"All the thoughts and thoughts of their heart were evil at all times..." The root of the deep corruption of antediluvian mankind is indicated in the damage to the heart, and since the latter, according to the biblical view, is considered the central focus of all conscious human activity, its corruption is tantamount to the contamination of the very source of life (Matthew XV:19 [397]).

6. and the Lord repented that he had created man on earth, and grieved in his heart.

"And the Lord repented... and grieved in his heart..." The concept of the attribute of repentance attributed to God may be borrowed from the account of Saul, where repentance is ascribed twice to God (1 Samuel XV:11 [398] and 35 [399]), and where, meanwhile, Samuel says of God that He is not a man that He should repent (29 [400]). From this it is evident that when it is spoken of Him as a man, it is because, according to the expression of Aben Ezra, the law speaks in the language of the sons of men, i.e., in the language of the simple, popular sense (Philaret). In particular, God's "repentance" — as it were a special way of changing the unchangeable — is the highest expression of the thought of extreme divine regret, which seemed to reach the point that the unchangeable Being himself seemed ready to change.

"And he grieved in his heart..." Like the previous one, this is the same human-like expression. "The sorrow of God is the foresight of the impossibility of man, created with free will, consciously and persistently abusing it, to return to the good path; therefore, where it speaks of the sorrow of God, as, for example, of the cities that have incurred the wrath of God (Matthew XI:20-26 [401]; Luke X:13 [402]), it must be understood that the judgment of God's eternal righteousness has been fulfilled, that this generation, or man, must perish, so that evil may not be perpetuated" (Vlastov).

7. And the Lord said, "I will destroy from off the face of the earth the men whom I have created, from man to beast, and I will destroy the creeping things and the fowls of the air, for I have repented that I have created them."

"And the Lord said, I will destroy... for I have repented that I have created..." A stronger expression of the same idea is given here, of the profound discrepancy between the actions of human freedom and the plans of divine providence and the desires of the Almighty to destroy this disharmony.

At the same time, the sad fate of man, according to the verdict of the divine court, had to be shared by the entire world of living beings surrounding him, since between the fate of man and the life of nature, according to the teaching of the Scriptures, there is the closest, moral connection; hence the fall and rise of man is correspondingly reflected in the rest of creation. And this was not, strictly speaking, the destruction of mankind (since the righteous Noah and his family were saved and revived him), but only the eradication of the evil that reigned on earth by washing in the waters of the Flood (1 Ezra III:8-9 [403]; 1 Peter III:20-21 [392]).

8. Righteous Noah.

8. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord (God).

"And Noah found grace..." A phrase quite analogous to what was said earlier about Enoch, "and Enoch please God" (Slavonic, LXX) and having corresponding parallels elsewhere in the Bible (Luke I:30 [404]; Acts VII:46 [405] and others).

9. Here is the life of Noah: Noah was a righteous and blameless man in his generation; Noah walked with God.

"This is the life of Noah..." This is the beginning of a new biblical section, the story of the righteous Noah and the global Flood (VI:9–IX:29).

"Noah was a righteous man and blameless in his generation...", i.e., he was morally pure and whole (tamim in Hebrew), standing out from among his vicious contemporaries, whose unsightly moral characterization is given to us by Jesus Christ himself and the apostles (Matthew XXIV:37-38 [406] and parallels, cf. 1 Peter III:20 [392]). The very review of Noah is repeated almost verbatim in a friend. (Ezekiel XIV:19–20 [407]; Sir XLV:16 [408]; Hebrews XI:7 [409]).

"Noah walked with God..." The conclusion of Noah's characterization is a trait already familiar to us from the story of Enoch (V:24). In the sacred language of the Bible, this is a special form in which a completely moral character was usually revealed among sinful contemporaries.