‘So Yahweh said, “I will blot out these men (or mankind) whom I have created from the face of the ground, men (mankind) and beasts and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them”.'
So God determines to blot out all who have been infected by this evil.
The question that arises, however, is as to who is involved. Is it the whole of mankind? Or is it the people who are living in the area where Noah lives, the people ‘in his world'. If we see this as happening in the very distant past before men had spread widely we may argue that it means all mankind. But the Hebrew does not require this because of the number of nuances of the word eretz.
The word translated ‘earth' (eretz) in Genesis 6:5-7 even more often means ‘land' and it is quite in accordance with the Hebrew that this situation described occurred in just one part of the earth, ‘Noah's earth', where Noah was living with his family. This is not just a matter of choosing between two alternative translations. The reason eretz could be so used was because of how the ancients saw things. To them there was their own world (their ‘eretz' - compare Genesis 12:1), then a wider ‘eretz' which included the surrounding peoples, and then the rather hazy world on the fringes, and then beyond that who knew what? Thus ‘the earth' even in its wider meaning could mean a fairly large, and yet from our viewpoint localised, area, and their ‘whole earth' was what to us would be to fairly limited horizons (compare how the Roman world and its fringes were ‘the world' in the New Testament (Luke 2:1; Acts 24:5; Romans 1:8; Colossians 1:6)).
There are thus three possibilities, all possible from the Hebrew.
1). That all mankind is involved and that the flood was global. (It could not strictly mean this to the writer, or to Noah, for both were unaware of such an idea. All they could think of, and mean, was ‘the world' according to their conception of it).
2). That all mankind was involved but that they had not moved out of a certain large area and therefore were all destroyed in a huge flood, which was not, however, necessarily global, as it would not need to involve lands which were uninhabited.
The fact of the worldwide prevalence of flood myths might be seen as supporting one of these two views, as would the argument that had the area been limited Noah could have moved with his family outside the area, however large. (Against this it could be argued that God had a lesson to teach to future generations, and that He had in view the preservation of animal life).
3). That it was only mankind in the large area affected by the demonic activity (‘Noah's world') that were to be destroyed, and that the flood was therefore vast, but not destroying those of mankind unaffected by the situation described, if there were such.
What cannot be avoided is the fact that the flood was huge beyond anything known since. It was remembered in Mesopotamia, an area which had known great floods, as ‘the Flood', which divided all that came before it from all that followed, as for example in the Sumerian king lists, see article on " ".
The term ‘the face of the ground' (compare Genesis 2:6; Genesis 4:14; Genesis 6:1; Genesis 7:23; Genesis 8:8; Genesis 8:13), used here and never outside Genesis 1-11, may have a specialist meaning, for Cain was driven ‘from the face of the ground' while he was hardly driven from the earth. It could therefore perhaps refer to that area of land ‘given' to Adam when they were driven from the Garden (thus Mesopotamia and its surrounds), or possibly to ground as a whole wherever men cultivate it (thus to all integrated mankind). Now He will not just drive men out of it as He did Cain, He will blot them out.