Why did God flood the world?
The story of the flood is found in Genesis 6-9, but it really begins a bit earlier. We can’t forget that this story is part of a larger literary unit from Genesis 1 to 11.
After Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 3), things began a downward spiral. Humanity multiplied and violence reigned. Cain killed his brother Abel. One of Cain’s descendants, Lamech, became a man renowned for violence, boasting his exploits (Genesis 4). Sin and evil were only intensifying. How would God react to this state of humanity?
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Just before the story of the flood begins, we learn that “the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5) and it grieved God “to his heart” (Genesis 6:6).
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So God sent the floodwaters as a judgment, a block in the way of humanity’s wickedness that rose out of the grief of his heart (Genesis 6:5-6). Genesis describes the flood as the de-creation of the world—the earth sinks back into the chaotic waters that God cleared away on page one of the Bible (Genesis 1:6-10). In the ark, God carries Noah’s family through the flood unharmed to start afresh in a world returned to innocence. It is a new beginning and a chance to have a different end.
If you’re like us, you might be saying, “But no matter how you tell the story, God still wipes out all of humanity except one family!” How does the flood reflect the goodness of God when he sent such disaster on the earth? Let’s make three observations from the context of the story.
Just Mercy
The story of the flood is one of God taking merciful action to restrain humanity’s ever-increasing evil. Genesis tells us that God saw that “every intention of the thoughts of man’s heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). In the Bible, context means everything. Genesis firmly anchors the meaning of the flood in the context of God’s intervention to stop humanity’s headlong slide into evil.
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Grief, Not Vengeance
God doesn’t take pleasure in the flood. Rather, Genesis highlights how the wickedness unleashed by the Fall caused him sorrow and grief. God made the earth to be a place where humanity could flourish, but instead they turned it into a theater of violence and disaster (Genesis 4:8, 4:23, 6:1-7). And God’s heart was broken.
The Curious Climax: Covenant
Later on, when Isaiah the prophet remembers Noah (Isaiah 54:9), he doesn’t think of the flood but the covenant God made with Noah afterward. In that covenant, God promises that nothing like this will ever happen again. This points to the key meaning of the story: the flood is about God’s mercy and commitment to the goodness of what he has made.
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Category: WHY
