What Does Genesis 6:13 Mean?
And God said to Noah, The end of all flesh has come before my face, for the earth is filled with violence from their faces, and look, I will spoil them along with the earth.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.THE KEY
“Destroy” grows from the same Hebrew root that names the world’s corruption, joining the announced ruin to the corruption already filling it.
THE MEANING
Violence does not remain an isolated act: when it fills the shared ground, its damage reaches both the people and the world they inhabit. Before God, that ruin is already visible, and the verse names its consequence without softening it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The harm of violence can be confined to its immediate targets while the people who wield it and the world around them remain untouched.
THE ROOT
מַשְׁחִיתָם
mashchitam
GROWS FROM
שחת
To ruin, corrupt, or destroy.
“spoil” in this verse is mashchitam. The same root describes the earth as corrupt earlier in the passage and names the destruction announced here. One Hebrew seed joins the corruption filling the world to the ruin that follows; the English presents those as separate ideas.
ALSO GROWS
nishchatah: Was corrupted, was ruined.
נִשְׁחָתָה
In Genesis 6:11, this form describes the earth as corrupt before God, the condition named by the same root behind “destroy” here.
hishchit: Had corrupted, had ruined.
הִשְׁחִית
In Genesis 6:12, this form describes all flesh corrupting its way upon the earth, repeating the root immediately before the announced destruction.
THE PATTERN
Corruption that fills the world defiles its shared ground, and those who ruin the earth meet judgment.
The earth also was ruined before God, and the earth was filled with violence.The earth is soiled beneath those who settle in it, because they have crossed over the instruction, exchanged the statutes, broken the covenant of the ages.The nations swell, and your anger comes, and the season of the dead comes to be judged, and to give the wage to your servants the prophets, and to the set-apart ones, and to those who stand in awe of your nature, small and great, and to rot those who rot the earth.THE THREAD
And God looked upon the earth, and look, it was ruined, for all flesh had ruined its way upon the earth.The words translated “corrupt” in this verse come from שחת (shachat), the same root behind “destroy” in verse 13. One root links what flesh does to its way with the ruin God announces.
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