The Universal Corruption of Man - Preparation for the Flood.

(GENESIS 6)

IT is a remarkable circumstance that all nations should have preserved in their traditions notices of the

extraordinary length to which human life was at the first protracted. We can understand that knowledge of

such a fact would be most readily handed down. But we should remember, that before the "flood" the

conditions of vigor, constitution, climate, soil, and nourishment were quite different from those on which the

present duration of life depends. A comparison between the two is therefore impossible, for the best of all

reasons, that we have not sufficient knowledge of the primitive state of matters. But this we can clearly see,

that such long continuance of life was absolutely necessary, if the earth was to be rapidly peopled,

knowledge to advance, and, above all, the worship of God and faith in that promise about a Deliverer which

He had revealed, to be continued. As it was, each generation could hand down to remote posterity what it

had learned during the centuries of its continuance. Thus Adam was alive to tell the story of Paradise and

the fall, and to repeat the word of promise, which he had heard from the very mouth of the Lord, when

Lamech was born; and though none of the earlier "fathers" could have lived to see the commencement of

building the ark, which took place in the year 1536 from the creation, yet Lamech died only five years before

"the flood," and his father Methuselah - the longest-lived man - in the very year of the deluge. If we try to

realize how much information even in our own days, when intercourse, civilization, and the means of

knowledge have so far advanced, can be gained from personal intercourse with the chief actors in great

events, we shall understand the importance of man's longevity in the early ages of our race.

But, on the other hand, it was possible to pervert this long duration of life to equally evil purposes. The rare

occurrence, during so many centuries, of death with its terrors would tend still more to blunt the conscience;

the long association of evil men would foster the progress of corruption and evil; and the apparently

indefinite delay of either judgment or deliverance would strengthen the bold unbelief of scoffers. That such

was the case appears from the substance of Lamech's prophecy; from the description of the state of the

earth in the time of Noah, and the unbelief of his contemporaries; and from the comparison by our Lord

(Matthew 24:37- 39; Luke 17:26) between "the days of Noe" and those of "the coming of the Son of man,"

when, according to St. Peter (2 Peter 3:3, 4), there shall be "scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and

saying, Where is the promise of His coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they

were from the beginning of creation."

The corruption of mankind reached its highest point when even the difference between the Sethites and the

Cainites became obliterated by intermarriages between the two parties, and that from sensual motives. We

read that "the sons o f God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all

which they chose."  13 At that time the earth must have been in a great measure peopled,14 and its state is

thus described, "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every

imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."

This means more than the total corruption of our nature, as we should now describe it, and refers to the

universal prevalence of open, daring sin, and rebellio n against God, brought about when the separation

between the Sethites and the Cainites ceased. With the exception of Noah there was none in that generation

"to call upon the name of Jehovah." "In those days there were 'giants' (in Hebrew: Nephilim) in the earth . . . .

the same were the mighty men (or heroes) which were of old, the men of renown."

Properly speaking, these Nephilim were "men of violence," or tyrants, as Luther renders it, the root of the

word meaning, "to fall upon."  15 In short, it was a period of violence, of might against right, of rapine, lust,

and universal unbelief of the promise. With the virtual extinction of the Sethite faith and worship no further

hope remained, and that generation required to be wholly swept away in judgment.