And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it
was
corrupt
This is spoken as if he had never looked upon it before; whereas
his eyes are always upon the earth, and the inhabitants of it,
and upon all their ways and works: but this denotes the special
notice he took, and the particular observation he made upon the
condition and circumstances the earth, and its inhabitants, were
in. And this is remarked, as well as the particle "behold" is
used, to denote the certainty of this corruption; it must needs
be true, that the earth was corrupted, since the omniscient God
had declared it to be so, who sees and knows all things:
for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the
earth:
that is, all men, excepting Noah; who were flesh, carnal and
unregenerate persons; these had corrupted the way of God, the
true religion, with their idolatries: and they had corrupted
their own way, their manners, their life and conversation with
their uncleanness and wickedness of various sorts: the Arabic
writers F25 say, that after Enoch was taken
away, the children of Seth and of Cain worshipped idols, everyone
as he pleased, and were immersed in wickedness, and gave their
right hands to each other, and joined in fellowship in committing
sin and vice; and that in the times of Noah, none were left in
the holy mount but he and his wife, and his three sons and their
wives; all went down below and mixed with the daughters of Cain,
and were immersed in sins, and worshipped strange gods, and so
the earth was corrupted and filled with lasciviousness. The
Jewish writers also observe F26, that the generations of
Cain were guilty of uncleanness, men and women, like beasts, and
defiled themselves with all kind of fornication and incest,
everyone with his mother, and with his own sister, and with his
brother's wife, and that openly, and in the streets: and
Sanchoniatho {a}, the Heathen historian, the writer of the
history of Cain's line, says of the fifth generation before the
flood, that the women of those times, without shame, lay with any
man they could meet with.
F25 Elmacinus & Patricides, apud Hottinger. Smegma Oriental. l. 1. c. 8. p. 242, 247.
F26 Pirke Eliezer, c. 22.
F1 Apud Euseb. Praepar. Evangel. l. 1. p. 34, 35.
