How can God be good if He drowned babies in Noah's flood?

On the other hand, Babylon (meaning "confusion") is typical of the mixture of religion with self-seeking, and this evil must eventually be destroyed. It may seem strange that we read, "Happy the one who takes and dashes your little ones against the rocks!" But it is solemn that the children are involved in their fathers' wickedness. However, their early death is actually a mercy, for they will then be in heaven, as was surely true also when Noah's flood destroyed the whole world. How many little ones who died in the flood will have been welcomed in heaven!

Certainly God knew from eternity past that man would so greatly corrupt himself, yet we are told in verse 6 that He repented that He had made man on the earth. This surely indicates the depth of sorrow that God feels in contemplating the sin of mankind. On the one hand God's great wisdom and power is seen in His creation and also in His marvelous work of recovery after man's ruin; but on the other hand we see the reality of the feelings of His heart in reference to His creatures willingly choosing to rebel against Him. Though God is absolutely sovereign, yet man is seriously responsible and must be made to feel the results of his willful sin. Thus, God decreed that He would “blot out man — from the face of the land.” Yet animals, creeping things and birds are included in this awesome destruction, for man's sin has involved the rest of the earthly creation. People may say that when they sin it is only themselves thy have damaged, but man's sin always affects others too, even unreasoning creatures.

Certainly God knew from eternity past that man would so greatly corrupt himself, yet we are told in verse 6 that He repented that He had made man on the earth. This surely indicates the depth of sorrow that God feels in contemplating the sin of mankind. On the one hand God's great wisdom and power is seen in His creation and also in His marvelous work of recovery after man's ruin; but on the other hand we see the reality of the feelings of His heart in reference to His creatures willingly choosing to rebel against Him. Though God is absolutely sovereign, yet man is seriously responsible and must be made to feel the results of his willful sin. Thus, God decreed that He would "blot out man -- from the face of the land." Yet animals, creeping things and birds are included in this awesome destruction, for man's sin has involved the rest of the earthly creation. People may say that when they sin it is only themselves they have damaged, but man's sin always affects others too, even unreasoning creatures.

How incisive is verse 5! 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. Thus before the flood we have exactly the same verdict as to man as is presented to us in Romans 3:10-18, by quotations extracted from scriptures, which describe the condition of men after the flood.

In verse 6 we are told how all this affected the Lord, and here for the first time we have human feelings attributed to God. Only thus could we have any understanding of such a matter, and there is nothing incongruous in it, inasmuch as man has been made in the image and likeness of God. Only there must be an intensity and elevation in the Divine thoughts and feelings altogether unknown by man. How great must have been His grief! All good at the outset, and now all so abominable, that nothing could meet the case but the total destruction of mankind, with but few exceptions, and also of the animate creation that had been committed to man's hand.

There was just one man that found grace in the eyes of the Lord. In this connection nothing is said of his wife nor of his three sons and their wives. Noah was a man of faith. Shem may have been the same. Ham, we know was not, and of the others we have no information, but as Hebrews 11 says, "Noah … moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house." Faith on his part accepted the Divine warning, which moved him to fear. Fear moved him to act.

Here however we need to distinguish: else we shall surely and seriously stray. Jehovah is here said to repent of mankind that He had made on the earth. His work is a thing quite different from His purpose. And when corruption pervaded it, He was in no way bound to perpetuate what existed only to His dishonour. On the other hand, when a prophet was sent to cry against a great city because of its wickedness before Him, and its inhabitants, from the greatest to the least, repented at the preaching, God saw their works that they turned from their evil ways, and God repented of the evil which He said He would do unto them, and He did it not, to the disgust of the prophet too self-occupied to appreciate the compassion of God, even for the babes and the cattle. But here we are not told of the slightest effect. The preacher of righteousness testified many a long year, and, as far as we know, in vain. Oracularly warned concerning things not yet seen, and moved with fear himself, he prepared an ark for saving his house, with no recorded result save condemning the world of that day and the imprisonment of their spirits, disobedient as they were then, till eternal judgment come. It was a singularly hard generation in the days of Noah; and the Lord declared that so it will be also in the days of the Son of man. They were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were given in marriage until the day, that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Alas! Christendom is rapidly becoming as unbelieving as the Jews were when divine judgments befell them all; and both will be surprised when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with angels of His power, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those that know not God and those that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

As the apostle Peter comments, "the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished"; so here the narrative has every mark of truth without exaggeration or the least approach to imaginative colouring. The universal death which suddenly befell every living creature of the land or the air, is vividly set before the reader; no less than the security of Noah alone and those with him in the ark. It is childish and sinful to cavil at the destruction of the lower creation, which had already been subjected to vanity through the fall of its head. And now that man's wickedness called aloud for divine judgment, the birds and beasts share his ruin on earth. Yet even in this the goodness and the wisdom of God secure the victory in due time. For if the creation fell with the first man, what joy to know in God's word that all its groaning awaits the triumph of the Second man when the manifestation of the sons of God takes place! For as surely as through Adam's transgression it was plunged into sighs, and travails in pain together until now, so surely will the Last Adam appear, when it also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. Christ, besides being Firstborn from the dead, the Head of the church, is also First-born of all creation, its Chief, and Heir of all things. And He died to reconcile, not all believers only, but all things unto Himself, whether things on the earth or things in the heavens. As the word of God is pledged, so His return will vindicate the word and display the reconciliation in power.

1895 225 Thus was the ante-diluvian world purged of its abounding and flagrant evils by divine judgment: the standing witness and warning of another judgment which impends over the habitable earth. There were two witnesses then, first Enoch, then Noah, each with his own characteristic points of difference, both concurring to announce judgment about to fall on the ungodly while living here below. So it will be in the day when the Son of man is revealed (Luke 17:30).

Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? Could He be indifferent to the general state of man morally? It is not God simply in His nature, but He who concerns Himself with the ways of His creatures. Jehovah saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth. Nor would it be easy to find a more solemn appraisal: "every imagination" of them was before Him; and He who loves to accredit the least thought or feeling that is good saw nothing but evil all the day. He is assuredly the God of judgment, and after due testimony will not be slow to execute it.

If the antediluvians had a doom more awful than others before them, we have the divine assurance on the one hand of a special testimony to them, and on the other of their excessive corruption and violence. Most justly therefore did the Judge of all the earth send the flood which took them all away, save the man of faith who, divinely warned of things not seen as yet and moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, through which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith. Granted that worse remains for all unbelievers than the flood; but not worse for antediluvians as such than for others, and for none so sad as for those who slight GOD'S call to repent and believe since redemption, especially for such as bear, and bear falsely or with indifference, the name of the Lord. Who that beholds the Lamb of GOD who takes away the sin of the world can say that the doom of unbelievers is out of proportion to their guilt? He who can deliberately think so seems to me to have no real sense of man's evil or of GOD'S infinite grace.

This judgement of God upon the earth, when the whole world had become corrupt before Him, has often been thought to be a subject full of difficulties, the principal of which it may be well to consider. First, as to its extent, was the flood universal? Language can scarcely be more explicit than is the scripture on this point. We read that "all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living substance was destroyed . . . . and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark." Gen. 7:19-23. After the flood God said He would not any more smite 'every thing living,' as He had done, Gen. 8:21; "neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth." Gen. 9:11: cf. also 2 Peter 2:5; 2 Peter 3:6-7. Words cannot be plainer than the above to signify a universal deluge: the world that then was is distinguished from the earth that now is, and it is easy for faith to accept God's statement. It was a miracle, and it would require as great a miracle to cover all the high hills in one district only, without the water flowing to other parts, as to submerge the whole earth. The quantity of water required to cover the whole earth could easily be formed by God the Creator of all things, and be dispersed into its elements afterwards.

Is not this same care for His people seen in the long respite vouchsafed to the antediluvians? Not only is the long-suffering of God seen, who bore long with the sinners before the flood, and gave them space for repentance, when even every day that Noah worked at the ark, and every plank, and every nail, and every stroke of his hammer, was a warning, and a threatening of the impending judgement; but God could do nothing till Noah was safe in the ark, after He Himself had shut him in: even then there was a respite of seven days (perfect forbearance). But if Noah had been as long again, until he was shut up safe in the ark, so long would judgement have been delayed.