole world did not. That made him a righteous man among disobedient men. They were a condemned race; he alone was justified.
Favour here has a practical outcome later in the story. The man who found it was already safe when the waters came.
Notice this: before God's government ever carried out its judgment, the chosen family, and all with them, were shut safely inside the ark, the vessel of grace... God in grace saved Noah before God in government swept the earth clean with judgment... Every atom of the ark carried the sweet stamp of grace; every wave of the flood reflected the solemn decree of government.
God tells Noah what is coming, and gives him work to do about it.
God tells His chosen one that the end of all flesh had come before Him... He tells him how He saw and judged the moral condition of the earth — the very thing He had said in secret before. Then He tells him to get an ark ready to save his household, because in the plans of His electing love and sovereign purpose Noah had already found grace in His eyes.
- Ruin — the sentence falls on the whole race, and one man stands on the other side of the word but.
- Grace — God's favour rested on Noah. His righteousness grew out of that favour; it did not come first.
- Order — grace first, walk second. That is always the sequence; a reason for grace would stop it being grace.
- Ark — the favour of verse 8 becomes a shut door: saved by grace before the judgment of government fell.
- Reach — the first grace in the Bible reaches one man in a condemned world, and still works the same way.