Genesis 6 - Which Mankind?
As we saw in Genesis 6 - God’s Decision, the evil heart of man was causing God great pain and grief. He regretted making them. However, before we go on, it bears our attention to contemplate exactly who it was that God regretted making.
As we discussed in Genesis 6 - Causing God Strife, Genesis 6 appears to discuss spiritual man as if he is all there is of mankind. But, as we also discussed in Genesis 5 - Proof that Adam was born, spiritual man is not all of humanity. Yet, even while Genesis 6 appears only to discuss spiritually aware people, other aspects are worded in such a way as to suggest that whoever God regrets making, they constitute all of mankind.
One of the most useful tools I have found in interpreting Genesis is to read through its discontinuities as if they are not there. This may sound like I am ignoring things, but bear with me. For example, where Genesis 2 appears to transition from Day 7 to summarizing Creation, I interpret it to be a continuation of the narrative. After Day 7, God made Adam and put him into the Garden. By seeing the appearance of Adam as sequential with mankind, instead of a restatement of their origins, it aligns with the observations of science, which are that man subdued the earth, and agriculture later appeared, around 10,000 years ago.
Another example is Cain’s Genesis 5. Mankind and Adam are the same words; Adam was named after mankind. It therefore becomes somewhat arbitrary to translate the beginning of Genesis 5 as we usually do:
 1 This is the written account of Adam’s line.
      When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. 2 He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them “man. ” 3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth.
… as translated in the NIV. Or alternatively in the NKJ…
1 This is the book of the genealogy of Adam. In the day that God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. 2 He created them male and female, and blessed them and called them Mankind in the day they were created. 3 And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.
…or the King James…
 1This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;
 2Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.
 3And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, and after his image; and called his name Seth:
Notice in particular verse 2. The old King James names mankind Adam. The NKJ backs off a bit and says Mankind. The NIV backs off even more and simply says “man”. Why? Because over time, Christians have begun to see Adam as much more a person than before. But, it creates this discontinuity between verses 1-2 and verse 3. Where we used to refer to the entire history as Adam, betraying our interpretation that somehow Adam definitely came first, the scientific truth has been creeping in… the creation of “man” and “Adam” are two separate things. How best to interpret these verses? As a sequence! Using the NIV translation, here is how the Church might eventually read them…
 1 This is the written account of Mankind’s generations.
      When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. 2 He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them “man. ” 3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth.
Should this be the way we go, then without changing one jot or tittle in the original scripture, our modern translation of these verses, if read sequentially, will align with scientific observation… that mankind subdued the earth long before Agriculture appeared (Adam was expelled from the garden after the advent of agriculture).
Now, much of this is a rehash, but notice something. It shows us a transition from talking about all of humanity in verse 2, to speaking only of that section of humanity that includes Adam and his descendants. For the rest of Genesis 5, they are all who matter. This confusion in verses 1 and 2 about whether Adam represents only a man or all of humanity has been brought forward into the rest of Genesis 5, and on into Genesis 6 and further, for as long as I have been taught the Bible. However, seeing how these verses so nicely align with science makes me see them as a narrowing of the scope from humanity to Adam, rather than the other way around… from Adam to humanity. Clearly, humanity cam first. Later came Adam, and he lived 130 years before Seth was born. This narrowing to Adam and his descendants is what I believe the writer intended us to carry through in our reading.
The idea of narrowing the Genesis narrative to only Adam’s descendants explains why Genesis 6 can talk about “mankind’s” interactions with Spirits, when it was clearly Adam’s descendants who were given that gift, in Genesis 2:7. Giving us spiritual awareness of God, the knowledge that there is God, and ability to believe and obey (coupled with the ability to disbelieve and/or disobey) is at the heart of Genesis 6, and did not exist within humanity until God gave it to Adam. But, lest you think all humanity had it at the same time, it was only Adam who God put into the Garden of Eden (Eve was created in the Garden). It was only Adam and Eve who disobeyed, and only them and their descendants who received punishment. Therefore, it is their descendants the writer of Genesis is referring to in Genesis 6… yet he writes of them as if they are “mankind”. Why? Because they were all who mattered. Much like the Joseph’s descendants were God’s focus in Exodus, Adam’s descendants were God’s focus in Genesis 6. The difference is that the Hebrews were in and among the Egyptians; Adam’s descendants in Genesis 6 were still isolated and apart from the rest of humanity. From their perspective, they may in fact have been all of the humanity they were aware of.
In the end, we need to choose between interpretations; we need to reconcile a discontinuity. Either Genesis 6 speaks of mankind before Adam even though Adam came first, or Genesis 6 zooms in from all of mankind to only Adam’s descendants, and then calls them mankind. Both perspectives have in common the treatment of “mankind” as constituting only Adam’s descendants; only a scientific interpretation however resolves the odd sequencing of verses 1 to 3.
We can therefore say that when God regrets making mankind, He refers only to Adam’s descendants, whom the author has narrowed in on for the reader’s benefit. It is Adam’s descendants whom I refer to as Spiritual Mankind, and it is Spiritual Mankind whom God expresses regret for creating. He regrets Genesis 2:7, not Genesis 1. This is has profound impact on our interpretation of The Great Flood.