And God saw the wickedness of man was great in the
earth,
&c.] That it spread throughout the earth, wherever it was
inhabited by men, both among the posterity of Cain and Seth, and
who indeed now were mixed together, and become one people: this
respects actual transgressions, the wicked actions of men, and
those of the grosser sort, which were "multiplied" F18 as the
word also signifies; they were both great in quality and great in
quantity; they were frequently committed, and that everywhere;
the degeneracy was become universal; there was a flood of impiety
that spread and covered the whole earth, before the deluge of
waters came, and which was the cause of it: this God saw, not
only by his omniscience, by which he sees everything, but he took
notice of it in his providence, and was displeased with it, and
determined in his mind to show his resentment of it, and let men
see that he observed it, and disapproved of it, and would punish
for it:
and [that], every imagination of the thoughts of his heart
[was]
only evil continually:
the heart of man is evil and wicked, desperately wicked, yea,
wickedness itself, a fountain of iniquity, out of which abundance
of evil flows, by which it may be known in some measure what is
in it, and how wicked it is; but God, that sees it, only knows
perfectly all the wickedness of it, and the evil that is in it:
the "thoughts" of his heart are evil; evil thoughts are formed in
the heart, and proceed from it; they are vain, foolish, and
sinful, and abominable in the sight of God, by whom they are
seen, known, and understood afar off: the "imagination" of his
thoughts is evil, the formation of them; they were evil while
forming, the substratum of thought, the very beginning of it, the
first motion to it, yea, "every" such one was evil, and "only"
so; not one good among them, not one good thing in their hearts,
no one good thought there, nor one good imagination of the
thought; and so it was "continually" from their birth, from their
youth upwards, throughout the whole of their lives, and all the
days of their lives, night and day, and day after day, without
intermission: this respects the original corruption of human
nature, and shows it to be universal; for this was not only true
of the men of the old world, but of all mankind; the same is said
of men after the flood as before, and of all men in general
without any exception, ( Genesis 8:21
) ( Psalms
14:1-3 ) ( Romans
3:9-11 ) . Hence appears the necessity of regeneration, and
proves that the new creature is not an improvement of the old
principles of corrupt nature, since there is no good thing in man
but what is put into him; also the disability of man to do that
which is good, even to think a good thought, or do a good action;
therefore the works of unregenerate men are not properly good
works, since they cannot flow from a right principle, or be
directed to a right end.
F18 (hbr) "augescere", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator; "multiplicaretur", Schmidt.