If the Population Goes Bad, Kill It!

Is Genesis 6 outrageous? I don’t think so. Truthful? Certainly. God is fed up with people. Too much contamination. The sons of God are mixing with the daughters of men. There is no differentiation. People are living the way they want- no regard for God and what he wants. God is losing it. He is running out of patience. His heart starts pounding. His skin turns red. The veins on his throat start tightening. He is chocking on anger and regret.

Finally he breaks down. “Adam, let me tell you something. I am sick and tired of being sick and tired of sick people”. Human kind has become too evil for me . I am done with man. I am going to wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth- men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air- for I am grieved that I have made them”. Now those are some tough words from God. I don’t want to be around when God gets that mad.

But this was not the last time God had lost it and wanted to destroy the very people he had created. He did it again with Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19. And this time he wasn’t planning to tell anybody about it. But being God as He is, he could not keep a secret from his beloved Abraham. So he told him: “Abraham, I don’t want to hide from you what I am about to do to Sodom and Gomorrah. The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous. I will go down and see what they are up to. If what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me, I will see what I can do”. Abraham was different from Adam though. He pleaded with God and God listened. But Abraham’s bargaining power was less than the mess Sodom and Gomorrah had put themselves into. So God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.

God did it again, or He wanted to, in Exodus 32. The people make a golden calf and they start worshiping it in the place of God. God burns with anger and makes plans to destroy each one of them. This time it was Moses pleading. It worked. God changed his mind.


How can we explain this kind of behavior where each time the population goes bad God talks of destruction?