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.
This is the history of Noah. Noah was a just man, perfect amongst his generations Noah walked with God.
Genesis 6:9 introduces one man whose life stood in total contrast to the world around him. It answers the question every reader of the flood story asks: why was Noah spared?
Some writers below quote an older translation: Noah "found grace" and was "a just man, perfect in his generations." The ESV says he "found favor" and was "a righteous man, blameless in his generation."
One writer reads the verse's opening line as the reason Noah's household escaped the flood:
Then in Genesis 6:9 we read, "These are the generations of Noah." This gives the fitting ground for his escape from the flood, along with his three sons and their wives.
Verse 8 says Noah found favour in God's eyes. Only after that does Scripture describe his character. One writer shows why that order matters, and what "perfect" does not mean:
It is written: "Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord." This comes before the statement, "Noah walked with God" (Genesis 6:8-9). This is always God's order. No man can walk with God until he has tasted the grace of God. "Noah was a just man, and perfect in his generations." "Perfect" does not mean "sinless." His sad failure after he came out of the ark is proof enough (Genesis 9:21). But, as the margin suggests, Noah was an upright man who sought to walk before God in integrity.
Calling Noah righteous is not the same as saying he was justified before God. One writer separates the root from the fruit:
Further, it is not correct to say that he was a just man, that is, justified before God. … The grace that justified him worked in him and through him practical righteousness before man. … The one (in Romans 4) is justification before God, the root of all. The other is the resulting fruit "shown" before man. Each is indispensable in its place; both are united in their season in every true believer. Practical righteousness is the effect, in no way the cause, of justification by faith. … We also know from Hebrews 11:7 that faith was the starting principle, through grace, of the conduct that marked him out in that day. By that faith he also condemned the world, as heir of the righteousness that is according to faith.
Scripture uses the same words of one man before Noah:
It is recorded in Genesis 5:22, "Enoch walked with God." … These two devout men lived in evil days, but they walked in separation from the evil, and in communion with God.
That walk also produced a public witness. Set beside Lot, the contrast is sharp:
Noah is an example of the separate saint bearing testimony to the world… Peter tells us that he bore witness for God as a "preacher of righteousness". Lot is a picture of a large class of believers. They have no faith for the separate path, so they settle down in the world. They are saved in the end, but they are no testimony to God while they pass through it. Peter does tell us that Lot was a "righteous man". Yet, by living among the wicked, he tormented his righteous soul day after day. He knew nothing of a walk in peace and nearness to God.
Scripture describes only one man this way. That carries a lesson for anyone who finds no company in following God:
Noah was righteous in his human relationships and blameless in his personal character, because "he walked with God." The earth's population had grown so large. It is deeply sad that only one man walked with God. In this he is a picture of the Lord Jesus. Yet he does show that a believer can walk in true, godly separation from an evil world, even with no one else to share that path. … In any case, a lonely path with God is far better than having many friends without God's presence.
What followed tested this description, and God then repeated it:
That is how Scripture describes this man when he first appears in the record, at the ripe age of five hundred years. He then made the ark as God directed. God said to him, "I have seen that you are righteous before Me in this generation" (Genesis 7:1). He proved that he was righteous. He illustrated the obedience of faith.
- Grace first. Noah found favour before Scripture ever calls him righteous. No one walks with God until he has first tasted God's grace.
- Then character. "Blameless" means integrity, not sinlessness; his later failure proves it. His righteousness was the fruit of grace, never its cause.
- Then the walk. Walking with God meant communion with Him and separation from the evil of his day. Scripture says the same of Enoch.
- Then testimony. That separate walk made him a preacher of righteousness. Lot was righteous too, but he settled in the world and bore no witness there.
- Then proof. A lonely path with God is better than crowded company without Him. God Himself confirmed the verdict: "I have seen that you are righteous before Me in this generation."
And Noah begot three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
Genesis 6 tells of corruption, violence and coming judgment. In the middle of it stands one man and a short family list — three names that carry the whole future of the human race, set down in an order that is not the order of their birth.
Other passages let us work out the actual order of their births, and it does not match the list here. One writer sets the lists side by side:
In Genesis 6:10 we find the names of Noah's sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth. Turn to Genesis 10:1 and 1 Chronicles 1:4, and each chapter gives the same names in the same order. Yet in the light of Genesis 9:24 and 10:21 we gather that the actual order of their birth was Japheth, Shem and Ham. But Shem was the one specially chosen in the sovereignty of God, so his name comes first.
Commentators differ on one detail: whether "younger son" in Genesis 9:24 means Ham himself or his son Canaan.
This swap is not a one-off:
A different order than the natural one is before us. The reason: the natural order — that is, birth order — constantly gives way when it crosses the order of grace and God's purpose of blessing.
Everyone alive today traces back to these three men and their wives:
A fresh start for the race began after the flood that judged a guilty world. God preserved Noah and his three sons from destruction. From them began conditions that continue today, and that will continue for their descendants until the Son of Man comes with the clouds of heaven... So the history of man is comparatively recent, and so is his threefold separation into lands and languages, families and nations. This time the race does not begin with a single line. We have three heads with their wives — three great families to renew the history of man on earth.
God names the three sons here, before the ark is even built. They will enter it as part of a household. On what ground?
The Lord commands Noah to enter the ark with his house on this ground: "For I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation." Someone may object that all the members of the household were probably righteous before God too. But the later history of one of them — Ham — forbids that thought. So nothing can weaken the force of the statement: God delivered the family of Noah from the judgment of the flood because of the faith of its head.
One quiet detail in the family list is easy to walk past:
The three sons of Noah, all married men, did not carry one infant into the ark. Eight adult persons passed through the flood. What a touch this is, showing God's thoughtful arranging, His planning tenderness! And it comes in such an unexpected place that it may well comfort many who are going through hard circumstances.
The three lines do not develop alike:
The fountain heads were three, first named in this order: Shem, Ham and Japheth. The first was the family in which God would establish His covenant on earth, and with which He would be in relationship. Then came the one who stood in hostility to God's family. Last came the Gentile Japheth, though he was the eldest and proudest.
After the flood the same three names appear again, with one phrase added — and that phrase casts a long shadow:
Scripture again draws attention to the three heads of Noah's race, "Shem, and Ham, and Japheth," in the same order as before (Genesis 5:32, 6:10, 7:13). Now there is an ominous addition: "and Ham is the father of Canaan." The sad incident that follows explains this at once, and the solemn prophecy that closes the chapter explains it still more. That prophecy echoes through the whole Old Testament, and it will only be brought to completion in that kingdom which awaits the Anointed of Jehovah.
- Named — In a chapter about total corruption, God records three ordinary names. He is already preparing the line through which the world will continue.
- Chosen — Shem stands first, though he was not the firstborn. Birth order gives way to God's purpose of blessing.
- Carried — The sons entered the ark on their father's faith, not their own. Ham's later behaviour proves it.
- Multiplied — From these three men and their wives the whole human family began again, in all its languages and nations.
- Divided — Later the same three names reappear, now with "Ham is the father of Canaan" attached. Coming through judgment is not the same as walking with God.
And the earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was full of violence.
Just before the flood, God looked at the world and summed it up in two words: corrupt and violent. Two questions follow — why these two evils, and why is the earth itself charged, not only the people in it?
One writer reads the verse as Scripture's own account of how sin works.
There are two forms in which sin, or the activity of man's will, shows itself — violence and corruption. This showed itself at the time of the flood. The earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence. Satan is a liar and murderer. In man, corrupt desires are even a more abundant source of evil.
These two evils are not new, and they do not point the same way.
Corruption and self-will have been at work from earliest ages, and in fact were the two great evils let loose among the race in the period before the flood is Godward; violence manward.
Order matters here. Scripture names corruption first, and one writer explains why people get the ranking of these two evils backwards.
Then comes man's most serious evil — his corruption before God. That corruption led to an earth filled with violence (v. 11). Violence is against other people, and people call that the worst thing. But their corruption is against God, and they think little of it. If there were no corruption, there would be no violence. … God tells Noah that the end of all flesh was near, because the earth was filled with violence. Violence was the glaring proof of man's corruption (v. 13).
Why did violence fill the earth with no check on it? One writer looks at the age itself, and at the risk run by anyone who spoke against it.
Genesis 6 tells us that the earth was corrupt in God's sight. It also tells us that "the earth was filled with violence." God had set up no government, and men gave free rein to their lawless desires. They took revenge on one another without restraint. Imagine a man among them condemning their terrible ungodliness and warning that the Lord was coming to judge them. Would they hear him without their anger rising to murderous heights?
One writer traces this ruin back to its start, and takes the word "earth" at face value.
Ever since sin entered the world through the fall of man, its degrading defilements have been spreading. … Notice: corruption had affected the earth itself, for man had also corrupted God's way. Material as well as moral corruption was present.
This is God's own verdict, not a human survey. One writer asks what that scene was to God Himself.
… For the divine nature, what mattered was the horror of an earth corrupt and full of violence. It stands in contrast with Noah — a righteous man, blameless among his generations, walking with God when all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.
Jesus said His return would come in days like Noah's. One writer uses that to test the hope of a world getting steadily better.
Remember the words of the Lord Jesus Christ: "Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man." Some would have us believe that this earth will be covered from pole to pole with a fair mantle of righteousness. They say this will happen before the Son of Man appears in the clouds of heaven. How was it in the days of Noah? Scripture replies, "the earth was filled with violence." "ALL flesh had corrupted their way on the earth." … "Righteousness" and "violence" are not very like each other.
The same two evils become questions for our own life.
These are the two great classes of sins that God had before Him when He said He would destroy the world by a flood. The world has not changed. If we are wronged or slandered, if we have personal grievances against others, what do we show? Is it a peaceful or a violent spirit? On the other hand, there is a moral corruption surrounding us, like the air we breathe.
- Root — corruption comes first: it is against God, and people think lightly of it.
- Fruit — violence is the visible proof of it; remove the corruption and the violence would not exist.
- Reach — corruption is toward God, violence toward people. The ruin reached the earth itself, material as well as moral.
- Restraint — God had set up no government yet. Lawless desire ran unchecked, and the man who warned them stood in danger.
- Repeat — the days of Noah are the pattern for the days of the Son of Man. The same two evils test our own spirit and desires.
And God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its way on the earth.
God looks at the world before the flood, and His verdict is one word: ruined. Three questions follow — what "corrupt" means, whose way all flesh had corrupted, and what God does when the ruin covers everyone.
Genesis opened with God looking at His own work and calling it very good. One writer sets that scene beside this one and asks who has been at work since.
In Genesis 1 God was alone, producing the fruit of His own handiwork, in wisdom, goodness, and skill, and then all was good and desirable... But now it is not God's hand presenting a perfect work to God's thoughts and affections. It is man, the rebel workman, spreading out a wide scene of corruption and violence, for the grief and regret of the mind of God. That is where the secret of the change lies. Man has been at work. Man has been shaping and furnishing the scene, and not the living, blessed God.
The older wording says all flesh had corrupted "his way" — that is, God's way. The damage was not only in behaviour but in the earth itself.
Note this: corruption had affected the earth itself, for man had also corrupted God's way. The corruption was material as well as moral... Ever since sin came in, corruption has thrived and grown. Sadly, its willing victims rush to spread its terrible influence, driven by the sinful desires of body and mind. They are themselves "slaves of corruption," as the Scripture says (2 Peter 2:19).
The word behind "corrupt" explains why the ruin spread through everything.
We have to admit, sadly, how corrupt this world is. It touches every area, so everything is falling apart — for the word "corrupt" carries the thought of "decay and pining away."
The verse before this one pairs corruption with violence. One writer explains which of the two is worse, and how people rank them the other way round.
The passage then points to the most serious evil of man — his corruption before God — which led to an earth filled with violence (v. 11). Violence is of course against others, and people consider this the worst thing. But their corruption is against God, and they think little of it. If there were no corruption there would be no violence... God tells Noah that the end of all flesh was near, because the earth was filled with violence. Violence was the clear proof of man's corruption (v. 13).
The word "all" rules out any idea that judgment fell on the worst of society while better people survived on their own merits.
There must be the entire destruction of that which had corrupted God's way on the earth. "The mighty men, and men of renown," must all be swept away, without distinction. "All flesh" must be set aside, as completely unfit for God. God said, "I have determined to make an end of all flesh." It was not the end of some flesh only. No, all of it was corrupt in the sight of the LORD — all beyond recovery.
The verdict falls on nature, not just on conduct. So effort and polish change nothing.
There is nothing good at all in our sinful nature... But can diligent prayer and watchfulness improve it? No, never: it is completely incurable... True, in some we find nature polished, cultivated, and refined; in others, rough, rude and rugged. But it is the same sinful nature in both. We may not be able to bend a bar of iron, yet it can be hammered out until it is quite flexible. But it is the same iron still. Its appearance has changed, but its nature is the same.
The same passage that announces the end also gives the order to build. Commentators read the ark as a picture of Christ, and the flood as the end of the old order.
Here, then, was a picture of the end of the old creation. All was to pass under the waters of judgement. What then? "Make yourself an ark of gopher wood." Here we have a picture of the new thing. That ark, floating quietly over the dark depth of waters, was a picture of Christ, and of the believer in Him... It all hinges upon this one question. "Am I in or out of Christ?"
One writer also holds this scene up against what people expect the world to look like before Christ returns.
How was it in the days of Noah? Did righteousness cover the earth, as the waters cover the sea?... Scripture replies, "the earth was filled with violence." "All flesh had corrupted their way on the earth." "The earth was corrupt in God's sight." Well then, "so will it be in the days of the Son of Man."
- Corrupt — the word carries decay and wasting away. The ruin was moral and material, and man had corrupted God's way, not just his own.
- Cause — corruption toward God came first. The violence that shocks people was only its proof.
- Scope — "all flesh," not some. God swept away the famous and the brutal alike.
- Incurable — polish changes how the iron looks, never what it is. God does not improve that nature; He judges it.
- Ark — God announces the end, then names one shelter, a picture of Christ. The only question left is whether you are in Him or outside.