Prophecies about different peoples begin. The first is about Babylon.
It must be borne in mind that the prophecy about the people, due to the multifaceted nature of the prophecies, has a universal meaning in one aspect or another – for example, if the judgment of God awaits the arrogant Babylonians, then the judgment of God awaits arrogant other people as well, although it seems that nothing in the prophecy can talk about them.
In general, the passage today is most reminiscent of the Second Coming – when the Lord Himself with the holy angels will appear and defeat the Antichrist and the evil one and those who are with them.
Babylon through the Revelation (Apocalypse) became a general symbol of evil in the world, and the main cause of evil is self-exaltation, pride, arrogance.
I will also pay attention to the words about the pregnant woman and the change in the face of the elders – they indicate deep internal changes in people at the time of the Second Coming – just as the pain of a woman from childbirth is internal. And faces indicate deep external changes in people.
The end of the flood, the coming of people to the renewed earth, the sacrifice of Noah, God’s decision not to destroy the earth because of people.
Here, too, the texts differ somewhat, but not as much as in the Proverbs.
They differ the most in that some texts speak of God’s repentance
,
while others speak of God’s decision. It should be borne in mind that no
matter which text is considered more correct, the idea of God’s
repentance
is an anthropomorphism — God knows everything in advance,
and does not need to truly repent of something, to change something in
His thoughts.
But if God’s actions are one for one state, and different for another, and both those and others occur one after another, in order, then a person calls such a state in relation to himself a change, which God does not really have (see, for example, Epistle of James).
God caused a flood on the earth once, and will not do it again,
people will live in the universe until the Second Coming, but this is
not repentance
of God.
Someone may be tempted by the fact that many people and animals died in the flood.
But you need to remember that with God all are alive
, that there
will be a general Resurrection of the dead. But the state of that
society was irreparable, God knew it for sure, and therefore could not
leave it the same, because no one would have been saved after Noah.
Note that people perished without even paying attention to Noah and the ark, so indifferent were they to the righteous man and his life both before and during the flood.
This is an indicator of the decline of society and every person among them.
On the other hand, the promises of Christ and the text of Genesis show that there will never be such a decline among people, among human society – people and the Church of Christ will exist until the end of the age, people will be saved, and history will have meaning.
Indeed, we people who have been taught compassion and love by Christ (and I really do not know anyone who teaches compassion and love better than Christ, not only by wisdom, but also by life and voluntary sacrifice, and everything), we grieve over those who perished in the waters flood, but would have even greater sorrow for all those who would live in a decadent society like that. The Lord allowed them to perish in the flood, rather than perishing all afterwards.
More about God’s and human freedom can be found in the work at the
link:
https://oleksandr-zhabenko.github.io/en/DialogueOnWordsChristFear.html
The Greek and Hebrew texts differ, but generally convey the superiority of righteousness over unrighteousness in this life.
Righteousness has the ultimate advantage in eternity, in the Kingdom of God, but it also has advantages in the present life. Solomon talks about some of them here.
It must be said that unrighteousness tries to imitate righteousness,
therefore it tries in every possible way to create conditions so that
these differences are not obvious, to flatten
them, to make them
imperceptible
– this happens clearly, and often also implicitly.
The Lord warns us against unrighteousness, and calls us to righteousness, which is why each verse is actually a double motivation.
Glory be to Thee, our God, glory be to Thee!