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Hey, I appreciate all of your supportive comments. I'll be getting to the next "article" on Levofgod.com as soon as possible (hopefully within a couple of days).

Now, on to Lindah's question. I know it wasn't necessarily for me, since it was addressed to at least three of us, but I'll make a few comments.

The question was:
"Why" did The Lord grieve in His heart?

Well, first, for my purposes I wasn't necessarily honing in on the WHY of this question, so much as I was in having my readers (at the site) "notice" that it says God did "grieve." Because, as I stated, this is too often overlooked or skipped to consider the other "WHY" questions in the passage. My purpose was to take time to even notice that it says "The Lord Grieved in His Heart." (I know that's not a direct answer to the question, but it is stating what I was emphasizing in the text).

The follow up question was:
"Is it because the men did evil, or is it because He knew He would soon destroy His own creation? (or something else?)"

The answer to this question would require the ability to know what was going through The Lord-God's Mind at the time. A difficult task indeed. Nevertheless, it is worth "thinking about." Perhaps I'll go ahead and offer my reflections on this. Let me say it surely was because men, whom He created, DID EVIL. And, not only is it that they "DID EVIL" (whatever qualifies as "doing evil," it seems to be related to an ACT), but the text clearly says that the LEV of men was "on evil" - which I understand to mean something like men's hearts were set upon evil continually. You know, it's kinda nice to be able to open another window while I'm typing this reply, and go to LEVOFGOD.COM and quickly reference the passage in question in this way, instead of pulling up a search engine, like Blueletter and having to type in the information. I never thought I'd be able to go to my own site for a quick reference. At any rate I pulled up the text as I had listed it, and here it is, this is what it says:

"The LORD (YHVH) saw that the wickedness of man was great in the eretz (land/earth), and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." (Genesis/Bereishit 6:5)

So, as it says concerning man, EVERY IMAGINATION of the THOUGHTS of his HEART was ONLY EVIL and that CONTINUALLY.

So, again, I say Yes, this is what "grieved the very heart of The Lord" - Evil is enough, but to think of the way the words "every" and "only" and "continually" are used (in English) is quite pointed. The text is saying a whole lot here, isn't it? Why wouldn't the "LEV" of a "Holy God" be grieved?

The Further Follow-up Question was:
"Or ... Is it because The Lord's creation did not reciprocate the Love He had for them?"

Well, I think this might just be a part of it to. These are not mutually exclusive possibilities. In fact, I have looked up the term translated "grieved" in this text and encompasses things like "hurt, pain, vex, wrest, and even torture, inter alia. It is used of human to human relationships where one person does not want to deeply hurt or cause pain to another. Interestingly, the term is used several times in the relationship between David and Jonathan in First Samuel Chapter 20 (see verses 3 and 34). They had the closest of relationships and David did not want Jonathan to be grieved, but Jonathan was grieved on account of his own father's actions (shame) towards David. So, I think the lack of reciprocation of Love can be a part of this grieving too.

Hope these rambling thoughts suffice for now. I better be careful or I'll get way ahead of myself, perhaps all the way to answering my update # 777 here and now!

Beloved