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And God said to Noah, The end of all flesh has come before me, because the earth is filled with abuse by them. And indeed, I am about to make a ruin of them with the earth.
The Hebrew for make a ruin of them with the earth is mašḥitam et ha-areṣ. The Hebrew wording is a little odd, and looks like destroy them the earth, as if both "them" and "the earth" were simultaneously the object of the sentence. It looks like the kind of thing that could easily have occurred with just a small typographic error, such as one where the word and has dropped out. In fact, the Septuagint looks like it has been translated from just such a Hebrew text: it has destroy them and the earth. The Samaritan Targum reads destroy them from the earth.
Kittel thinks that we should read differently from the Masoretic Text in either of two ways. First, instead of et ha-areṣ we should perhaps read on min ha-areṣ ("from the earth") or maʿal ha-areṣ ("from upon the earth"). Alternately, instead of "Indeed, I am about to make a ruin of them with the earth," we should read "Indeed, they are making a ruin of the earth."
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