Antediluvian corruption

Antediluvian corruption describes the earth’s pervasive wickedness and violence before the flood. The account makes it the cause of a world-ending judgment, while setting it against Noah’s righteousness and using the survivors’ preservation to frame a new covenant between God and all living creatures.

A World Corrupted

The narrative presents corruption as universal rather than confined to a single offender: God sees that human wickedness is great and that the thoughts of the human heart are continually evil. The earth itself is described as corrupt before God and filled with violence, with all flesh having corrupted its way upon the earth.

The account’s diagnosis joins inward and outward disorder. The imagination of the heart is evil, while violence has become the condition of life on earth; corruption therefore encompasses both human intention and the conduct that has overtaken the world.

Judgment and Preservation

God’s response is grief as well as judgment: He is grieved at heart and resolves to blot out humanity, animals, creeping things, and birds. The announced flood is to destroy all flesh in which there is the breath of life, because the earth is filled with violence.

Noah is presented as the exception to this condition. He finds grace, is described as righteous and whole-hearted in his generation, and walks with God. God tells him to build an ark and promises a covenant with him; Noah’s household and representatives of the living creatures are to enter it and be kept alive. When the flood has passed, Noah alone and those with him in the ark remain.

Aftermath and Covenant

After leaving the ark, Noah builds an altar and offers burnt offerings from clean animals and birds. God then promises not again to curse the ground on humanity’s account or to strike every living thing as before, even while acknowledging that the human heart’s inclination is evil from youth. The continuing cycle of seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night is affirmed.

The covenant extends beyond Noah and his descendants to every living creature. Its sign is the bow in the cloud: God says it will recall the promise that floodwaters will never again destroy all flesh. The narrative thus answers the crisis of universal corruption not with a claim that human evil has disappeared, but with a commitment to preserve the earth and its living beings.