Commentary on Genesis - Luther on Sin and the Flood · Martin Luther

021 - Chapter VI Part V

·26 min

The episode opens with a note on the order of Noah’s sons, where Japheth is said to have been first, Shem two years later, and Ham two years after that. This chronology is not a side detail. It supports the larger claim that the text has been carefully observed, even where Moses does not spell out every point. The next movement takes up the words that the earth was corrupt before God and filled with violence. Luther treats this as the turning point of the flood narrative. He rejects Lyra’s suggestion that the corruption might extend to the animals as if they had strayed from their species. The beasts, he says, have not fallen through sin as man has. They belong to bodily life alone, do not hear the word, and are not subject to the first and second tables. The corruption therefore concerns man. Yet the beasts still suffer. That suffering is not because they share human guilt, but because God intends to destroy man altogether, not in body and soul only, but also in his possessions and dominion over creation. The flood is thus framed as an act of total judgment. Luther strengthens the point by citing other biblical judgments in which families and households are brought down together with the guilty. He points to Daniel 6, where the enemies of Daniel are cast into the lion’s den with their wives, children, and whole families. He recalls Numbers 16, where Korah, Dathan, and Abiram are destroyed along with their households. He also turns to Christ’s parable of the king who orders the servant sold together with wife, children, and all that he has. These parallels are used to show that punishment may rightly touch more than the immediate offender when God means to make the judgment full and complete. The flood is not treated as an isolated disaster but as a deliberate, comprehensive undoing of a corrupt order. The earth’s corruption before God is the ground of that judgment. Noah stands within this account as the man set apart by the divine purpose that the episode is preparing to unfold. The argument stays close to the verse, but it keeps widening into doctrinal reflection on sin, justice, and the reach of divine punishment. What begins as a comment on corruption becomes a sustained meditation on how God judges a world that has filled itself with violence.

As heard by us

A severe reading of the flood as complete judgment on corrupt humanity.

It reads Genesis 6:11 as a judgment on corrupt humanity, not as a mere note of wrongdoing. The commentary keeps a firm line between scripture and Lyra's reading, arguing that the flood is meant to sweep away people, their goods, and their dominion, with the beasts included so…

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If you want Genesis 6:11 argued like a case, not skimmed like a lesson, start here.

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