Genesis 6

Notes

1. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "the sons of God" (KJV, RSV)

   Rulings 38, 92, 46

   In בְּנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים no verb or suffix agrees with הָאֱלֹהִים, so ruling 92 prints "the elohim," lowercase, as at 5:22, 24. The phrase names the members of the heavenly court in Job 1:6 and 2:1 (and without the article in 38:7); compare בְּנֵי אֵלִים in Ps 29:1 and 89:7, and Deut 32:8, where 4QDeut^j and the LXX read "sons of God" against the Masoretic "sons of Israel." The tradition divides three ways. (a) Divine beings who cross from the skies to the land: 1 Enoch 6–11 (the Watchers), Jubilees 5:1, Codex Alexandrinus (οἱ ἄγγελοι τοῦ θεοῦ), Philo and Josephus (Ant. 1.73), and in the NT 2 Pet 2:4 and Jude 6. (b) The sons of rulers or judges: Targum Onkelos "sons of the great ones," Symmachus "sons of the powerful," Genesis Rabbah 26:5 (Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai cursed anyone who called them "sons of God"), Rashi. (c) The line of Seth, marrying the daughters of Cain's line: Julius Africanus, Augustine (City of God 15.23), Chrysostom, and most Reformation readers. "The elohim" holds all three, as it holds the judges and the gods at Exod 21:6. "God" would lean toward (c), and "angels" would choose (a).

2. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "the daughters of men" (KJV, RSV)

   Rulings 11, 86, 87

   הָאָדָם with the article is the kind, as in v. 1, where "the human began to be many." The daughters are its own, born to it in v. 1. They are not a woman distinct from the אָדָם, so ruling 11 does not make it "man," here or in v. 4. "Of the human" keeps the contrast the verse draws: the sons of the elohim and the daughters of the human.

3. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "My spirit shall not always strive with man" (KJV) / "My spirit shall not abide in man for ever" (RSV)

   Rulings 1, 25, 46

   יָדוֹן occurs only here. The Masoretic vowels make it a form of דִּין, the verb of judging and governing (15:14; 30:6; Zech 3:7 "you shall govern my house"; Ps 72:2), and Symmachus has οὐ κρινεῖ "shall not judge." The LXX οὐ μὴ καταμείνῃ and the Vulgate non permanebit, "shall not remain," guess from the context or read a form of דּוּר "dwell," and the RSV follows them. Targum Onkelos turns it into a sentence on the generation: "this bad generation shall not stand before me." Rashi reads strife within the speaker: my spirit shall no longer be at odds within me over the human. The KJV's "strive" hears contending at law. Ruling 25 finds nothing more in Genesis. "Hold court" is the home gloss of דִּין (row below). It keeps the judging the vowels give and the contending the KJV heard, and it does not say that a spirit remains, which the Hebrew does not plainly say. The reading is printed under ruling 1, and the others are named here (46).

4. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 40, 74

   בְּשַׁגַּם is read as בְּ + the relative שֶׁ + גַּם, "in that also": the human too is flesh, against the spirit of the first clause. The relative שֶׁ is rare this early (Judg 5:7) and common in later Hebrew. A second reading derives the word from שָׁגַג "go astray," "in their going astray he is flesh." The Masoretic division is printed with the expected sense (40).

5. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 91, 46

   "A hundred and twenty years," in the Hebrew order (91). Two readings. (a) A limit on each life, as Moses dies at a hundred and twenty (Deut 34:7); but Shem lives six hundred years (11:10–11), and the lives after the flood shorten only gradually. (b) A respite before the flood: Targum Onkelos, "a span of a hundred and twenty years will be given them, if they return"; Rashi; Jerome (Hebrew Questions). The English keeps both.

6. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "giants" (KJV) / "the Nephilim" (RSV)

   Rulings 1, 18, 46

   הַנְּפִלִים has the article and returns only in Num 13:33, where the spies see "the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, from the Nephilim," and are like grasshoppers beside them. The form looks like a noun from נָפַל "fall," "fallen ones," and Ezek 32:27 lays the גִּבּוֹרִים נֹפְלִים, "the mighty ones, fallen," in Sheol with their swords under their heads, the two words of this verse. The readings: "giants," from Num 13:33 (LXX οἱ γίγαντες, Vulgate gigantes); "fallen ones," the dead heroes of Ezek 32 or, in 1 Enoch and its readers, the offspring of fallen Watchers; "those who fall upon," attackers (Aquila οἱ ἐπιπίπτοντες; Symmachus οἱ βίαιοι "the violent"). Genesis Rabbah 26:7 gives them seven names and explains this one: they fell, and made the world fall. No English word holds both "fallen ones" and "giants," and either one would choose. The name holds the crux open, as in the RSV, and the root is given here (18). Whether they are the children of v. 4b or were in the land before them ("and also after it was thus"), the verse leaves open.

7. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 2, 37

   גִּבּוֹר is from גָּבַר "be mighty," the verb of the waters in 7:18–20, 24. The mighty ones of old are answered by waters that "were mighty." "Mighty ones" keeps that chain where the KJV and RSV have "mighty men" here and "prevailed" there. Nimrod "began to be a mighty one in the land" (10:8). In "the men of the name," שֵׁם is also Shem (v. 10), and the builders of 11:4 set out to "make a name."

8. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "every imagination of the thoughts of his heart" (KJV, RSV)

   Rulings 2, 95

   יֵצֶר is the noun of יָצַר "shape," the verb of 2:7, 8, 19: what the potter shapes (Isa 29:16), "he knows our shaping" (Ps 103:14). Adonai Elohim shaped the human; now everything the human's heart shapes is bad. The verse returns at 8:21, after the flood, as the ground of mercy rather than of judgment. On these two verses the rabbis built the doctrine of the yetzer ha-ra, the bad inclination (Gen. Rab. 27:4; b. Sukkah 52a–b; b. Berakhot 61a), and Sir 15:14 (Hebrew) says Elohim left the human "in the hand of his yetzer." "Shaping" keeps the potter's word visible without making it a technical term. The verb and the noun share "shape" as one root

9. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "it repented the LORD" (KJV) / "the LORD was sorry" (RSV)

   Rulings 101, 20, 46

   וַיִּנָּחֶם is the niphal of נחם, split by stem (101): piel "comfort" (5:29), niphal "be sorry." Lamech named his son Noah, "this one shall comfort us (יְנַחֲמֵנוּ) from our deed and from the pain of our hands" (5:29). Seven verses later the same root is Adonai's sorrow at having made the human. The split keeps the two stems apart in English, and this note keeps them joined. Whether Elohim can be sorry is the question of Num 23:19 ("El is not a man… nor a son of the human, that he should be sorry") and of 1 Sam 15, where Adonai "was sorry" (v. 11, 35) and "is not a human, to be sorry" (v. 29) within one chapter. The LXX softens to ἐνεθυμήθη "he took it to mind," and Targum Onkelos to "Adonai turned back in his word." The KJV's "repent" now means turning from sin and is avoided. The niphal recurs in v. 7, in Adonai's own mouth.

10. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 2, 17

    וַיִּתְעַצֵּב is the root of עִצָּבוֹן "pain" (3:16–17) and of 5:29, "the pain of our hands." The woman's pain and the man's pain become Adonai's. "Pained" keeps the root; the seed is adopted in the row below, and the verb–noun pair is declared (95). "To his heart": the heart of v. 5 that shapes bad, and the heart to which Adonai speaks in 8:21.

11. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "both man, and beast" (KJV) / "man and beast" (RSV)

    Ruling 2

    עַד "until" here sets a limit in space, "as far as": the list runs from the human down through beast and creeper to the flyers, back across the sixth day to the fifth. "To" carries the spatial sense. The home gloss "until" holds where the word is temporal (v. 7 is its first spatial use in the run). The same list returns in 7:23.

12. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 17, 18

    נֹחַ and חֵן are the same two letters reversed, נח and חן. The verse that closes the section answers Lamech's naming (5:29) and Adonai's sorrow (vv. 6–7, נחם) with an anagram, which English cannot carry (17). "Favor," not "grace" (KJV): "find favor in the eyes of" is used between humans (30:27; 33:8; 39:4; 1 Sam 20:29), and "grace" would make an idiom into a doctrine (guide §1.4).

13. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "perfect" (KJV) / "blameless" (RSV)

    Ruling 2

    תָּמִים is "whole, complete": "seven whole sabbaths" (Lev 23:15), "about a whole day" (Josh 10:13), and the sacrificial animal "whole," without blemish (Exod 12:5; Lev 22:21, "it shall be whole to be accepted; no blemish shall be in it"). Abraham is told "walk about before my face and be whole" (17:1), and Israel "you shall be whole with Adonai your Elohim" (Deut 18:13). In modern English "perfect" means flawless and "blameless" means free of fault; both claim an absence. The Hebrew claims that nothing is missing. Noah is the first in the Bible called צַדִּיק "just" (core gloss) and תָּמִים; the LXX has τέλειος, the word of Matt 5:48. "In his generations" was read both ways by the rabbis: as praise, and as a limit, just for his own generation, who would have counted for nothing in Abraham's (Gen. Rab. 30:9; Rashi).

14. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 92, 20

    "Walked about" is the hithpael of הָלַךְ (20), the verb of Adonai Elohim in the garden (3:8) and of Enoch (5:22, 24). The clause is Enoch's word for word: אֶת־הָאֱלֹהִים הִתְהַלֶּךְ. "The elohim," as at 5:22, 24 (92). The verse begins and ends with Noah's name.

15. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 2, 37

    שָׁחַת is "ruin," held through the chain: the land "was ruined" (v. 11, niphal); "look, it was ruined" (v. 12); all flesh "had ruined" its way (v. 12, hiphil); "I am ruining them" (v. 13); the flood "to ruin" all flesh (v. 17); and the promise that no flood will "ruin" the land again (9:11, 15). The KJV and RSV divide the root, "corrupt" for the land and flesh and "destroy" for Elohim, and so hide that the punishment is the crime returned: what flesh did to its way, Elohim does to flesh. The participle is the destroyer of the Passover night (Exod 12:23, הַמַּשְׁחִית).

16. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "before God" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 92, 38

    לִפְנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים has the article and no agreement in its clause, so ruling 92 prints "the elohim," as in vv. 2, 4 and 9. The next verse returns to Elohim with a singular verb. לִפְנֵי keeps "face" (standing note of פָּנִים), so the reader hears the face again in v. 13: "before my face," "from their faces."

17. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 74

    אֶת־הָאָרֶץ is either the preposition "with" or the mark of a definite object: "I am ruining them, the land," or "them and the land." The KJV and RSV read "with," and Rashi explains it: even three handbreadths of the ploughed ground were wiped away with them. "With" keeps the preposition; the object reading is given here.

18. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "an ark" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 2, 25

    תֵּבָה occurs here and in Exod 2:3, 5 only. Moses' mother puts him in a תֵּבָה of papyrus, daubs it with bitumen and pitch, and sets it among the reeds: the two who are saved from the waters are both put in a box. The word is usually compared with Egyptian ḏbꜣt "chest, coffin." It names a container with no keel, sail or rudder; nobody steers it. The LXX has κιβωτός here and θῖβις in Exod 2; the Vulgate has arca here and fiscella "little basket" there; the KJV has "ark" in both. "Ark" is also the KJV's word for אֲרוֹן, the chest of the covenant (Exod 25:10), a different word that reverse concordance must keep apart (guide §3 rule 2). "Box" serves both places of תֵּבָה: a box of gopher trees and a box of papyrus.

19. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 25

    גֹּפֶר occurs only here, and the versions guess: the LXX "of squared timbers" (ἐκ ξύλων τετραγώνων), the Vulgate "of planed timbers" (de lignis levigatis), Targum Onkelos "cedar"; later readers suggest cypress. Ruling 25 finds nothing in Genesis or elsewhere. The consonants sound like כֹּפֶר "pitch" at the end of the verse. The KJV's transliteration is printed, because no English tree can be named without choosing among guesses. עֵץ keeps its home gloss "tree": a box of trees, the material named as the source does.

20. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "rooms" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 39, 1

    קִנִּים is the plural of קֵן "nest": the eagle's (Deut 32:11), the swallow's (Ps 84:4), "I shall die with my nest" (Job 29:18). "Rooms" is the sense the KJV and RSV draw from it; the concrete word is kept (39). The box is a nesting place for every kind that flies and creeps. Vocalized קָנִים, the same consonants are "reeds," "reeds you shall make the box," like the reed boats of Mesopotamia and the papyrus box of Exod 2:3. The Masoretic text is printed.

21. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 6, 17

    וְכָפַרְתָּ… בַּכֹּפֶר "you shall pitch… with pitch" is a cognate pair, kept (6); Akkadian kupru is the bitumen of the flood boat in Gilgamesh XI. The qal of כָּפַר occurs only here. In the piel the same root is the verb of atonement (Lev 16), and כֹּפֶר is also "ransom," the price given for a life (Exod 21:30; 30:12). The box that keeps its passengers alive is sealed with a word that elsewhere covers a life. English "pitch" cannot carry the atonement, and an added word would import it into a verse about carpentry, so the text keeps "pitch" and the pun stays in this note (17).

22. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "a window" (KJV) / "a roof" (RSV)

    Rulings 1, 25

    צֹהַר occurs only here in this sense. Ruling 25 looks first in Genesis, where its dual צָהֳרַיִם is "noon" (43:16, 25), and then in the Bible, where יִצְהָר is shining oil: the root is light. Hence the KJV's "window," and Rashi's two readings, a window or a precious stone that lit the box (Gen. Rab. 31:11). The RSV's "roof" draws on Akkadian ṣēru "back, top" and on the next clause, "to a cubit you shall finish it from above," which sounds like an eave. No English word is both a roof and a light. "Gleam" keeps the root's light and leaves open whether it is an opening, a stone or a skylight; the roof reading is given here (1).

23. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "the breath of life" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 31, 26

    The Hebrew is רוּחַ חַיִּים, not נִשְׁמַת חַיִּים "breath of life" (2:7); the two meet in 7:22. רוּחַ is "spirit" when someone possesses it (31): here, all flesh "in which is" a spirit, as Adonai's own spirit is in the human in v. 3. חַיִּים is a plural of abstraction, printed "life" (26).

24. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "with thee will I establish my covenant" (KJV) / "I will establish my covenant with you" (RSV)

    Rulings 20, 2

    הֵקִים is the hiphil of קוּם, whose home glosses are "rise; stand" (20). "Establish" is a Latinism for the same thing; "make stand" keeps the Hebrew root, the formula of 9:9, 11, 17 and 17:7, 19, 21. בְּרִית "covenant" occurs here for the first time (row below): a promise made before the flood and kept after it.