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5 August 2022 Navigate 'up to the Genesis index: index-genesis.
wa-ani hineni mebi et-hammabbul mayim al-ha-aretz leshahet kol-basar asher-bo ruah hayyim mittahat hashamayim kol asher-baaretz yigwa.
And I, behold, I am about to bring the deluge, water upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under the sky, all that is on the earth will perish.
Keep in mind that the punctuation marks here are present in the English but not in the Hebrew, and are simply added for convenience. Note how the verse flows just fine if you remove the word mayim ("water"). Kittel thinks that the word may have been added. Alternately, he suggests that perhaps we should instead read miyyam ("from the sea").
This is just personal speculation, but I wonder if perhaps the word "mabbul", which is either only or almost only[1] used of the Flood of Noah in the Bible, had become archaic at some point, and an editor added "water" to clarify.
Where the Masoretic Text has LŠḤT (lešaḥet, piel, "to destroy") the Samaritan Pentateuch has LŠḤYT (lašḥit? hiphil?). I don't think this makes any real difference to the intended meaning.
If the original reading is miyyam, from the sea, this contrasts with the other depictions in the chapter, which focus mainly on rain as the source of the Flood.
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