The first four verses of Genesis 6 are among the strangest in the Bible. Sons of God take human wives, and the Nephilim appear on the earth. Serious readers have disagreed for centuries about who is meant. Most of them agree on what the passage is doing: humanity is multiplying its sin as fast as it multiplies itself.
Then the narrative narrows to one devastating sentence. 5"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." Every word carries weight: every intention, only evil, continually. This is the far end of a decline that began with a piece of fruit in a garden.
Now comes the verse the passage turns on: the LORD regretted making man, and 6"it grieved him to his heart." In Hebrew, the same word for heart appears in verse 5 and in verse 6. Man's heart is filled with evil intention. God's heart is filled with grief. One heart has been corrupted beyond recognition, and the other is wounded by what the first has become. Scripture holds together God's own steadfast character and a sorrow that responds to what his creatures do. Centuries later, at the tomb of a friend he was about to raise, Jesus wept (John 11:35). The sorrow of Genesis 6 and the tears at Lazarus's tomb come from the same place.
7"I will blot out man whom I have created." This is the heaviest sentence in the chapter, a verdict against a creation God had called very good. Then, in a handful of words, everything turns: 8"But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD."
Verse 8 says Noah found favor. Verse 9 is where we learn that he was 9"a righteous man, blameless in his generation." Grace is named first, and righteousness follows. The pattern that runs through the rest of Scripture, mercy given before merit is ever mentioned, appears at the first great crisis. Even Noah's name and the Hebrew word for favor use the same letters in reverse order, as though the sound of his name carried the answer before the story explained it.
Noah was not exempt from the indictment. He belonged to a race whose every intention had turned to evil. What set him apart was that grace reached into that corrupted humanity and found him anyway. It is the same grace that later found a young woman in Nazareth and told her, "you have found favor with God" (Luke 1:30), and changed everything again.
If you are grieved by what you see in the mirror, in your family, or in the world around you, take comfort that God grieved first and more deeply than you can. His grief was never the last word. In the very sentence that announces judgment, he is already naming the person through whom mercy will come.
Prayer
Father, we grieve over what we see in the mirror and in the world, and we take comfort that you grieved first. Thank you that your grief was never the last word, and that in the sentence announcing judgment you were already naming the one through whom mercy would come. We are found by your grace, as Noah was. Meet us this morning in whatever we would rather not name. In Jesus' name, amen.