Tuesday
Tuesday
The Spread of Corruption
The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.
Genesis 6:5
Just as God created Adam in his own likeness, so now Adam had a son (Seth) in his likeness (5:1–3). Does this mean that Adam’s likeness to God and Seth’s likeness to Adam were the same likeness, or different? Surely both—for the divine likeness in which Adam and Eve were created and which was transmitted to their descendants, and has been transmitted to us, is both authentic (9:6) and distorted by the fall.
The genealogy in Genesis 5 traces Seth’s line from Adam to Noah. Each generation is described in identical terms, with one main exception, namely Enoch. Instead of declaring that he lived so many years and then died, it is written that he “walked with God” and then “was no more, because God took him away” (v. 24). Thus in the case of this godly man, both life and death were transformed. As Delitzsch wrote, “On a sudden he was gone, without sickness, without dying, without burial.”1
But the general moral situation, which was soon to provoke God’s judgment of the flood, was one of extreme decadence. The author singles out the strange story of the “sons of God” being attracted by “the daughters of men” and marrying them (6:2). Most ancient church fathers thought this was angels marrying humans, but (as Calvin wrote) this theory “is abundantly refuted by its own absurdity.”2 For Jesus taught that angels are sexless creatures. The Reformers, following Chrysostom and Augustine, thought it was Sethites marrying Cainites, the godly marrying the ungodly. In either case, these mixed marriages were unnatural and polygamous, an arrogant rejection of God’s original ordinance of marriage.
The narrative concludes that the earth was “full of violence” (v. 11) and that the Lord’s heart was filled with grief and pain (v. 6). The scene is set for the flood.
For further reading: Genesis 6:1–12