Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
Genesis 8:21b
The imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth. The same diagnosis as before the flood, now given as the reason God will not flood the earth again.
Genesis 8:21, in every translation this tool compares.
Imagine a story where the reason given for a punishment is repeated afterward, word for word, as the reason the punishment will not be repeated. That reversal, same diagnosis, opposite response, is exactly what this verse is doing, and it depends on a reader catching the repetition.
Because this verse repeats, almost word for word, the diagnosis of the human heart that opened the flood story two chapters earlier, and the repetition after judgment, rather than a changed verdict, is the real theological weight of the sentence.
Every version reads roughly the imagination, or inclination, of man's heart is evil, matching Genesis 6:5's similar language, but English translation does not flag for a reader that this is a deliberate callback to the flood's original cause.
יֵצֶר yetser (יָצַר yatsar, to form) · H3336
Yetser, the same word used at Genesis 6:5 to explain why the flood came, every yetser of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, recurs here after the flood in nearly identical language. What has changed is not the diagnosis but the response: the same human condition that triggered judgment at 6:5 becomes, at 8:21, the stated reason God commits not to judge the earth this way again.
English imagination or inclination renders yetser accurately in both places, but nothing in the English text signals to a reader that this is the identical phrase recurring, so the deliberate structural echo, same cause, opposite outcome, is visible only to someone reading the Hebrew or already told to look for it.
When a phrase used to explain a judgment recurs later in a very similar form, check whether the narrative is using the repetition to make a point about mercy or continuity rather than simply repeating itself. Genesis 6:5 and 8:21 are exactly this kind of matched pair.
Imagination and inclination are both uncontested renderings. The point worth seeing is structural: the flood does not fix the human condition it responds to; the same diagnosis becomes the basis for restraint rather than for further judgment.
- The same phrase at Genesis 6:5, the flood's stated cause
- yetser from yatsar, to form or fashion, the same verb used of forming Adam at Genesis 2:7
