Humanity Embraces Wickedness (Genesis 4-6:7)
Have you ever felt like the whole world was going to hell? There was a point in history where this was more than a trite saying.
Genesis 4-6:7
Today's Scripture Passage
A Few Thoughts to Consider
Have you ever felt like the whole world was going to hell?
There was a point in history where this was more than a trite saying. From Genesis 4-6, humanity takes a very dark turn. Adam and Eve’s son Cain murders his brother Able, and from there, the world slowly dissolves into chaos. In Genesis 6:3, the author reveals that one of the results of this sin is a reduction in the number of years men and women would live. Whereas someone like Methuselah could live 969 years, now “…the Lord said, ‘My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.’”
This changes everything, and as Gordon Wenham writes,
As often in Scripture the punishment is made to fit the crime. Grasping at immortality through these liaisons, man is sentenced to live a maximum of 120 years, roughly a sevenfold reduction over the average lifespan of the antediluvians. Though some of Noah’s immediate descendants live longer than this, their lives are much shorter than the pre-flood patriarchs. The Pentateuch shows that by the time of Moses one hundred and twenty was regarded as the greatest age a man could hope to reach.[1]
Genesis 6:5-7 shows us the depth of this depravity when the author writes,
5 When the Lord saw that human wickedness was widespread on the earth and that every inclination of the human mind was nothing but evil all the time, 6 the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and he was deeply grieved. 7 Then the Lord said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I created, off the face of the earth, together with the animals, creatures that crawl, and birds of the sky—for I regret that I made them.” 8 Noah, however, found favor with the Lord.
A few more textual notes. Referring to verse 5, John Walton writes, “Hardly a better description of total depravity can be given.”[2] Gordon Wenham notes, "The Lord saw" is used in other passages to introduce a decisive divine intervention. And Jewish Historian Umberto Cassuto says, “It does not denote sudden perception but the consideration of a state of affairs that had long been in existence, and on account of which a decision has to be taken.”[3]
