Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  20. I have said that Noah was a virgin above all others; I may add he was the greatest of all martyrs. Our so-called martyrs, compared with him, have infinite advantage in strength received from the Holy Spirit, by which death is overcome and all trials and perils are escaped. Noah lived among the unrighteous for six hundred years, and like Lot at Sodom, not without numerous and dire perils and trials.

  21. This was, perhaps, one reason why Father Lamech gave his son the name Noah at his birth. When the holy patriarch saw evil abounding in the world, he entertained the hope concerning his son that he should comfort the righteous by opposing sin and its author, Satan, and restoring lost righteousness.

  22. However, the wickedness that began then, not only failed to cease under Noah, but rather grew greater. Hence Noah is the martyr of martyrs. For is it not much easier to be delivered from all danger and suffering in a single hour than to live for centuries amid colossal wickedness?

  23. The opinion before expressed I maintain, that Noah abstained from matrimony so long that he might not be compelled to witness and suffer in his own offspring what he saw in the descendants of the other saints. This sight of man’s wickedness was his greatest cross, as Peter says of Lot in Sodom (2 Pet 2, 8): “That righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their lawless deeds.”

  24. Accordingly, the increase of humanity of which Moses speaks has not reference alone to the time of Noah, but also to the age of the other patriarchs. It was there that the violation of the first table commenced — in the contempt manifested for Jehovah and his Word. This was followed later by such gross offenses as oppression, tyranny and lewdness, which Moses explicitly mentions and names first as the cause of evil. Consult all history, study the Greek tragedies and the affairs of barbarians and Romans of all times, and you find lust the mother of every kind of trouble. It can not be otherwise. Where God’s Word remains unknown or unheeded, men will plunge into lust.

  25. Lust draws in its train endless other evils, as pride, oppression, perjury and the like. These sins can be attacked only as men, through the first table, learn to fear and to trust in God. Then it is that they follow the Word as a lamp going before in the dark, and they will not indulge in such scandalous deeds, but will rather beware of them. With violation of the first table, however, the spread of passions and sins of every description is inevitable.

  26. But it seems strange that Moses should enumerate in the catalog of sins the begetting of daughters. He had found it commendable in the case of the patriarchs. It is even enjoyed by the ungodly as a blessing of God. Why, therefore, does Moses call it a sin?

  I reply, he does not condemn the fact of procreation as such, but the abuse of it, resulting from original sin. To be endowed with royal majesty, wisdom, wealth and bodily strength is a goodly blessing. It is God who bestows these gifts. But when men, in possession of these blessings, fail to reverence the first table, and by means of these very gifts do violence to it, such wickedness merits punishment. Therein is the reason for Moses’ peculiar words: “The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all that they chose,” without consideration of God or of law, natural or statutory.

  27. The first table having been despised, the second shares the same fate. Desire occupies the principal place and in contempt for procreation it becomes purely bestial; whereas God has instituted matrimony as an aid to feeble nature and chiefly for the purpose of procreation. But when lust in this manner has gained the upper hand, all commandments, those that go before and that follow, are ruthlessly broken and dishonored. Parental honor becomes insecure; men do not shrink from doing murder; from alienating property, speaking false testimony, etc.

  28. The word jiru, “saw,” does not merely signify “to view,” but “to view with pleasure and enjoyment.” This meaning often occurs in the psalms, for instance: “Mine eye also hath seen my desire on mine enemies,” Ps 92, 11; that is, shall with pleasure see vengeance executed upon my enemies. The meaning here is that, after turning their eyes from God and his Word, they turned them, filled with lust, upon the daughters of men. The sequence is unerring that, from the violation of the first table, men rush to the violation of the second. After despising God they despised also the laws of nature and, as they pleased, they married whom they chose.

  29. These are rather harsh words, and yet it is my opinion that lust continued hitherto within certain limits, inasmuch as they neither committed incest with their mothers, as later the inhabitants of Canaan, nor polluted themselves with the vice of the Sodomites. Moses confines his charge to their casting aside the legal trammels set by the patriarchs and recognizing in their matrimonial alliances no law but that of lust, selecting only as passion directed and against the will of the parents.

  30. It seems the patriarchs had strictly forbidden to contract alliances with the offspring of Cain, just as, later, the Jews could not lawfully mingle with the Canaanites. Though there are not wanting those who write that incestuous marriages existed before the flood, blood-relationship being held to be no barrier, I yet infer from the fact that Peter has extolled the old world, that such incestuous atrocities did not exist at that time, but that the sin of the ancient world consisted rather in men marrying whom they pleased, and as many wives from the Cainites as they chose, ignoring parental authority and controlled alone by passion. It is, therefore, a harsh word— “All which they chose.”

  31. I have shown, on various occasions, that the two generations, or churches, of Adam and Cain were separate. For, as Moses clearly states, Adam expelled the murderer from his association. Without doubt, therefore, Adam also exhorted his offspring to avoid the church of the evil-doers and not to mingle with the accursed generation of Cain. And for a while his counsel or command was obeyed.

  32. But when Adam died and the authority of the other patriarchs became an object of scorn, the sons of God who had the promise of the blessed seed and themselves belonged to the blessed seed, craved from the tribe of the ungodly, intercourse and espousal. He tersely calls the sons of the patriarchs the “sons of God,” since to them was given the promise of the blessed seed and they constituted the true Church. Yielding to the corruptions of the Cainite church they indulged the flesh themselves and took from the tribe of Cain, as wives and mistresses, whom and as many as they chose. This Lamech and Noah saw with pain, and for that reason, perhaps, deferred entering upon marriage.

  33. In reference to this point the Jews fancy foolish things. They interpret the sons of God to signify demon-lechers by whom that impious generation was begotten, and that they were called the sons of God by reason of their spiritual nature. The more moderate ones, however, refute such folly and represent the sons of the mighty. This has been aptly disproved by Lyra; for the punishment of the deluge befell, not alone the mighty, but all flesh, as shall the doom at the last day.

  34. But as regards the demon-lechers and strumpets (incubi and succubi), I do not deny — nay, I believe — that a demon may be either a lecher or a strumpet, for I have heard men cite their own experience. Augustine says that he heard this from trustworthy people whom he was constrained to believe. Satan is pleased when he can deceive us in this manner, by assuming the form either of a young man or a young woman. But that anything may be begotten by a devil and a human being is simply false. We hear of monstrous births of demon-like features, and I have even seen some. I am of opinion, however, that they have been deformed by the devil, but not begotten: or that they are real devils with a human body either simulated or purloined. For if the devil, by divine permission, may take possession of the whole man and change his mind, is it strange that he may disfigure also his body, causing men to be born sightless or cripples?

  35. Hence, the devil may so deceive frivolous people and such as live without the fear of God that when the devil is in bed, a young man may think that he has a girl with him, and a girl that she has a youth with her; but that anything may be born fr
om such concubinage I do not believe. Many sorceresses have at one time or another been subjected to death at the stake on account of their intercourse with demons. If the devil can deceive eyes and ears so that they fancy they see and hear things which do not exist, how much easier is it for him to deceive the sense of touch, which is in this nature exceedingly gross! But enough! These explanations have no bearing upon the present text, and we have been led to them merely by Jewish babbling.

  36. The true meaning is that Moses calls those men the sons of God, who had the promise of the blessed seed. This is a New Testament phrase and signifies the believers who call God, Father, and whom, God in turn, calls sons. The flood came not because the generation of Cain was corrupt, but because the generation of the righteous who had believed God, had obeyed his Word, and had possessed the true worship, now had lapsed into idolatry, disobedience to parents, sensuality, oppression. Even so the last day shall be hastened, not by the profligacy of Gentile, Turk and Jew, but by the filling of the Church with errors through the pope and fanatical spirits, so that those very ones who occupy the highest place in the Church exercise themselves in sensuality, lust and oppression.

  37. It is a cause of fear for us all, that even those who were descended from the best patriarchs, began to grow haughty and depart from the Word. They gloried in their wisdom and righteousness, as later the Jews did in circumcision and Father Abraham. So did the popes glory in the title of the Church only to replace gradually their spiritual glory by carnal indulgence after forfeiting the knowledge of God, his Word and his worship. The Roman Church was truly holy and adorned by the grandest martyrs. We, at this day, however, are witnesses how she has fallen.

  38. Let no one, therefore, glory in his gifts, however splendid! The greatest gift is to be a member of the true Church. But take care not to become proud on that account, for you may fall, just as Lucifer fell from heaven and, as we are here informed, as the sons of God fell into carnal pleasures. They are, therefore, no longer sons of God, but sons of Satan, having fallen alike from the first and the second table of the Law. So in the past, popes and bishops have been good and holy, but today they are of all men the worst and, so to speak, the dregs of all classes.

  39. Among this rabble of decadent men who had departed from the piety and virtues of their ancestors, godly Noah lived in the greatest contempt and hatred of everybody. How could he approve the corruption of such degenerate progeny? And they themselves were most impatient of reproof. While, therefore, his example shone and gleamed, and his holiness filled the whole earth, the world became worse from day to day, and the greater the sanctity and chastity of Noah, the more the world reveled in lust. This is the beginning; it invariably introduces ruin.

  40. When God arouses holy men, full of the Holy Spirit, to instruct and reprove the world, the world, impatient of sound doctrine, falls with much greater zeal into sin and plies it with much greater persistency. This was the situation at the beginning of the world, and now, at the end of the world, we realize it is still the case.

  II.

  GOD’S JUDGMENT AND GRIEF OVER THE FIRST WORLD; NOAH AND HIS PREACHING.

  A.

  GOD’S JUDGMENT AND LAMENTATION OVER THE OLD WORLD.

  1.

  The words of the lamentation.

  a.

  Interpreters have shamefully perverted these words 41.

  b.

  The Jewish interpretation, which Jerome follows 42.

  c.

  The Jews’ interpretation refuted 42-43.

  d.

  The interpretation of Rabbi Solomon 44.

  e.

  The interpretation of others, especially of Origen 45.

  *

  Why Augustine was especially pleased with the doctrine of the Manicheans 45.

  f.

  Rabbi David’s explanation 46.

  *

  The false idea of the Jews and some Christian interpreters that the true sense of Scripture is learned from grammar.

  (1)

  Thus ideas most foreign to the sense of Scripture are defended 46-47.

  (2)

  This method is false and led the Jews into many fantasies 47.

  g.

  The source of Rabbi David’s awkward interpretation of these words 48.

  *

  Why Luther has so much to say about the false interpretation of Scripture 49.

  *

  What is necessary to interpret Scripture 50.

  h.

  The true sense of these words 51.

  *

  Scripture definition of “to judge” 51.

  2.

  The author of this judgment and lamentation 51-53.

  *

  Man’s conduct upon hearing God’s Word preached 54.

  3.

  From what kind of a heart does such judgment and lamentation spring 55.

  *

  What kind of grief is the grief of the Holy Spirit 56.

  *

  God’s severest punishment 57-59.

  *

  What follows when man does not possess God’s Word 57-58.

  *

  Why the heathen are so carnal 58.

  4.

  The nature of this judgment and lamentation 59.

  *

  The lamentation and judgment of Luther over Germany because it lightly esteemed God’s Word 60.

  *

  The spirit of grace and of prayer 61.

  *

  The office of the ministry.

  a.

  It requires two things 62.

  b.

  It is the greatest blessing of God 63.

  c.

  To despise it is a great sin, and what follows when it is taken from a people 63.

  d.

  A complaint of its neglect 64.

  e.

  This office is explained by the expression “to judge” 65.

  *

  Every godly preacher is one who disputes and judges 65.

  *

  Luther’s grief because of the stubbornness of the world 66.

  *

  Why Ahab called Elijah a troubler of Israel 67.

  *

  Why the world resents being reproved by sound doctrine. It is a good sign if a minister is reviled by the world 68.

  *

  The glory of people who boast of being the Church.

  a.

  Such glory avails nothing before God 68-70.

  b.

  Papists wish by all means to have this glory 68-70.

  c.

  Papists need this glory to suppress the Protestants 71.

  d.

  Christ will decide at the judgment day to whom this glory belongs 71.

  e.

  Although the first world adorned itself with this glory, it did not save them 72.

  5.

  How and why this judgment and complaint are ascribed to God 73-74.

  6.

  How they were published to the world by the holy patriarchs 75.

  7.

  Why they were made 76.

  8.

  In what way they have been published to the world 77.

  9.

  How the world resented this judgment and complaint 78.

  *

  Time given to the first world for repentance.

  a.

  We are not to understand the 120 years as the period of a man’s life 79.

  b.

  The 120 years the time given these people in which to repent 80-81.

  10.

  Whether and to what end this time was necessary 82.

  11.

  How the old world felt upon hearing this 83.

  *

  The complaint and judgment of the last world 84-86.

  *

  The nearer the world approaches its destruction the less it thinks of it 86.

  *

  How the time of the flood is to be compared with the time God gives man to repent 87.

  II. THE
JUDGMENT AND LAMENTATION OF GOD OVER THE FIRST WORLD; NOAH AND HIS PREACHING.

  A. GOD’S JUDGMENT AND LAMENTATION OVER THE OLD WORLD.

  V. 3. Jehovah said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for that he also is flesh: yet shall his days be a hundred and twenty years.”

  41. Moses here begins by describing Noah as the highest pontiff and priest, or, as Peter calls him, a preacher of righteousness. This text has been mangled in various ways, for the natural man cannot understand spiritual things. When, therefore, the interpreters, with unwashed feet and hands, rushed into the Holy Scriptures, taking with them a human bias and method, as they themselves acknowledge, they could not but fall into diverse and erroneous views. It has almost come to pass, that the more sublime and spiritual the utterances of Scripture, the more shamefully they have been distorted. This passage in particular they have managed so shamelessly that you would not know what to believe, if you followed the interpreters.