What Does Genesis 6:7 Mean in the King James?
And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
Here, “destroy” is the language of wiping life from the ground, while the maker’s own word carries regret.
THE MEANING
You stand before a sentence in which the maker names the wiping away of the human and animal life he made. The word for regret carries sorrow or relenting, yet it sits beside a declaration of destruction without softening it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse dissolves any easy equation of regret with rescue: here, regret accompanies the announced wiping away of the life God made.
THE ROOT
אֶמְחֶה
ʾemḥeh
GROWS FROM
מחה
māḥâ
Wipe away, blot out, erase.
The word translated “destroy” carries the force of wiping something away. The same root can describe blotting a name from a book, so the verse speaks in the language of erasure from the face of the ground.
ALSO GROWS
māḥîtî: Wipe out every living thing.
מָחִיתִי
The same root extends the announced wiping away from human beings to all living things.
ʾemḥennû: Blot a person’s name out of a book.
אֶמְחֶנּוּ
The root can erase a name as well as life from the ground, revealing the breadth of its image.
נִחַמְתִּי
niḥamtî
GROWS FROM
נחם
nāḥam
Regret or relent; in another Hebrew stem, comfort or console.
English “repenteth” can sound like a change of conduct, while נָחַם carries the sense of regret or relenting. The same root also gives the word for comfort, placing the maker’s decision in the register of grief even as the verse declares destruction.
ALSO GROWS
niḥamtî: Regret or be sorry.
נִחַמְתִּי
This form of the root also names regret over an act of setting something in motion.
naḥămû: Console or comfort.
נַחֲמוּ
The same root can describe comfort given amid grief, revealing a range that English separates from regret.
אָדָם
ʾādām
GROWS FROM
אדם
ʾ-d-m
Human, joined by sound and word-family to אֲדָמָה, ground or soil.
“man” in this verse is ʾādām. אָדָם (adam, human) echoes אֲדָמָה (adamah, ground or soil), binding the human name to the ground. The verse says the wiping away is from the face of that ground, joining the human being and the earth in one image.
ALSO GROWS
ʾādām: A human being.
אָדָם
The verse names the human as part of the life made and threatened with removal.
ʾădāmāh: The ground or soil.
אֲדָמָה
The echo between adam and adamah ties humanity to the very ground from which the verse says life will be wiped away.
THE PATTERN
Created life is received from God and remains within the giver’s power to end.
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled: thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust.Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;THE THREAD
And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.“Destroyed” here and in Genesis 6:7 comes from מחה (māḥâ, wipe away). The later verse names the wiping away across living beings on the ground, making the force of the earlier word plain.
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