Genesis 6:1 Commentary and Bible Study

The subject dealt with in this chapter could be entitled, how God warns a society, or equally, the mixing of two nations. Here is a great turning point in the history of the people before the flood, the mixing of the two nations or the two lines – the line of Seth and the line of Cain. The household of Seth and his descendants were bearing the promised seed; they were the godly line, the believers, the God-fearers, the first who gathered together for worship. In the line of Cain were those who were godless, and not worshippers in any way. So we have here encapsulated in those two family lines, the church and the world. Between them there was hostility, as with the hostility that arose from Cain towards Abel. Moses shows the history (this is one of the great cables running right through the Bible) of the hostility towards the church on the part of the world, and here it is prefigured in the history before the flood in the early chapters of Genesis.Of course, there had been daughters from the very beginning; we are aware of that, and there had been multiplying of people. So this obviously signifies the considerable population explosion that occurred in the centuries immediately before the flood. And things were growing worse. Not only were those who descended from Cain godless, but those who descended from Seth also were increasingly godless.