Genesis 6 Study Notes

6:8 This contrast to the rest of humanity anticipates Noah’s contrasting destiny. The word favor means undeserved blessing given by a powerful being to one who is less powerful. Noah did not earn his salvation, but his life did demonstrate that he possessed saving faith (Heb 11:7). A wordplay exists in Hebrew between the words for “Noah” and “favor,” as both contain the same two consonants but use them in reverse order: n-ch/ch-n.

6:9-10 The family records of Noah is the third of eleven (Hb) toledoth sections in Genesis (2:4; 5:1; 10:1; 11:10,27; 25:12,19; 36:1,9; 37:2).

6:11-12 Within these two verses three different forms of the verb corrupt are used to describe what humanity had done to itself and the world in Noah’s day. The Hebrew word translated “corrupt” means “to bring to ruin, to destroy.”

6:13 For the first time in the Bible—but by no means the last (18:17; Am 3:7)—God is shown expressing to one person what his intentions were for others. Noah is thus established as a prophet, a role that he would faithfully fulfill (2Pt 2:5). As indicated first in Gn 6:5-7, God would put an end to every creature . . . because of human sin. But judgment would not be limited to people; God would also destroy . . . the earth. Sadly, one of the victims of human sin is the earth on which we live (Lv 26:18-20; Is 24:4-7; Jr 12:11; Hs 4:1-3).

6:14 Because of God’s grace (v. 8) and Noah’s relationship with God (v. 9), Noah and his family would be saved in an ark, along with the land and air animals. The Hebrew term translated “ark” is used only in the Noah account and the story of Moses’s early childhood (Ex 2:3); as used in the Bible it refers to a watertight vessel used to preserve human life from impending disaster. Gopher is the transliteration of a Hebrew word whose meaning is unknown; gopher wood may be pine or cypress or something extinct.

6:15 Noah was to make the ark rectangular and barge-like in shape, six times longer than it was wide, and ten times longer than it was high. These ratios have been used to produce seaworthy craft for centuries. In the Hebrew text the measurements are expressed as “cubits,” a cubit being the length from a person’s elbow to the end of the fully extended middle finger—about eighteen inches. The 450-foot length made the ark the largest ship known to be constructed in ancient times. The ark was to contain an unspecified number of rooms—literally, “nests”—and was to have two layers of pitch, (that is, asphalt or bitumen) painted over the boards.

6:16 The Hebrew word translated roof can also be translated “window” or “hatch.” If the term means “roof,” then the text probably indicates that it was to extend eighteen inches over the sides of the boat. If the term means “window,” then it refers to an eighteen-inch high gap separating the four sides of the boat from its roof.

6:17 Only after he commanded Noah to make the ark did God tell him why it was to be built: God was bringing a flood—a term used only in connection with the massive, all-destroying flood in Noah’s day. Everything on earth will perish. The biblical language here and elsewhere in Gn 6-8 most naturally indicates that Noah’s flood covered the entire globe. The apostle Peter seems to affirm this (2Pt 2:5; 3:6). That the flood was global has been the dominant Christian understanding throughout history and remains so today. Defenders of this view offer models to explain the flood’s impact on the geological column. They also tackle questions such as how much water was required to flood the entire globe. If geography today reflects pre-flood geography, scientists estimate that Earth would have needed four times the current quantity of water for the flood to cover the highest mountains (Gn 7:19-20). In this light some defenders of a global flood have suggested that pre-flood geography differed from today’s geography. Specifically, they suggest that Earth’s landscape was flatter in the pre-flood era, thus requiring less water to flood, and that the violent flood created many of today’s geographical and geological features. Others take a different approach, suggesting that pre- and post-flood geography is largely the same, that the flood did indeed require a greater quantity of water than is now present on Earth, and that by an unknown mechanism Earth’s quantity of water has greatly diminished after the flood.

Tamiym, an adjective from tamam, “be complete,” has both physical and spiritual significance. Fifty-one occurrences describe animals as unblemished (Ex 12:5) or without blemish, thus qualified to be sacrificial victims. Related ideas are entire (Lv 3:9), complete (Lv 23:15), whole (Pr 1:12; Ezk 15:5), and full (Lv 25:30). A frequent spiritual meaning is blameless, devout, or upright (Gn 6:9; 17:1; Jb 12:4). A synonym is yashar (“upright”; Pr 2:21). This is God’s standard for human behavior (Dt 18:13) echoed in the NT by the word translated “perfect” (teleios) in Mt 5:48. Tamiym means perfect when describing God’s ways, knowledge, or word (Dt 32:4; 2Sm 22:31; Jb 37:16). He can make our way perfect (2Sm 22:33). Tamiym can function nominatively as integrity or sincerity (Jos 24:14; Am 5:10), and adverbially as honestly (Jdg 9:16).

Citing the flexible application of some terms used to describe the flood (e.g., kol ha’arets is rendered as “throughout the earth” in 7:3 but legitimately can refer to limited areas of land), the inclusion of details that could indicate a regional flood (e.g., the dove returning with a “plucked olive leaf” in its beak just as soon as the waters subsided despite the fact that low-lying areas where olive trees now grow would have been fully submerged for roughly a year, 8:11), and the difficulty of finding traces of a global flood in earth’s geological record, some evangelicals conclude that Noah’s flood covered only that portion of the earth that was inhabited by humans. In this view the flood destroyed all humans except the persons on Noah’s ark, but did not need to cover the whole globe to do so, since the flood of Noah occurred before the dispersion of the nations in Gn 10.

6:18 The term covenant refers to a binding, formal agreement between two parties—a sort of treaty, pact, or contract.

6:19 God’s preservation of Noah meant that earth and humanity would still need the ecological support network of animals. Consequently, Noah was to bring into the ark one male and one female of all the living creatures. Representatives of all vulnerable species were to be preserved.

6:20-21 Noah would not have to go on safaris to collect the various animals. They would come to him so he could keep them alive. On at least three other occasions in the Bible God directed animals to go to people (Ex 16:13; Nm 11:31; 1Kg 17:2-6).

6:22 As other heroic men of the Bible would do in later times—Moses and Aaron (Ex 7:6), Aaron’s sons (Lv 8:36), Joshua (Jos 11:9), Gideon (Jdg 6:27), Samuel (1Sm 16:4), David (2Sm 5:25), and Elijah (1Kg 17:5)—Noah did everything that God had commanded him. An undetermined amount of time had passed between this verse and the previous verses in this chapter. Certainly the construction of the ark would have been a lengthy endeavor.