Why Did God Flood The Earth? The Answer Is Not What You Think

Genesis 6:2

That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair;
and they took them wives of all which they chose.

The history of the Bible is largely that of the conflict between two seeds and the narrowing line through which the True Seed came. In the time of Noah, it was indicated that through the line of Shem, The Seed should come, and of the descendants of Shem, the family of Abraham was chosen. Ishmael is passed by, and Isaac is chosen. Esau is set aside, and Jacob is chosen. Of the sons of Jacob, Judah is chosen, and of Judah, came the family of David and so on unto the birth of Christ at Bethlehem. We are, however, conscious that in thus stating the case, we have narrowed our survey down to One, namely Christ, whereas it is perfectly clear from Scripture that the seed of Abraham was to be multiplied as the stars of heaven or as the sand of the seashore. We must return accordingly to Genesis 3, where the great prophecy concerning The Seed of the Woman is recorded and consider it more closely.

The Bible is the record of God's purpose in the Ages, a record that reveals a spiritual foe of great power and a conflict that involves two seeds, as indicated in the primeval prophecy of Genesis 3:

I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her Seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel (Gen. 3:15).

In this wonderful verse, we have the first mention of The Coming Christ Child and of His enemies. First, women do not have seed; they get seed from a man.  Here is a prophecy of a Virgin Birth for this woman is to be found with Seed, and He will be so mighty He will bruise (crush) the head of the old serpent, and the serpent will bruise His heel. The bruising of His heel was the Crucifixion, and the bruising of Satan's head comes quickly.

The devil, now knowing God's plan, sets out to stop it, as our study will show. As a spoiler alert, he fails.

The Ark was prepared by Noah at the command of God with the express purpose of keeping seed alive upon the face of all the earth (Gen. 7:3), and the destruction of all flesh by the flood is intimately connected with the abnormal alliance of the sons of God, and the daughters of men (the Hebrew word for men = adam) (Gen. 6:1-4) and the resulting hybrid progeny, are the seed of the serpent. With the true seed thus preserved, the covenant of Genesis 9:9 was made. The next reference to seed is that of Genesis 12:7, where the promise of God to Abraham is expressed in one sentence: "Unto thy seed will I give this land."

Before we show what happened, we need to examine a very interesting Hebrew word. The word translated "began" (first in Gen. 4:26) is the Hebrew verb chalal, but the idea of beginning is entirely secondary. Chalal primarily means to perforate or pierce through. Thus, to wound as in Psalm 109:22, Isaiah 53:5. From this primitive meaning comes the derived sense of laying open, giving access to, and so to profane as one might a sanctuary (Lev. 19:8), and is used of profaning seed (Lev. 21:15. Chalal is translated in the A.V. be defiled, polluted, profaned, and prostitute, seventy times! The word chalal occurs in Genesis just eight times, and we give the references in order to provide every help possible in arriving at a true understanding of the passage before us:

Gen. 4:26 Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord.
Gen. 6:1 When men began to multiply.
Gen. 9:20 Noah began to be an husbandman.
Gen. 10:8 Nimrod ... he began to be a mighty one.
Gen. 11:6 This they begin to do.
Gen. 41:54 The seven years of dearth began to come.
Gen. 44:12 He searched, and began at the eldest.
Gen. 49:3-4 Reuben ... then defiledst thou it.

It is not without significance that on the one occasion in Genesis where the verb chalal is translated as defile, the reference is to Reuben, who committed a defiling sin against his father and so lost the excellency of the firstborn's position. Here was a most definite attempt to pollute the seed and is but one of many similar attempts that are recorded in the Book of Genesis. The second reference, Genesis 6:1, is recorded as a preface to the violation of God's will by the sons of God, another attack upon The Seed. Even the innocent record Noah began to be a husbandman is but a preface to his drunkenness and the illegitimate begetting of Canaan (Gen. 9:20-27), and Nimrod stands as the head of the abomination that is associated with Babylon throughout the entire Word of God.

Genesis 6 deals with a phenomenon so unnatural that the mind at first turns from it and searches for a more reasonable interpretation than that which lies upon the surface. As this chapter is to the world of Noah and his three sons, what Genesis 3 is to Adam and the entire race, we must spare no pains in our endeavor to understand its teaching. Who and what are the sons of God? In what way could such beings take to themselves, wives? And how could such wives bear them children? How are we to understand the word giants? And what is the meaning of the words "And after that" in Genesis 6:4? What is the significance of the word perfect when applied to Noah (Gen. 6:9), and what is the intention of the words all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth? (Gen. 6:12). These subjects should be studied by the student of the Bible in the context of the seed of the serpent.

The words "sons of God" found in Genesis 6:2 have been variously translated, but the translations fall into two main groups:

1.  The sons of God refer to the descendants of Seth, whereas the daughters of men were the descendants of either Cain or the other sons and daughters of Adam whose names have not been recorded (Gen. 5:4).

2.  The sons of God were fallen angels.

It is most evident that the word "God" in "the sons of God" is set over against "men" in "the daughters of Men"; the word translated "men" being a faulty rendering, for (a) the word in the original is singular, (b) it has the definite article "the," (c) it is the word adam, and the passage should be rendered "the daughters of the man Adam." Without the article, "Adam" denotes mankind in general, but with the article, it denotes the man Adam. Now, however godly the children of Seth may have been up to this time, they could never have been contrasted with the other descendants of Adam, for he was the father of all. Genesis is not putting into contrast two lines descended from Adam, but the sons of God, over against the children of Men.

Before Moses wrote Genesis, a man lived in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and the preface to his most terrible ordeal is given in Chapter 1 of that Book. There we find that there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them (Job 1:6). Now, if the sons of God here referred to the godly among men, surely Job, not Satan would have been among them (Job 1:1). It is assumed that the title "son of God" is used of men in the Old Testament, but this is not so. Job 1:6, Job 2:1, Job 38:7, Psalm 29:1, Psalm 89:6, and Daniel 3:25 all refer to angels. The passage in Hosea 1:10 is not the translation of the Hebrew Beni-ha-Elohim, but Beni-el-chai. Moreover, the Septuagint translates the expression in Genesis 6:2 as "angels." Jude 1:6 makes it clear that there was a fall among the angels; they left their own estate (Gr. oiketerion in 2 Cor. 5:2, a spiritual body), and their transgression was "in like manner" to the sons of Sodom. This fall took place "in the days of Noah" (1 Pet. 3:20; 2 Pet. 2:4).

The progeny of this union are called "giants" Nephilim or "fallen ones." They were monsters both in size and in sin, and it was the express purpose of the flood to blot them out and to recommence a new world with the children of the one man whose pedigree was uncontaminated, namely Noah. It is beyond the ability of any man to demonstrate how it could come about that the marriage of a man of the line of Seth to a woman descended equally from Adam should or could produce such a monstrous race. This subject is part of a larger one, namely the Truth about the presence of the Two Seeds on the earth, and the reader is directed to articles dealing with the Fallen Angels, Seed, and Giants for further teaching on the subject.

The Preservation of the Seed in Noah

In direct contrast with the prevailing corruption, the patriarch Noah stands out in the record of Genesis 6 as a notable exception.

This word repented challenges us, for in what way can God be said to repent? This is not the only occasion when repentance is predicated on the Lord. At the intercession of Moses, the Lord repented of the evil which He thought to do unto His people (Exod. 32:14); this repentance is repeated in the days of David (2 Sam. 24:16), and this repentance is commemorated in Psalm 106:45. It was the complaint of Jonah that he knew full well that God is merciful would repent if only Nineveh would turn to Him (Jonah 3:9-10; Jonah 4:2).

These gracious repentings we can perhaps understand, but it is strange indeed to read that the Lord repented that He had made man. In the first place, we may say that repenting and being grieved at the heart are instances of the figure of speech known as anthropopatheia, a figure which ascribes human attributes to God. The Hebrews called this mode of speech Derek Benai Adam = The way of Adam, and without such condescension on the part of God, man could never apprehend His revelation. But conceding all this and admitting that the use of such parts of the body as the face, nostril, eyes, ears, and hands with reference to God are accommodations to our limitations, we nevertheless believe that they stand for realities, even though we can affix to such spiritual realities no human name.

In like manner, though we may not take the words grief, anger, jealousy, and other similar affections and feelings at their surface value, we nevertheless know that they stand for something equivalent on the high plane of Divine experience. Consequently, we are to gather from Genesis 6:6 that something of extreme antipathy to the purpose of God and creation had come in and spoiled the work of God's hands, grieved His heart, and made Him repent that He had made man. In the language of the parable, the reason is found in the fact that "an enemy hath done this" and that with reference to two sowings of seed (Matt. 13:28).

Throughout the Bible, we have the consciousness of a conflict, a conflict between good and evil, darkness and light, God and Satan, and that the battle is intensely real, making demands upon the Wisdom and Power of The Almighty and culminating in the sparing, not of His Beloved Son.

If such inroads had been made into the nature of mankind by the evil one, that it could be said all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth, then God must act and act drastically if the situation were to be saved. The word translated corrupt in Genesis 6:11-12, and the word translated destroy in Genesis 6:17 is the Hebrew shachath. The only remedy was to destroy it (de facto) as it had become destroyed (de jure) (The Companion Bible). In the future, at the time of the sounding of the seventh angel (Rev. 11:15), the wheel has come full circle, as it was in the days of Noah, and we read that the time had come to destroy them, which destroy (or corrupt) the earth (Rev. 11:18).

Standing separate and almost alone in the midst of well-nigh universal corruption was Noah. It is not without significance that the name Noah is derived from the same Hebrew word translated repent. The Hebrew word is nacham and is found for the first time in Scripture in the words of Lamech, saying, "This same shall comfort us" (Gen. 5:29), and refers to the Ark and the Flood. The next occurrence of nacham is in Genesis 6:6, where it is written: "it repented the Lord." The reason why the one Hebrew word can have such opposite meanings is that, primarily, nacham means a change of mind or affection, and obviously, the mind may change sometimes in one way, sometimes in another. God changed His mind regarding mankind as a whole and destroyed them. He changed His mind about Noah in particular and saved him. What constituted the essential difference between Noah and the rest of mankind? We shall find upon examining the history of Israel that they are denounced as wicked, corrupt, and evil, yet even though enemies because of The Gospel, they are beloved because of the fathers, for the gifts and calling of God are without repentance (Rom. 11:29). Israel, for all their sins, were the chosen seed, and so were saved. Even after the Flood, the words are written, I will not again curse the ground anymore for man's sake; for (although, Heb. ki) the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth (Gen. 8:21). What was it that the Lord saw in the generation before the flood that demanded total destruction? It was the corrupting of the seed, and it is the separation of Noah from this that marks him out in Genesis 6.

These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God (Gen. 6:9).

Noah, like Enoch, walked with God, but this was not all. Noah found grace, the first to so find in all Scripture, but in addition, Noah was perfect in his generations. As the word generations occurs twice in this passage, let us note that the first word is a translation of toledoth family history, and can read either forward or backward, and can speak of either one's ancestors or of one's descendants, but the second word is a translation of the Hebrew dor which refers to Noah's contemporaries, the men living at the same time as himself. With regard to his contemporaries, Noah was perfect. This word, which translates to the Hebrew tamim, means without blemish and primarily refers to physical, not moral, perfection. It is in constant use to describe the blemishless character of a sacrificial animal (Exod. 12:5; Lev. 1:3). Job was described as perfect, as well as upright (Job. 1:1, Job. 1:8; Job. 2:3) and Jacob is described as a plain man (Gen. 25:27), using the same word as is employed in Job and translated perfect, while undefiled is the translation of the word in Song. 5:2 and Song. 6:9. The testimony of Genesis 6:9 is that Noah was uncontaminated so far as his pedigree was concerned, and the channel through which The Seed of the Woman could come, though narrowed down by the well-nigh universal corruption that had set in, was still preserved.

So to cleanse the world of the wicked seed, The Flood had to come, and "eight souls were saved by water" (1 Pet. 3:30) so the human race could be sent a Savior in the form of The Seed of the Woman, Who is Christ Jesus our Lord.