Genesis 6:1–7:24--Increasing Corruption and the Global Flood

Genesis 6-7
World English Bible

6 When men began to multiply on the surface of the ground, and daughters were born to them, 2 God’s sons saw that men’s daughters were beautiful, and they took any that they wanted for themselves as wives. 3 Yahweh said, “My Spirit will not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; so his days will be one hundred twenty years.” 4 The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when God’s sons came in to men’s daughters and had children with them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.

5 Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was continually only evil. 6 Yahweh was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him in his heart. 7 Yahweh said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the surface of the ground—man, along with animals, creeping things, and birds of the sky—for I am sorry that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found favor in Yahweh’s eyes.

9 This is the history of the generations of Noah: Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time. Noah walked with God. 10 Noah became the father of three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. 11 The earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. 12 God saw the earth, and saw that it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.

13 God said to Noah, “I will bring an end to all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them and the earth. 14 Make a ship of gopher wood. You shall make rooms in the ship, and shall seal it inside and outside with pitch. 15 This is how you shall make it. The length of the ship shall be three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. 16 You shall make a roof in the ship, and you shall finish it to a cubit upward. You shall set the door of the ship in its side. You shall make it with lower, second, and third levels. 17 I, even I, will bring the flood of waters on this earth, to destroy all flesh having the breath of life from under the sky. Everything that is in the earth will die. 18 But I will establish my covenant with you. You shall come into the ship, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. 19 Of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ship, to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female. 20 Of the birds after their kind, of the livestock after their kind, of every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, two of every sort will come to you, to keep them alive. 21 Take with you some of all food that is eaten, and gather it to yourself; and it will be for food for you, and for them.” 22 Thus Noah did. He did all that God commanded him.

7 Yahweh said to Noah, “Come with all of your household into the ship, for I have seen your righteousness before me in this generation. 2 You shall take seven pairs of every clean animal with you, the male and his female. Of the animals that are not clean, take two, the male and his female. 3 Also of the birds of the sky, seven and seven, male and female, to keep seed alive on the surface of all the earth. 4 In seven days, I will cause it to rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights. I will destroy every living thing that I have made from the surface of the ground.”

5 Noah did everything that Yahweh commanded him.

6 Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came on the earth. 7 Noah went into the ship with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives, because of the floodwaters. 8 Clean animals, unclean animals, birds, and everything that creeps on the ground 9 went by pairs to Noah into the ship, male and female, as God commanded Noah. 10 After the seven days, the floodwaters came on the earth. 11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the sky’s windows opened. 12 It rained on the earth forty days and forty nights.

13 In the same day Noah, and Shem, Ham, and Japheth—the sons of Noah—and Noah’s wife and the three wives of his sons with them, entered into the ship— 14 they, and every animal after its kind, all the livestock after their kind, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth after its kind, and every bird after its kind, every bird of every sort. 15 Pairs from all flesh with the breath of life in them went into the ship to Noah. 16 Those who went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God commanded him; then Yahweh shut him in. 17 The flood was forty days on the earth. The waters increased, and lifted up the ship, and it was lifted up above the earth. 18 The waters rose, and increased greatly on the earth; and the ship floated on the surface of the waters. 19 The waters rose very high on the earth. All the high mountains that were under the whole sky were covered. 20 The waters rose fifteen cubits higher, and the mountains were covered. 21 All flesh died that moved on the earth, including birds, livestock, animals, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every man. 22 All on the dry land, in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, died. 23 Every living thing was destroyed that was on the surface of the ground, including man, livestock, creeping things, and birds of the sky. They were destroyed from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ship. 24 The waters flooded the earth one hundred fifty days.

---

This is the largest section of text that we have tried to cover at one time so far, so I hope I can do it justice as I summarize the main points.  First, we are told that men continued to increase in number, but as they did so, they also increased in their wickedness.  The meaning of Genesis 6:2 is hotly debated, but I believe that there are some New Testament passages that clarify this for us.  This speaks fallen angels (demons) who left their domain (the spiritual realm) to enter the physical realm and have sexual encounters with human women.  I'm not exactly sure how this is possible, but it seems like their goal was to make a super-strong race of humans bent on rebellion against God that they believed would be big enough and strong enough and evil enough to stop God's good plans from happening.  We see in future Scripture passages that God binds these demons to hold them over for the day of judgment in the same Abyss that Satan will one day be held for 1,000 years, but these evil spirits will be released on the earth in the last days as part of the judgment on the world (see Revelation 9:1-11 when this abyss or bottomless pit is opened and these angles come out to torment men and women).  We are told that this is where the Nephilim come from.  However, there are Nephilim up until the time of David when David and his men killed many giants like Goliath and his siblings that were all described as Nephilim, so I don't think this was an isolated event.  If it were, all of the Nephilim would have died in the Flood and that would have been the end of them and there would have been no Goliath, for there were no survivors of the Flood other than those inside the Ark.

I'm getting ahead of myself a bit as we've established that the world is becoming more and more evil and it gets to the point where God says that every thought and intention of man's heart is always wicked at all times.  That is quite a statement.  He says that He's sorry that He created mankind and that He will not put up with their wickedness and rebellion forever, and he gives a warning that judgment is coming in exactly 120 years (the verse does not mean that a human cannot ever live to be more than 120 years old, though we know that is extremely rare).

God commits that he will destroy not just all mankind, but all land-dwelling flesh from the earth, and much of the vegetation so that he can basically start off with a clean slate like after Day 3 of creation.  The containers will be there ready to be filled again but the heavens are not judged and the fish of the sea are only partially judged, but God expected them to be able able survive.  God would cause the whole world to be covered by water, even the highest hills and mountains would be completely covered for 120 days.  During that time, the geography of the earth changed greatly, as the continents began to separate from one another, the waters that were once gathered in a single place were now spread out across most of the face of the earth, and there were now vast differences in elevation and climate across the face of the earth after the Flood.

God sees Noah (remember his name from yesterday?  He was the last name in the genealogy, so we know he was to be the next important character).  He is one of the few people in the Bible that is described as being blameless and walking with righteousness.  We will see later that he is not perfect and he does sin, but along with other like Joseph and Daniel, these are men whom we should try to emulate who were salt and light in the midst of very wicked environments and did not become polluted by the world.  For the sake of God's promises being fulfilled and because He had compassion on Noah and his family, God gave Noah instruction on how to build an Ark that would be large enough to save Noah's family and anyone else who wished to come on the Ark with him, and Noah would spend the 120 years he was given to build and evangelize (he was quite the multi-tasker being able to preach and teach all while overseeing the construction of the Ark and working on it himself).  The whole world would reject Noah's invitation, so the room that was made for all of mankind would be given to two of every kind of animal and seven pairs of every kind of clean animal (more of these animals would be needed so that they would be used for sacrifices).

Note that Noah did not have to go out and hunt and trap the animals, the LORD brought the animals to him and caused the animals to get on the Ark when the time was right.  Since the Ark is a picture of salvation, I think there is something to be learned here about God's sovereignty and power to bring people to Himself, even those whom we would never imagine would be able to be tamed because we see them as having no more spiritual insight as these wild animals, yet God can work powerfully to accomplish His good plans to make a people unto Himself from every tribe, tongue and nation to the praise of His glory (more on this when we get to the Tower of Babel which happens shortly after the Flood).

Many people laugh at this account to say that there is no way that there was room for two of every species of animal on the ark, but that is not what the text says, nd the full gambit of speciation has not happened yet.  Remember that Adam created a taxonomy and named all the different kids of animals in the Garden?  That is the same word we are using here.  Adam was able to do that in less than a day, so we're talking about something high-level here where the animals brought on the Ark were compatible with one another and had all the genetic information necessary to make all the different species of their kind that we see today (you can find more information about his on the Answers in Genesis website and the Institution for Creation Research website if you're interested in learning more about how one family and two of every kind of animal and seven pairs of every clean animal were able to turn into the vast array of what we see today).

Experts have looked at the proportions given for the Ark and the materials used to construct the Ark and have realized that God told Noah how to build a vessel that couldn't be capsized.  We've used these same specifications to help build some of our large vessels  to this day.  Since there were variations on what a "cubit" could be, we usually estimate it is 18 inches.  It is roughly the distance from the elbow to the tip of your finger in a fully-formed adult.  If you're interested in seeing what a vessel of this size might look like and what the different kids of animals might look like and how they could have stored all the food and been able to take care of things like waste disposal, you should visit The Ark Encounter in northern Kentucky (and stop by The Creation Museum that is in the Cincinnati, OH area right over the right while you are there).  These are both part of Answers in Genesis ministries, so you can find out more about them on the Answers in Genesis website.

Noah did everything that God commanded him and on the day that God brought all the animals onto the Ark, He told Noah and his family to get in and God closed the door behind them (God closed the door and sealed it, not Noah).  There is coming a day that the New Testament points to that will be like this day when God seals all of His people inside the Ark of Christ so that we might be delivered through the coming judgment to the new creation that He has in store for us on the other side of it.  However, those who are outside who have rejected the LORD's invitation will have no more opportunity as God desires that they face the consequences of their choice and experience the coming judgment.  In the first judgment, the earth was judged by water.  In the coming judgment, it will be judged by fire.

A quick accounting of everyone on the Ark is given so that we see that there are eight humans on the Ark--Noah and his wife and the sons of Noah--Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives.  From these eight people, God will bring about all the various nations of the world.  We'll see that in a little bit with the Table of Nations passage.

So we see that the death and destruction and fossilization and geological changes didn't happen gradually over a long period of time, but they happened quickly over a short period of time--mostly during the 150 days of the flood and the total of 360 days (a full lunar calendar) until Noah was able to exit the Ark.  Important events happened on many of the Feast Days during the first month and the seventh month of the year, though these feasts would not be established until the time of Moses, but God was already pointing towards them and their greater fulfillment in Christ. 

Everything we see today in geology shows that we have layers that were laid down quickly across the entire earth, and the story in Genesis explains why we see a massive amount of fossils appear all at once in what you probably call the Cambrian Explosion.  It was not a record of the "explosion" of life on earth (creation), but of cataclysmic judgment on all flesh and death and destruction (the Flood).  The websites I pointed you towards earlier have many answers to the questions that you may have about Creation Science and the history recorded in Genesis.  It is not myth, fable, or legend.  It is literal history, and Jesus quoted it as such and tells us to expect history to repeat itself in the last days.  In the last days, things will be just like they were in the time of Noah before the Flood.  People who failed to listen to the warnings will be caught unprepared, and that's exactly the way God intends it to be.  He will save all of His Elect (those whom He calls and caused to come inside His Ark of salvation--that is Christ), but to those who choose to reject Him, they will face eternal judgment that will start with the judgment of this creation, which is just a preview of the eternal judgment that will be experienced by the devil, his angels, and all those who choose to rebel along with him (whether that rebellion is passive or active, it is still rebellion).  Choose today to enter the Ark of Christ and be saved.