Genesis 6:5-8
The Lord saw how great
the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every
inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The
Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was
deeply troubled. So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the
human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the
creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” But
Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
Comments
Just as thorns and thistles proliferated in the ground from
which Adam was to raise his food, so did wickedness and evil flourish in the
generations that followed Adam and Eve.
God’s reaction to this was not one of outrage, but of
sorrow. The description of God’s heart as being “deeply troubled” should not be
understood in the context of anger. The New Living Translation makes this clear
by saying that the proliferation of evil in the world God had created “broke
his heart.”
Like a surgeon choosing to remove a cancerous tumor before
it destroyed everything, God determined to wipe out all life from the face of
the earth. This could have simply been the end, but God chose instead to have a
new beginning. This “do-over” would not involve a new creation and a second
Garden of Eden, but the salvation of one man’s family and a representative
sample of all the animals.
Reflections
God’s regret over having created the world implies that God
had not known from the beginning how far human wickedness might go. This is an
important passage for understanding the limits of God’s sovereignty and the
extent of human free will. Do you find such an understanding of God to be
comforting or disturbing?
God did not choose to
remain distant and removed from creation, but rather to invest in it so greatly
that its demise brought great sorrow. What in our world today is likely a
source of similar grief and sorrow for God? Are there attitudes and behaviors in
your own life that might do the same?
Would love to talk more about this passage with you sometime in Michigan.
ReplyDelete