Genesis Deeper ㉗ The Earth Was Corrupt · Why Would God Destroy the Earth Along with People? (Genesis 6:9~22)
This series takes one Bible passage at a time and looks at it a little more closely. The images are free to use in worship, class, and on social media.
This is the history of the generations of Noah: Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time. Noah walked with God. Noah became the father of three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. The earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. God saw the earth, and saw that it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. God said to Noah, “I will bring an end to all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them and the earth. Make a ship of gopher wood. You shall make rooms in the ship, and shall seal it inside and outside with pitch. This is how you shall make it. The length of the ship shall be three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. You shall make a roof in the ship, and you shall finish it to a cubit upward. You shall set the door of the ship in its side. You shall make it with lower, second, and third levels. I, even I, do bring the flood of waters on this earth, to destroy all flesh having the breath of life from under the sky. Everything that is in the earth will die. But I will establish my covenant with you. You shall come into the ship, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. Of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ship, to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female. Of the birds after their kind, of the livestock after their kind, of every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, two of every sort will come to you, to keep them alive. Take with you some of all food that is eaten, and gather it to yourself; and it will be for food for you, and for them.” Thus Noah did. He did all that God commanded him.
Genesis 6:9~22 (World English Bible)
1. What Did the Earth Do Wrong?
Noah’s story begins in 6:9. The text introduces Noah in three phrases. He was a righteous man, he was blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God. ‘Walked with God’ was said twice of Enoch in chapter 5. In Genesis, only Enoch and Noah have these words said of them.
From verse 11, though, the scene changes. The earth was corrupt before God, and it was filled with violence. In verse 13 God tells Noah that he will bring an end to all flesh, and then he says, “Behold, I will destroy them and the earth.”
One phrase stands out here: ‘and the earth.’ It was people who did violence, yet God says he will destroy the earth along with them. So a question arises. Why would God destroy the earth along with people?
2. Two Words, Two Events
Read verses 11~13 in English, and two different words appear. Verses 11 and 12 say ‘corrupt,’ and verse 13 says ‘destroy.’ ‘Corrupt’ sounds like a condition, something rotten and spoiled. ‘Destroy’ sounds like a penalty coming down from above, separate from that condition. Because the words are different, the story splits into two events.
Read this way, ‘and the earth’ in verse 13 is hard to make sense of. It was people who filled the earth with violence. And ‘the earth was corrupt’ in verses 11 and 12 is easily read as meaning only that the people living on it had gone bad. Then ‘and the earth’ is left sounding like a punishment stretched to cover an earth that had done nothing wrong.
In Hebrew, though, these three verses do not tell two separate events. They are one thread, tied together by a single word.
3. Going Deeper · Corrupt and Destroy Are the Same Word
Here is the answer first. In verses 11~13, the word for the earth being ‘corrupt’ and the word God uses when he says ‘I will destroy’ are the same Hebrew verb, shachat. The text says first that the earth was already ruined, because all flesh had ruined its way on the earth. When God said he would destroy them and the earth, he was not stretching punishment to an innocent earth. He was naming the end of an earth already ruined, with the same word.
Here are the places where this verb is used, in order.
Verse 11, “The earth was corrupt before God”. The earth was ruined.
Verse 12, “saw that it was corrupt”. What God saw was a ruined earth.
Verse 12, “for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth”. This tells why it was ruined. In Hebrew it reads, ‘all flesh had ruined its way on the earth.’
Verse 13, “Behold, I will destroy them and the earth.” What God says he will do is written with the same verb.
The same verb appears four times in three verses. The World English Bible translates the first three as ‘corrupt’ and the last one as ‘destroy.’ To someone reading the Hebrew, it sounds like this: ‘the earth was ruined, the earth was ruined, all flesh ruined its way, I will ruin them with the earth.’
The English split follows the speaker. In chapter 6 the World English Bible uses ‘corrupt’ three times, all in verses 11~12, where the narrator is speaking. It uses ‘destroy’ twice, in 6:13 and 6:17, where God himself is speaking. So in English it can sound as if the narrator reports one thing and God announces another. Yet in Hebrew, ‘had corrupted’ in verse 12 (hishchit) and ‘will destroy’ in verse 13 (mashchitam) are even in the same active stem, the Hiphil. The first is a perfect, and the second a participle. What all flesh did to its way and what God says about them and the earth are written with the same word in the same stem.
Read this way, ‘and the earth’ is not a word that widens the punishment. Verses 11 and 12 already explain why verse 13 names the earth. The earth was ruined first, by the way people walked, and it was filled with violence. God’s judgment is written in the same word as what people had been doing on the earth. That does not mean the judgment simply happened by itself. In verse 17 God says directly, “I, even I, do bring the flood of waters on this earth”. The ‘to destroy’ that follows is shachat again. The text clearly writes the judgment as God’s own act, and with the same word it shows where that judgment began.
4. Word Study · Shachat · Chamas · Darko
① corrupt · destroy · shachat(שחת). A verb meaning ‘to ruin, to spoil, to make useless.’ It appears five times in chapter 6, and only its form changes. Verse 11 has vattishachet(וַתִּשָּׁחֵת), and verse 12 has nishchatah(נִשְׁחָתָה) and hishchit(הִשְׁחִית). Verse 13 has mashchitam(מַשְׁחִיתָם), and verse 17 has leshachet(לְשַׁחֵת).
② violence · chamas(חָמָס). It names violence that harms and tramples others. It appears twice, in verses 11 and 13, and both verses say the earth was ‘filled’ with it.
③ their way · darko(דַּרְכּוֹ). It means ‘his way.’ The World English Bible keeps the picture of a road and translates it ‘their way’ in verse 12. What people ruined was the way they walked, and that way ran on the earth. In Hebrew, too, ‘walked’ in verse 9 (‘Noah walked with God’) is the ordinary verb for walking along a way. While all flesh ruined its way, Noah walked with God.
5. One More Thing · Where the Covenant First Appears
Right after the words about destroying, verse 18 goes on like this.
“But I will establish my covenant with you…” (Genesis 6:18)
The word ‘covenant’ in ‘my covenant’ (beriti, בְּרִיתִי) appears here for the first time in the Bible. What this covenant is becomes clear in chapter 9, after the flood is over.
“…There will never again be a flood to destroy the earth.” (Genesis 9:11)
Here ‘to destroy’ is shachat again. In 9:15 God says, “…the waters will no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.” It is the same verb. In the flood story of Genesis 6~9, this verb is used seven times in all. The five in chapter 6 speak of the ruined earth and the judgment coming on it. The two in chapter 9 sit inside the covenant that says ‘never again.’ The word that spoke of ruin becomes a word of promise at the end of the story.
6. For Us Today
This passage leaves us with one message. When people ruined their way on the earth, the earth was ruined with them.
Verse 12 calls what people ruined ‘their way,’ and it says that way was ‘on the earth.’ The way a person walks was never theirs alone. When that way was ruined, the earth everyone shared was filled with violence.
The places we live are like that too. A word spoken at home, the way we treat others at work, small things we do for our neighbors: together they become the air of that place. When harsh words pile up, a home grows harsh. When people trample one another, a workplace dries up. Even when the earth was filled with violence, Noah walked with God. Today, may the way we walk make the place we live a little more livable.
“God who looked on a ruined earth and still established your covenant, help us remember that the way we walk shapes the place where we live. Today, at home, at work, and among our neighbors, keep our words and actions from trampling anyone, and let us walk with you as Noah did. Help us tend this earth we share with the people beside us, and make it a little more livable. Amen.”
🕊 How to Use This in Ministry
Opening question
Ask, “What would happen to our classroom if everyone in our class threw trash on the floor?” and listen to a few children. Then say, “Today the Bible tells a story where even the earth was ruined because of the way people lived,” and move into the passage.
Activity
Read verses 11~13 together and have the children find and circle ‘corrupt’ and ‘destroy’. When everyone has found them, write the two words on the board and say, “In the language the Bible was first written in, these two are the same word. Both mean ‘to ruin.’” Next, show the image captioned ‘The earth was corrupt’ from today’s images and ask, “Why do you think this garden ended up like this?” Finally, show the image captioned ‘Make a ship of gopher wood’ and read verse 22 together.
Application
Give each child a small card. On the left side they write one word or action that ruins our class, and on the right side one word or action that takes care of our class. When they finish, a few children read aloud only what they wrote on the right, and the cards go up on the classroom wall.
🖼️ Today’s Four Images · Press and hold or right click to save
Make a ship of gopher wood |
Noah became the father of three sons |
The earth was corrupt |
Take with you some of all food |
📄 Image license CC0 (public domain) · Free to use, modify, and redistribute without attribution.
🤖 These images were created with AI (Grok).
📖 Genesis Deeper ㉔ Walking with God · the story of Enoch, who was said to have ‘walked with God’ before Noah
Origin Bible · Mission Zedero
Contact joypej@gmail.com
✍️ This article was written with the help of AI and reviewed by a person.
The text is CC BY-NC 4.0. You are free to use it for noncommercial purposes with attribution.
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