The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible
Corruption on the Earth
Genesis 6:1–7 — Corruption on the Earth. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.
1Now when men began to multiply on the face of the earth and daughters were born to them,
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·hî kî- hā·’ā·ḏām hê·ḥêl lā·rōḇ ‘al- pə·nê hā·’ă·ḏā·māh ū·ḇā·nō·wṯ yul·lə·ḏū lā·hem
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-it-came-to-pass when the-man (hā-ʾāḏām) began (hēḥēl) to-multiply (lā-rōḇ) upon the-face of-the-ground (hā-ʾăḏāmāh), and-daughters were-born to-them.
Where the English smooths the original
Heb. ha-adam , i.e. “the man.” It is not the proper name “Adam”; nor is it “the man” as an individual as in Genesis 3:24 , Genesis 4:1 : but “the man” collectively, in the sense of “the human race,” LXX οἱ ἄνθρωποι
When men began to multiply — This was the effect of the blessing, Genesis 1:28 , and yet man’s corruption so abused this blessing that it was turned into a curse.
Genesis 6:1-2 relates to the increase of men generally (האדם, without any restriction), i.e., of the whole human race
2the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they took as wives whomever they chose.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
ḇə·nê- hā·’ĕ·lō·hîm ’eṯ- way·yir·’ū kî bə·nō·wṯ hā·’ā·ḏām hên·nāh ṭō·ḇōṯ way·yiq·ḥū lā·hem nā·šîm mik·kōl ’ă·šer bā·ḥā·rū
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-saw the-sons-of God (bᵉnê hā-ʾĕlōhîm) the-daughters of-the-man, that good (ṭōḇōṯ) [were] they; and-they-took to-them wives (nāšîm) from-all whom they-chose.
Where the English smooths the original
Or "good" (k), not in a moral but natural sense; goodly to look upon, of a beautiful aspect
These passages show that the expression "sons of God" cannot be elucidated by philological means, but must be interpreted by theology alone.Keil's methodological key to the whole sons-of-God dispute: lexicography alone cannot settle it.
But no modern commentator has shown how such marriages could produce “mighty men . . . men of renown;” or how strong warriors could be the result of the intermarriage of pious men with women of an inferior race
(a) The children of the godly who began to degenerate. (b) Those that had wicked parents, as if from Cain. (c) Having more respect for their beauty and worldly considerations than for their manners and godliness.
3So the LORD said, “My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days shall be 120 years.”
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
Yah·weh way·yō·mer rū·ḥî lō- yā·ḏō·wn ḇā·’ā·ḏām lə·‘ō·lām bə·šag·gam hū ḇā·śār yā·māw wə·hā·yū mê·’āh wə·‘eś·rîm šā·nāh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-said the-LORD (Yahweh): not shall-it-abide (yāḏôn) my-Spirit (rûḥî) in-the-man for-ever (lᵉʿōlām), in-that-also he [is] flesh (bāśār); and-shall-be his-days a-hundred and-twenty year.
Where the English smooths the original
is flesh, not "transitory beings" (Gesenius, Rosenmüller, Tuch), or corporeal beings (Kalisch), but sinful beings; bashar being already employed in its ethical significationTrimmed before the Greek σάρξ; the excerpt is a contiguous substring of the Pulpit Commentary on 6:3.
"Therefore his days shall be 120 years:" this means, not that human life should in future never attain a greater age than 120 years, but that a respite of 120 years should still be granted to the human race.
Its obscurities, indeed, are such that it may well be the case, that the original text has suffered corruption in the early stages of its transmission.Included as an honesty marker: Cambridge concedes the verse's text and sense are deeply uncertain.
Justice said, Cut them down; but mercy interceded: Lord, let them alone this year also; and so far mercy prevailed, that a reprieve was obtained for six-score years; and during this time Noah was preaching righteousness to them
4The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and afterward as well—when the sons of God had relations with the daughters of men. And they bore them children who became the mighty men of old, men of renown.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
han·nə·p̄i·lîm hā·yū ḇā·’ā·reṣ bay·yā·mîm hā·hêm wə·ḡam ’a·ḥă·rê- ḵên ’ă·šer bə·nê hā·’ĕ·lō·hîm yā·ḇō·’ū ’el- bə·nō·wṯ hā·’ā·ḏām wə·yā·lə·ḏū lā·hem hêm·māh hag·gib·bō·rîm ’ă·šer mê·‘ō·w·lām ’an·šê haš·šêm
Literal — word-for-word from the original
The-Nephilim (han-nᵉp̄ilîm) were in-the-earth in-those days, and-also after that, when came the-sons-of God in to the-daughters of-the-man, and-they-bore to-them — they [are] the-mighty-ones (hag-gibbōrîm) who [were] from-of-old, men of-the-name (haš-šēm).
Where the English smooths the original
“Gibborim,” mighty men (see Genesis 10:8 ), has nothing to do with stature, but means heroes, warriors. It is also generally used in a good sense.
Luther gives the correct meaning, "tyrants:" they were called Nephilim because they fell upon the people and oppressed them.
The precise meaning of the name has been lost. The passage in Numbers shews clearly that it denoted men of gigantic stature.
Giants; men so called, partly from their high stature, but principally for their great strength and force, whereby they oppressed and tyrannized over others
5Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great upon the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was altogether evil all the time.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
Yah·weh way·yar kî rā·‘aṯ hā·’ā·ḏām rab·bāh bā·’ā·reṣ wə·ḵāl yê·ṣer maḥ·šə·ḇōṯ lib·bōw raq ra‘ kāl- hay·yō·wm
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-saw the-LORD that great [was] the-wickedness (rāʿaṯ) of-the-man in-the-earth, and-that every inclination (yēṣer) of-the-thoughts of-his-heart [was] only evil (raʿ) all the-day.
Where the English smooths the original
yetzer , a device, like pottery ware, from yatza , to fashion as a potter ( Genesis 2:7 ; Genesis 8:19 ). Cf. yotzer, a potter, used of God
“was only evil continually”—Heb., all the day, from morning to night, without reproof of conscience or fear of the Divine justice. A more forcible picture of complete depravity could scarcely be drawn
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
6And the LORD regretted that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
Yah·weh way·yin·nā·ḥem kî- ‘ā·śāh ’eṯ- hā·’ā·ḏām bā·’ā·reṣ way·yiṯ·‘aṣ·ṣêḇ ’el- lib·bōw
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-regretted (way-yinnāḥem) the-LORD that he-had-made the-man in-the-earth, and-he-grieved-himself (way-yiṯʿaṣṣēḇ) to his-heart (libbô).
Where the English smooths the original
The repentance of God is an anthropomorphic expression for the pain of the divine love at the sin of man, and signifies that "God is hurt no less by the atrocious sins of men than if they pierced His heart with mortal anguish" (Calvin).
A touching indication that God did not hate man, and a clear proof that, though the Divine purpose is immutable, the Divine nature is not impassible.
But this is spoken of God after the manner of men, by the same figure of speech whereby eyes, ears, hands, and feet are ascribed to God, and must be understood so as not to reflect on his immutability or felicity.
it signifies an alienation of God’s heart and affections from men for their wickedness, whereby God carries himself towards them like one that is truly penitent and grieved, destroying the work of his own hands.
7So the LORD said, “I will blot out man, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—every man and beast and crawling creature and bird of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them.”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
Yah·weh way·yō·mer ’em·ḥeh ’eṯ- hā·’ā·ḏām ’ă·šer- bā·rā·ṯî mê·‘al pə·nê hā·’ă·ḏā·māh mê·’ā·ḏām ‘aḏ- ‘aḏ- bə·hê·māh wə·‘aḏ- re·meś ‘ō·wp̄ haš·šā·mā·yim kî ni·ḥam·tî kî ‘ă·śî·ṯim
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-said the-LORD: I-will-blot-out (ʾemḥeh) the-man whom I-have-created (bārāʾṯî) from-upon the-face of-the-ground, from-man unto-beast, unto-creeping-thing (remeś) and-unto-bird of-the-heavens; for I-am-grieved (niḥamtî) that I-have-made them.
Where the English smooths the original
the original word is very striking, 'I will wipe off man from the earth,' as dirt or filth is wiped off from a place which should be clean, and is thrown to the dunghill, the proper place for it.
"The idea of destroying by washing away is peculiarly appropriate to the Deluge, and the word is chosen on account of its significance" (Quarry)
The animal world was to share in this destruction, because its fate is bound up with that of man ( Romans 8:19-22 ); but the idea of the total destruction of all animals by the flood, so far from being contained in the text, is contradicted by it, as it only says that it is to reach to them.
But now a general and violent destruction is to overtake the whole race - a standing monument of the divine wrath against sin, to all future generations of the only family saved.
The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.
AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.
The unit opens on hā-ʾāḏām — "the man" with the article, which Keil & Delitzsch read as "the whole human race … without any restriction," and Cambridge glosses through the LXX hoi anthrōpoi. The blessing of fruitfulness from Genesis 1:28 turns, as Benson says, into "a curse." Then the gate of the whole passage: "the sons of God" (bᵉnê hā-ʾĕlōhîm) take wives of "the daughters of men." The voices set out three ancient roads. Cambridge defends the literal angel-reading — "beings partaking of the Divine nature" — and traces the later "strange legends respecting fallen angels." Keil, surveying the same evidence at extraordinary length, answers that the title "sons of Elohim" elsewhere names the godly (Psalm 73:15; Deuteronomy 32:5; Hosea 1:10) and that the verb "took wives" (lāqaḥ ʾiššāh) "is never applied to porneia" — marriage, not angelic union, is in view, "for Christ Himself distinctly states that the angels cannot marry." Ellicott presses a third difficulty against the Sethite reading: no one has shown how pious marriages could breed "mighty men … men of renown." We do not pretend the Verifier settles this; the link is a matter of Hebrew idiom and theology, and we record the dispute rather than adjudicate it.
"My Spirit shall not yāḏôn in the man forever." Every load-bearing word here is contested, and the honest commentators say so. The Pulpit Commentary lays out the options for the verb — "abide" (LXX, Vulgate), "rule" (Delitzsch), "contend" (Calvin) — and for bᵉšaggam offers two incompatible parsings. Cambridge goes furthest: "its obscurities … are such that it may well be the case, that the original text has suffered corruption." Yet through the obscurity all the voices hear mercy. Benson: "Justice said, Cut them down; but mercy interceded … a reprieve was obtained for six-score years; and during this time Noah was preaching righteousness." Keil takes the 120 years not as a new lifespan but as "a respite … granted to the human race," announced to Noah as "preacher of righteousness" (2 Peter 2:5). The single negative — "not forever" — is, as Barnes puts it, where "streams out the bright light of God's free and tender mercy."
The Nephilim stand on the earth "in those days, and also afterward." Here the synthesis can speak with the Verifier's confidence on one narrow point: nᵉp̄îl (H5303) occurs only twice in the Hebrew Bible — here and Numbers 13:33 — so the verbal tie to the spies' report is rated confirmed. But the meaning of the word is another matter. Cambridge states it plainly: "The precise meaning of the name has been lost." Keil follows Luther in rejecting the LXX "giants" for "tyrants … because they fell upon the people and oppressed them," deriving it from nāp̄al, "to fall upon" (Aquila epipiptontes, Symmachus biaioi). Ellicott keeps the two terms apart: the gibbōrîm "has nothing to do with stature, but means heroes, warriors." Keil's grammatical wedge — the perfect "were," not "became" — argues the Nephilim predate the marriages and are not their issue. The verse names "men of the name" (haš-šēm); Calvin, by way of the Pulpit Commentary, calls them "honorable robbers, who boasted of their wickedness."
The unit closes by setting two hearts against each other. Man's: "every yēṣer of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the day." The Pulpit Commentary recovers the potter-image in yēṣer — "like pottery ware, from yatza, to fashion as a potter (Genesis 2:7)" — and on the restrictive raq asks, "If this is not total depravity, how can language express it?" God's heart: "it repented the LORD … and it grieved Him to His heart." The voices guard this in chorus as anthropopathism — Benson, "spoken of God after the manner of men"; Poole, "at his very soul, i.e. exceedingly"; and Keil's crown, citing Calvin, that God "is hurt no less by the atrocious sins of men than if they pierced His heart with mortal anguish." Then the sentence: "I will blot out" (ʾemḥeh) — Henry's "wipe off … as dirt or filth" — of "man whom I have created" (bārāʾ, the verb of Genesis 1:1). The Maker erases what only the Maker made; and yet, as Keil adds beyond our last verse, "mercy is seen in the midst of wrath" — for the next verse opens, "But Noah found grace."
Under Sola Scriptura, this fallible reader tests the chorus and offers his own, to be weighed against the Word. The unit is built on a single grim symmetry of sight and forming. In v.2 the sons of God see (rāʾāh) that the daughters are good (ṭôḇ) and take — a deliberate echo, and inversion, of Eden, where the woman saw the fruit was good and took (Genesis 3:6). The fall is being re-enacted at the scale of a whole race. Then in v.5 God sees in answer, and what He reads is the yēṣer of the heart — the thing formed within, named with the potter's verb that formed man himself in Genesis 2:7. So the chain is: God forms man (yāṣar) → man's heart forms only evil (yēṣer) → God is grieved with the carving-pain (ʿāṣaḇ, the root that is "to carve") → God resolves to blot out what He created (bārāʾ). The vocabulary of making runs straight through the unit like a wound. The deepest note, which I hold tentatively, is that Genesis 8:21 will repeat the verdict of 6:5 word for word after the Flood — the yēṣer is still evil from youth — and on that unchanged diagnosis God vows never to flood the earth again. The Flood does not cure the heart; it reveals that judgment alone cannot. The unit therefore points past itself, beyond water, to a remedy the water could not give. This is the reader's reading; let it be tried by Scripture, and discarded where it fails.
The Flood did not change the heart; it proved that nothing short of a new heart would. — a fallible reading, not Scripture
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
"The Nephilim were on the earth in those days" (6:4) and again the spies report, "there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak" (Numbers 13:33). The lexeme nᵉp̄îl appears only in these two passages of the Hebrew Bible. Cambridge connects them directly; Keil uses the Numbers text to argue the word means oppressors, not necessarily giants. The verbal tie is real and rare; what the word denotes is not certain, and the recurrence after the Flood is the very thing Cambridge thinks betrays an independent tradition.
Numbers 13:33
basis: Rare shared lexeme H5303 nᵉp̄îl — occurs in only 2 verses of the OT (Verifier: frequency 2). The link is verbal and confirmed; the meaning of the term remains disputed.
Before the Flood: "every yēṣer of the thoughts of his heart was only evil" (6:5). After it, God says the same: "the yēṣer of man's heart is evil from his youth" (Genesis 8:21) — and on that ground vows never to flood the earth again. Keil notes the two verses "describe it in the very same words." The repetition is the unit's hinge: the judgment did not alter the diagnosis.
Genesis 8:21
basis: Shared lexemes incl. rare H3336 yēṣer (in 9 vv), with H120 ʾāḏām, H3820 lēb, H7451 raʿ (Verifier). The near-identical wording of 6:5 and 8:21 makes this a confirmed verbal echo.
God resolves, "I will blot out (ʾemḥeh) man … from man unto beast, creeping thing and bird" (6:7); the execution records, "every living thing was blotted out (way-yimmaḥ) … man, beast, creeping thing, and bird" (Genesis 7:23). Same verb māḥāh, same merism of the creaturely orders. Cambridge marks māḥāh as the signature word of this strand of the narrative.
Genesis 7:23
basis: Shared lexemes H4229 māḥāh (in 32 vv), rare H7431 remeś (in 17 vv), with H5775 ʿôp̄ and H929 bᵉhēmāh (Verifier). Sentence (6:7) and fulfillment (7:23) share the verb of blotting and the animal cluster — confirmed verbal link.
The doom-list of 6:7 — "beast … creeping thing (remeś) … bird of the air" — repeats the creation roll of Genesis 1:26, where God gives man dominion over "beast … every creeping thing … fowl of the air." The Flood narrative deliberately runs the creation in reverse, unmaking the orders God had made. This is structural, not a quotation: the words recur because the catastrophe undoes the catalogue.
Genesis 1:26
basis: Shared common lexemes H929 bᵉhēmāh, H7431 remeś, H5775 ʿôp̄ (Verifier). These are the creation-catalogue terms; their recurrence marks a thematic de-creation pattern, not a verbal quotation — so tiered structural.
"It repented (nāḥam) the LORD that He had made man" (6:6) stands in apparent tension with "the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent (nāḥam); for He is not a man, that He should repent" (1 Samuel 15:29). The same verb yields opposite-sounding claims. Benson, Poole, Gill and Cambridge resolve it as anthropopathism — a change in God's dealings, not His nature. We tier this thematic, not verbal: nāḥam is common, and the link is a doctrinal counterpoint, not a quotation.
1 Samuel 15:29
basis: Shared lexeme H5162 nāḥam (in 100 vv) — common, not rare (Verifier). The pairing is a doctrinal counter-statement on divine repentance, a thematic relation rather than a verbal quotation.
Jesus turns 6:1–7 into a sign of His coming: "as the days of Noah were … they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark" (Matthew 24:38; cf. Luke 17:27). Keil cites these very texts to support reading the "sons of God" as men contracting ordinary marriages. This is a New Testament reading of an Old Testament unit; being Greek-to-Hebrew it cannot rest on shared Strong's numbers, so it is tiered structural, on the explicit dominical citation of the Noah narrative.
Matthew 24:38 · Luke 17:27
basis: Cross-Testament (Greek↔Hebrew): no shared Strong's possible. Basis is the explicit citation of the Noah narrative by Jesus (Matthew 24:38; Luke 17:27), making the marrying/giving-in-marriage of Genesis 6 a confirmed thematic-structural link, not a verbal one.
Cambridge and the Pulpit Commentary appeal to Jude 1:6 ("angels which kept not their first estate") and 2 Peter 2:4 ("God spared not the angels that sinned") as New Testament support for reading the "sons of God" as angels. Keil devotes pages to denying that either text refers to Genesis 6 at all, arguing the antecedent of Jude's toutois is Sodom, not the angels. Because the provenance of this NT link to Genesis 6 is genuinely contested among the voices, and because it is cross-Testament (no shared lexemes possible), we flag it.
Jude 1:6 · 2 Peter 2:4
basis: Cross-Testament (Greek↔Hebrew): no shared Strong's possible, so never verbal. Provenance is disputed in the sources themselves — Cambridge/Pulpit affirm the allusion to Genesis 6; Keil denies it, reading Jude's referent as Sodom. Flagged for that contested basis.
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
"My Spirit shall not always strive with man" (6:3) is read by the apostle as Christ's own work: 1 Peter 3:18–20 says it was "the Spirit" by whom Christ "preached unto the spirits in prison … when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah." Jamieson, Fausset & Brown make the claim directly: "Christ, as God, had by His Spirit inspiring Enoch, Noah, and perhaps other prophets … preached repentance to the antediluvians." The 120-year reprieve is the longsuffering of God in Christ, and Noah its herald — a foreshadowing of the gospel offered while judgment is held back.
1 Peter 3:18-20 · 2 Peter 2:5 · Genesis 6:3
The God who is "grieved to His heart" at man's sin (6:6) is the God whose love, Keil says (citing Calvin), is "hurt no less … than if they pierced His heart with mortal anguish." This wounded divine love finds its fulfillment not in the Flood but in the Cross, where the heart of God is literally pierced (John 19:34). Matthew Henry presses the contrast across the whole canon: "God repented that he had made man; but we never find him repent that he redeemed man." The grief of Genesis 6 is answered by the redemption that God never regrets.
John 19:34 · Genesis 6:6
The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.
Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:
This is among the most contested units in Genesis, and the synthesis deliberately under-claims. (1) Sons of God (6:2): three ancient readings — angels, nobles, Sethites — are all attested in the voices (Cambridge for angels; the Targums for nobles; Augustine, Calvin, Keil for Sethites). The Verifier adjudicates Hebrew↔Hebrew lexeme overlap, not the sense of an idiom; we present the debate and resolve nothing. (2) 6:3 is acknowledged by Cambridge as possibly textually corrupt; the verb yāḏôn and the word bᵉšaggam each carry incompatible parsings, and the "120 years" may mean lifespan or respite. We name the alternatives rather than pick one silently. (3) Nephilim (6:4): the verbal tie to Numbers 13:33 is confirmed by a rare shared lexeme, but Cambridge states the word's meaning "has been lost" — a confirmed link to an uncertain term. (4) Cross-Testament threads (Matthew 24:38, Jude 1:6, 2 Peter 2:4) cannot use shared Strong's numbers and are never tiered verbal; the Jude/2 Peter angel-allusion is flagged because its provenance is disputed within the voices themselves (Keil vs. Cambridge). (5) Every voice excerpt above is a contiguous verbatim substring of the corresponding raw commentary in input.json voices_raw, trimmed only at the ends. The Greek-word edges (e.g. σάρξ, πορνεία) are deliberately excluded from quoted excerpts so that the verbatim test holds against the source encoding. No Pulpit Commentary entry is supplied for 6:2 in voices_raw; its argument on the marriage-verb belongs to the Pulpit's 6:1 note, and the verse-2 voice slot is filled instead by Keil, the position's original author.
✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)