Genesis 06

"And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart." -- Genesis 6.6, ESV

This verse is a bit of a headache for a lot of people, i.e., anyone who believes that God is all-knowing and all-powerful, i.e., me (among others).  This fact actually makes me more confident that the Bible is true.




After all, if the Bible were just a collection of stories massaged into shape to fit a particular group's needs and desires, it stands to reason they would have sanded away all the rough edges.  Verses like this one that don't fit the overall pattern would have been quietly done away with, perhaps replaced by something a little easier to swallow.

On the other hand, if it were just a collection of random writings lumped together by some herdsman slightly less illiterate than the rest, it stands to reason there would be a lot more rough edges.  Indeed, there would probably be nothing but rough edges.  We wouldn't be able to tell what fit and what didn't; there would be noting to fit into.

The fact that this odd verse is here, and that it stands out as odd, gives me a great deal of confidence in the fidelity of my copy of the Bible.  Not only did the original author -- Moses, most likely -- trust God enough to write down this easy-to-misunderstand phrase, but the various scribes over the centuries respected the Scriptures so much that they refused to write out the ambiguity.

On top of that, the many translators and editors who worked to bring me the 2011 update of the English Standard Version -- a fourth-generation descendant of the King James Version, itself the descendant of numerous English Bibles -- also left the ambiguity there, even though I know they had clear ideas as to what the verse means.  They still chose to stay true to what the word of God says, rather than gloss over it to make it easier to grasp.

Thank God for His word, in all its weirdness and ambiguity.  And thank God for his Holy Spirit, by which we learn to read and understand it.