Genesis Chapter 6

As violence fills the earth and God’s Spirit pleads for a final season, Noah finds grace, receives the covenant, and builds the ark as commanded.

Genesis 6:1-4

Mixed Marriages and Mighty Men

Genesis 6:5-8

The LORD’s Verdict and Noah’s Grace

Genesis 6:9-12

A Righteous Man in a Ruined World

Genesis 6:13-16

Judgment Announced and the Ark Designed

Genesis 6:17-21

Flood, Covenant, and Provision

Genesis 6:22

Noah’s Full Obedience

Genesis 6:1

“And it came to pass” does not signal that these events happened only after the genealogy of chapter 5 was complete. The phrase sets a scene. Having traced ten generations from Adam to Noah, the narrator now steps back to describe the moral climate of that long era, especially as it reached its climax in Noah’s lifetime.

“When men began to multiply on the face of the earth” shows the creation blessing still at work. God had told the first pair to be fruitful and fill the earth (Genesis 1:28), and the earth was filling. Yet the earlier chapters have already shown that growing numbers do not guarantee growing godliness. Cain’s line built a city, forged bronze and iron, made music, and produced Lamech, who boasted of killing a man for wounding him (Genesis 4:17–24). More people meant more reach for sin.

The notice that “daughters were born unto them” is deliberate. Chapter 5 repeated that each patriarch “begat sons and daughters,” but the daughters remained unnamed in the background. Here they come to the foreground because the crisis that follows turns on marriage. What looks like a simple population note prepares for the choice that would draw the worshiping family of Seth into the ruin of the wider world.

Study Links

Cross References

Genesis 1:28Genesis 4:17-24Genesis 5:4

Word / Phrase Notes

כִּי־הֵחֵל הָאָדָם לָרֹב (ki-hechel ha’adam larov) — when men began to multiply

The verb “began” is the same one used in Genesis 4:26, where “men began to call upon the name of the LORD.” Genesis uses it at turning points: Noah “began to be an husbandman,” Nimrod “began to be a mighty one,” and the builders at Babel “begin to do” their project. Here the beginning is one of numerical increase, and the narrative will show what that increase produced. Ha’adam is humanity as a whole, the same word used for the man made in God’s image.

Genesis 4:26Genesis 10:8Genesis 11:6