1. WHEN MEN began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them,
2. The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair, and they took wives of all they desired and chose.
3. Then the Lord said, My Spirit shall not forever dwell and strive with man, for he also is flesh; but his days shall yet be 120 years.
4. There were giants on the earth in those days–and also afterward–when the sons of God lived with the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.
5. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination and intention of all human thinking was only evil continually.
6. And the Lord regretted that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved at heart.
7. So the Lord said, I will destroy, blot out, and wipe away mankind, whom I have created from the face of the ground–not only man, [but] the beasts and the creeping things and the birds of the air–for it grieves Me and makes Me regretful that I have made them.
8. But Noah found grace (favor) in the eyes of the Lord.
9. This is the history of the generations of Noah. Noah was a just and righteous man, blameless in his [evil] generation; Noah walked [in habitual fellowship] with God.
10. And Noah became the father of three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
11. The earth was depraved and putrid in God's sight, and the land was filled with violence (desecration, infringement, outrage, assault, and lust for power).
12. And God looked upon the world and saw how degenerate, debased, and vicious it was, for all humanity had corrupted their way upon the earth and lost their true direction.