Genesis 6:11

Summary

Genesis 6:11 states that the earth had become corrupt and was filled with violence, situating this corruption specifically "before" or "in the presence of" God. The verse uses two parallel passive verbs with "the earth" as subject, forming a synonymous couplet that intensifies the description of the earth's condition.

Key words

• tishachet ("was corrupt", H7843) — niphal (passive/reflexive) verbal form, narrative sequence; the earth undergoes corruption rather than actively corrupting.
• ha'aretz ("the earth", H0776G) — feminine singular noun with definite article, repeated as subject of both verbs.
• lifnei ("before", H6440G + H9005) — construct form of "face" with prefixed preposition, literally "to the face of," indicating a relational/spatial standing.
• Elohim ("God", H0430G) — masculine plural noun (used here with singular reference), object of the preposition lifnei.
• timale ("was filled", H4390) — niphal verbal form, parallel in structure to tishachet, describing the earth as passively "filled."
• chamas ("violence", H2555) — masculine singular noun, the content with which the earth is filled.

What the text says

The verse is built as two clauses joined by the narrative va ("and," H9001), each following the same pattern: verb (niphal) + subject ha'aretz + complement. This creates a chiastic parallelism: "and-was-corrupt / the-earth / before-God" mirrored by "and-was-filled / the-earth / violence." Both main verbs, tishachet and timale, are niphal forms, a stem that in Biblical Hebrew often carries passive or reflexive nuance — the earth is described as being in a corrupted and filled state, without the text specifying an explicit agent for either action.

The phrase lifnei ha'Elohim uses the construct noun fnei ("face of," H6440G) governed by the preposition li ("to," H9005), a common Hebrew idiom meaning "in the presence of" or "before." This construction ties the earth's corruption to a relational position vis-à-vis Elohim, though the Hebrew itself does not specify the exact nature of this relation beyond spatial/relational presence.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders lifnei ha'Elohim ("before God") as τοῦ θεοῦ, a genitive construction ("of God") rather than reproducing the prepositional "before/in the presence of" sense that the Hebrew lifnei conveys. The Vulgate's coram Deo ("before God") more closely mirrors the Hebrew spatial idiom than the LXX's genitive. Additionally, the LXX introduces the particle δὲ ("but/now") at the verse opening, marking a narrative transition, where the Hebrew simply continues with the narrative va.