Old Testament - Genesis 6 - February 1, 2022

 2/1/2022 – Genesis 6

V 2 is a bit difficult to understand, but Joseph Fielding Smith, in Answers to Gospel Questions, wrote that the “daughters of Noah” whose parents were immersed in the gospel of the Lord, were marrying men who had not been raised to live according to the Lord’s gospel. And President Kimball, in the Miracle of Forgiveness, wrote that marrying someone from a different faith can often “frustrate” people’s lives together, putting extra stress on how people spend their time, on basic ways people choose to live, and on significant differences in the foundations of people’s lives.

V 3 tells us that the Lord was not happy with how so many of the children of men were living. “…My spirit shall not always strive with man…” and then He goes on to say that man’s “days shall be an hundred and twenty.  Many gospel scholars feel that this 120 days was the time that Noah was allowed to preach to the people, hoping that they would repent of their ways and come closer to the Lord again. When that didn’t happen, the great flood did.

V 5-6 tells us “God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.” The earth was now “corrupt” and “filled with violence” (v 11)  Man was not using this time on earth to grow and progress. “The earth is filled with violence through them; and behold, I will destroy them with the earth” (v 14). The great flood was God’s ‘do-over’.  He would try again. Noah and his family, the only righteous people left, were to be saved and would be the basis of God’s ‘do-over’. 

The Lord tells him how they will be able to survive. He tells them to make an ark, and gives them exact directions. He tells them that “a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh…and every thing that is in the earth shall die.” 

Then the Lord tells Noah the most important thing: “With thee will I establish my covenant” (v 18) for the gospel holds the true purpose of this life on earth. He goes on to insure that Noah and his family will save the animals of the earth by bringing “two of every sort…into the ark”. Noah is also to take food…not just for his family, but for all the animals. What a huge task Noah is asked to undertake. It reminds me of the verse: “In the strength of the Lord, I can do all things.”  That’s a truth I want to remember and hold on to for all of my life, for that makes a tremendous difference in the way I work to move forward. 

V 22 “Thus did Noah, according to all that God commanded him, so did he.”


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