The answer to the question of why did God flood the world is really about Land and Seed.
Yes, it’s about corruption and violence in the world.
Yes, it’s about fallen angels and giants.
Ultimately, however, it concerns God’s purpose for humanity and what He expects from us.
When God creates the Land, He sees it as very good. The earth and humans are very good. He puts Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to cultivate the Land and multiply their Seed.
Adam’s task was to enlarge the Garden to cover the whole world so humans could meet and know God intimately everywhere on earth.
Adam sins and his sin leads to disaster, as described in the verses below.
Genesis 6:5
“the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was continually only evil.”
Genesis 6:11-13
The earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. God saw the earth, and saw that it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.
God said to Noah, “I will bring an end to all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them and the earth.
The above verses mention that the earth and humans are both utterly corrupted. God says that He will destroy them and the earth.
So, to answer briefly why God sent the Flood, it is due to human sin; the earth (Land) and humans (Seed) are defiled beyond repair.
However, if we leave it at that, we miss entirely that Noah’s Flood is one of many exodus stories in the Bible and, as such, invaluable in giving insights about the Bible and how God works in the world.
Before Adam’s fall, everything in the world was very good. God, and we all, want to return to that state of being. The Flood is a part of God’s salvation plan to return humanity to the Garden of Eden.
Despite human failure, God is determined to see humanity as a vehicle to bring heaven to earth. Every time human sin goes too deep into the darkness, God destroys the old world and remakes it. The Flood is an example of this.
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Noah’s flood as a type of exodus
Exodus comes from Greek and means “departure” or “going out.” However, going out is only one part of the exodus story. For example, Israel is not just saved from Egypt, but God delivers His people out of slavery and brings them into the Promised Land.
We can describe the exodus pattern as going under and coming up. The pattern consists of multiple elements that repeat similarly in many exodus stories in the Bible.
In our Exodus Bible study, we found 26 elements that repeat in various exodus stories of the Bible. You can see them below.
- Sinning leads to exile from the Land
- God’s people are captured and enslaved
- God presents Himself to the chosen person
- The serpent attacks the Seed promised in Genesis 3:15, mainly through Eve
- God’s people avoid the attack by trickery (tricking the serpent as it did to God’s people in Genesis 3)
- Passover lamb sacrificed
- God delivers His people from slavery
- God humiliates idols
- God gives His people spoils
- God delivers His people across a water
- En route to the Promised Land, the old generation dies
- God delivers judgment on the old heaven and earth
- God establishes a new heaven and new earth
- God re-creates the world: New Creation
- Sabbath rest, enthronement of God and His chosen person
- New covenant
- Updated law
- Updated way of worship
- Promise of God
- Name of God
- New name for God’s people
- Baptism
- God’s people minister to others, and others join God’s people
- God gives His people Land
- Conquering of the Land
- Building a house for God
You can find descriptions of each element from our Exodus Bible study. Here, we explain the elements, bolded in the list, that we see in Noah’s Flood.
Sinning leads to exile from the Land
The sinning in Noah’s Flood starts from the very beginning. First, exile throws man out from the Garden of Eden, second from the Land of Eden, and third from the world.
- Adam sins in the Garden, and God casts him out of it. (Gen 3)
- Cain kills his brother in the Land of Eden, and God casts him out of it. (Gen 4)
- Humans become so evil that God takes them out of the world. (Gen 6)
The serpent attacks the Seed, mainly through Eve
The serpent’s attack in Noah’s exodus happens when the sons of God have illicit relations with the daughters of men. Based on the Bible and the Book of Enoch, we interpret the sons of God as fallen angels who, together with Satan, rebel against God. God appointed the angels to guard and protect humanity. Instead, they corrupt people with sin and novel technology that takes people deeper into sin.
Like in the Garden of Eden, the attack in Gen 6 comes through Eve, the daughters of men. The serpent produces its own seed to defile the bloodline of humans from which the Seed would come. This is where the Nephilim come on the earth.
The attack to eradicate the promised woman’s Seed in Genesis 3:15 that would crush the serpent’s head succeeds almost wholly. Before the Flood, only one person, Noah, walked with God.
(You can also interpret the sons of God as the righteous line of Seth that becomes corrupted through intermarrying with the unrighteous line of Cain.)
God presents Himself to the chosen person
God chooses the only righteous person to lead humanity from the old world to the new. Noah finds favor in God’s eyes, and God commands him to build an Ark that would keep Noah, his wife, his three sons and sons’ wives, plus all the animals, safe during the Flood.
Unlike Adam in the Garden, Noah “did all that God commanded him.”
Genesis 6:7-8
Yahweh said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the surface of the ground—man, along with animals, creeping things, and birds of the sky—for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in Yahweh’s eyes.
Genesis 6:13-14
God said to Noah, “I will bring an end to all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them and the earth. Make a ship of gopher wood. You shall make rooms in the ship, and shall seal it inside and outside with pitch.
God delivers His people from the slavery
Genesis 7:20-21
The waters rose fifteen cubits higher, and the mountains were covered. All flesh died that moved on the earth, including birds, livestock, animals, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every man.
Genesis 7:23
Every living thing was destroyed that was on the surface of the ground, including man, livestock, creeping things, and birds of the sky. They were destroyed from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ship.
God delivers judgment on the old heaven and earth
The religious and political leadership of the old world faces God’s judgment in the Flood.
God establishes a new heaven and new earth
Noah and his sons, particularly Shem as the Seed line, are the new heaven and earth after the Flood.
God re-creates the world: New Creation
Noah’s flood has elements from Creation Week, during which God first created the earth as empty and void. He then forms it, fills it, rests from His work, and puts the man into the Garden to cultivate the land. The same happens in Noah’s flood. The floodwaters re-create the earth. The separation of the land and water forms the earth and Noah and the animals come out from the Ark to fill the earth. In the end, Noah is in a garden cultivating the land.
- Waters above all the earth in Gen 1 and Gen 7:20.
- The Spirit of God hovers above the waters in Gen 1:2 and Gen 8:6-12 (as a dove).
- Waters recede, revealing the land in Gen 1:9 and Gen 8:3-5.
- God says to fish and birds to be fruitful and multiply in Gen 1:22 and to birds and land animals in Gen 8:17.
- God created man in His image Gen 1:27, reiterated after the Flood in Gen 9:6.
- God blesses man and says to be fruitful and multiply in Gen 1:28 and twice to Noah in Gen 9:1 and 9:7 (actually 3x “to multiply”)
- God puts Adam in the Garden Gen 2:8. Noah is a farmer and plants a vineyard Gen 9:20.
New covenant
In Genesis 9, God establishes a covenant with Noah. God promises never again to destroy the earth by flood and set the rainbow as a sign of this covenant.
Genesis 6:18
But I will establish my covenant with you. You shall come into the ship, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you.
Genesis 9:15-17
I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh, and the waters will no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. The rainbow will be in the cloud. I will look at it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” God said to Noah, “This is the token of the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”
Sabbath rest, enthronement of God and His chosen person
The name Noah in Hebrew comes from the word nûaḥ, “rest”. Nûaḥ is used in Exodus 20:11 to recap the Creation Week.
Exodus 20:11
for in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day, and made it holy.
In Gen 8:4, Noah’s Ark rested on the Ararat’s mountains when the water receded.
Also, the narratives from Gen 1 and 2 and Gen 9 have similarities.
- God finishes creating, rests on the Sabbath, and blesses the day.
- The flood ends, Noah and others leave the Ark, and God blesses them.
- God lays out the Adamic covenant in Gen 1, blesses the Sabbath in Gen 2, and the next verses discuss the generations of heavens and earth.
- God blesses Noah and 7 others, lays out the Noahic covenant, and the next verses discuss the generations of Noah.
- God puts Adam in the Garden after the Sabbath.
- Noah plants a vineyard in the garden after the Sabbath.
Updated law
Dietary laws change after the Flood. God allows humans to eat meat for the first time. He also forbids humans to drink blood.
Banning the drinking of blood is related to the institution of capital punishment for murder. Life is in the blood, and humans are made in God’s image. Therefore, whoever kills another human being, that person’s life is required for it.
Baptism
The Flood waters from the deep and the 40-day-long rain purify the defiled earth and symbolize Noah’s family’s baptism through water.
Genesis 7:11-12
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the sky’s windows opened. It rained on the earth forty days and forty nights.
God’s people minister to others, and others join God’s people
We often think that God’s people didn’t minister to others in the Old Testament, but that’s not so. The verses below from 2 Peter and Hebrews testify that Noah preached righteousness, just as Abraham and other patriarchs of the Old Testament.
2 Peter 2:5
and didn’t spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah with seven others, a preacher of righteousness, when he brought a flood on the world of the ungodly;
Hebrews 7:11
By faith, Noah, being warned about things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared a ship for the saving of his house, through which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.
God gives His people Land
Like in the beginning with Adam, the whole world is Noah’s Land. If only he and his family could have walked with God in the new world, too. But you must read that story from the Tower of Babel as an exile.
Why did God flood the earth – summary
Noah’s Flood is a type of exodus that traces the progression of sin from Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden to the corruption of humanity that culminates before the Flood.
Drawing parallels with the Creation Week and Israel’s Exodus from Egypt accounts, the narrative highlights Noah as the chosen person through whom God delivers His people from slavery into the Promised Land. Exodus is a story of going under and coming up, and the Flood is one part of the story.
The Floodwaters serve as both a means of purification and a symbol of baptism, marking a fresh start for humanity. Through connections with other exodus narratives in the Bible, the story of Noah’s Flood reflects God’s ongoing work of salvation and restoration, ultimately pointing towards His plan to reconcile humanity to Himself and renew creation.