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 end of all flesh is come before me. That "the end of all flesh" does not here mean the destruction of mankind appears not only from the circumstance that that judgment is not formally announced until the last clause of the verse, but from the accompanying words," is come before me," which always denote a loud, vehement, irrepressible rumour, (cf. Genesis 18:21; Exodus 3:9; Esther 9:11, margin) "The end," therefore, must signify the height of depravity, the acme of wickedness.
For the earth is filled with violence through them - literally, from them [Septuagint, ap' (G575) autoon (G846), by them]. They were the efficient causes of the violence (see for this use of the preposition, Genesis 47:13; Exodus 8:20; Judges 6:6; Jeremiah 15:17; Ezekiel 14:15). The universal prevalence of lost and violence, encouraged by longevity, which put the thought of death far away from the antediluvians, was the proximate cause of the destruction of the ungodly "world." A confluence of various streams of evil had swelled into an overflowing torrent of corruption. The idolatrous or atheistical race of Cain; the religious decline and final apostasy of the Sethites, who, disappointed in their hope of the promised Deliverer, abandoned their faith; or, attracted by the worldly prosperity and gay lives of the Cainites, gradually cultivated their society, and forming matrimonial alliances with them, merged into full conformity with the world. The forms of worship being abandoned, and all sense of the true germinal religion extinguished, wickedness increased with fearful rapidity until, in the tenth generation, the iniquity of the old world came to the full. The kingdom of God was overthrown. Satan reigned supreme in the world, and converted this earth into a province of hell.
Behold, I will destroy them with the earth - or, from the earth. How startling must have been the announcement of the threatened destruction! There was no outward indication of it. The course of nature and experience seemed against the probability of its occurrence. The public opinion of mankind would ridicule it. The whole world would be ranged against it.
God said unto Noah. It was by an immediate revelation that he was made aware of the awful catastrophe which was to befall the world in his days. By whatever means the announcement of it was made to him-whether it was by means of a heavenly messenger in human form (Genesis 18:16; Genesis 18:33); whether, as in the case of Moses, out of a bush (Exodus 3:2); or in a vision of the night, as revelations were frequently made to the prophets-Noah must have had some solid grounds of conviction that he was not imposed upon by a vision of the fancy, or had become the dupe of a timid and credulous mind. Nothing short of the most direct and unmistakable evidence that God Himself was the Author of this astonishing communication could have removed all the objections that must have risen up before his mind relative to such a destructive calamity, or could have secured his full credence to the prediction of an event of which the established laws of nature and the course of Providence combined to show the apparent improbability. He believed that, since it was within the compass of divine power to accomplish the threatened destruction, so it was perfectly accordant with all the attributes of the divine character; and hence, being fully persuaded that the communication made to him was from God, through faith (Hebrews 11:7) he set about preparing the appointed means for preserving himself and family from the impending calamity.