Some thoughts on Genesis, chapters 6--9

 

I.                    Gn. 6.5—9.17: The Great Flood

A. OBSERVATION

1. General observations

     The Flood narrative begins with God regretting having created humanity, due to its “great wickedness” (Gn. 6.5-6).  Things have apparently escalated since the murder of Abel.  “But Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord” (6.8).  Indeed, Noah’s unique destiny had been portended since his birth (cf. 5.28-29).  Noah’s father “prophesizes” that his son will provide humanity “relief[1] from the toil caused by the cursing of the ground” (cf. 3.17-18).  Like his great-grandfather Enoch before him, Noah “walked with God” (6.9; cf. 5.22-24).  Indeed, Noah is the only “righteous”[2] person among his generation (7.1; cf. 6.9); presumably, this is because, in the preceding verse, he is said to “have done all that God commanded him”[3] (6.22; cf. 7.5, 9).

     There is a fundamental irony in this story.  Since the earth is “filled with violence”, God decides to respond with his own act of extreme violence[4] – “to make an end of all flesh; to destroy them along with the earth” (6.11-13).[5]  However, God decides to spare Noah, his wife and his three sons along with their wives – indeed, to establish a covenant with them (6.18).  God instructs Noah to construct an “ark of cypress (?) wood” (6.14).  Reflecting Levitical concerns with “clean” and “unclean” animals, Noah is instructed to take 7 pairs of every species of clean animal and 1 pair of every species of unclean animal onto the ark so they survive the coming cataclysm (7.2-3).  The numbers 7 and 40 are very important in this story.[6]  God gives Noah a 7-day warning before the rain begins to fall, which it continues to do for 40 days (7.4; cf. 7.10, 12, 17; 8.6, 10, 12).  “All flesh died…and all human beings; everything on dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died…only Noah was left, and those that were with him in the ark” (7.21-23).  This is the un-creation.

     “But God remembered Noah…and God made a wind blow over the earth…” (8.1; cf. 1.2; 7.18).[7]  Now that the cosmos has been returned to a state of watery chaos, God begins to re-create it, as he had done in chapter 1.  As the waters recede and as the (dry) land “(re-)appears”[8] (cf. 1.9), the ark comes to rest on the mountains of Ararat (8.4).  In order to determine whether it is safe to leave the ark, Noah sends out a series of birds, including a dove, which he sends out three times; upon returning from its second sortie, the dove brings back an olive leaf, which demonstrates that vegetation has recovered from the Flood and the earth is once more habitable (cf. 8.6-12).  Once everyone had disembarked “on the first day (of the first month)” (8.13, 18-19; cf. 1.5)[9], Noah built an altar to Yahweh, and when Yahweh had “smelled the pleasing odor”, he swore to “never again”[10] curse the ground because of humankind (8.21; cf. 3.17-18; 4.11-12; 5.29).[11]  As he had done for the man and the woman (cf. 1.28), God blesses Noah and his sons, telling them to be fruitful and multiply, and to fill the earth.  God declares a proto-lex talionis (cf. Ex. 21.24), i.e. murderers will receive the “death penalty” (9.1-6).[12]  God then signals his covenant to never again destroy the earth with a flood by setting his “bow in the clouds” (9.8-17).[13]

2. The 6 questions

a.       Who?  Noah and his family, God, all humanity and all creation.

b.      What?  The Flood.

c.       When? “When people began to multiply on the face of the ground…” (6.1)

d.      Where?  “Everywhere.”

e.       Why and wherefore?  As judgment for the “wickedness of humankind” (6.5).

f.        How? By “bringing a flood of waters on the earth” (6.17).

1.      Structure

J source[14]

·         Prologue (6.5-8)

·         Flood (parts of 7.1—8.13)

·         Epilogue (8.20-22)

P source[15]

·         Prologue (6.9-12)

·         Flood (parts of 6.13—8.19)

·         Epilogue (9.1-17; 28-29)

 

B.     INTERPRETATION

1. Questions

     Why, after having shown such mercy to the man and the woman in chapter 3 and to Cain in chapter 4, does God now decide to completely destroy his creation?  Why does God appear to change his mind, both about having created humanity and about having sent the Flood?  Why, after his dialogue with the man and the woman as well as with Cain, does God engage in strictly one-way communication with Noah?  Why is Noah silent?

2. Answers

     Brueggemann offers some possible (not-completely-satisfactory) answers (surprise, surprise).  God purposes to destroy his creation because it is not responding to his covenant – the world refuses to be God’s world.  Brueggemann insists that the main point of the Flood narrative is to witness to a fundamental change within the heart of God – before the Flood, God’s heart is grieved because of the wickedness of humanity, and after the Flood, he realizes that the human heart is desperately wicked and will not be changed by cataclysmic judgment.  Rather, God determines to hereafter “leaven his justice with mercy”.

3. Outline

·         Change of mind # 1: God’s “heart” is grieved by the evil of human hearts (6.5-8).

o   God instructs Noah to build an ark and to take his family as well as representatives of all animal and bird species with him (6.9-22).

§  God tells Noah to board the ark and then “shuts him in” (7.1-16).

·         God sends the Flood (7.17-24).

o   God remembers Noah and makes the waters subside (8.1-5; cf. 9.15-16).

·         Noah sends out birds from the ark to “scout” for dry land (8.6-12).

§  God tells Noah to leave the ark (8.13-19).

o   Noah builds an altar and offers sacrifices to God (8.20-22).

·         Change of mind # 2: God resolves “in his heart” to never again “curse the ground” (8.21).

·         God blesses Noah as the head of a new creation (9.1-7); God establishes his covenant with all creatures to never again destroy the earth (9.8-17).

C.     APPLICATION

1. Interpretation

     God is a God of pathos.  In the very act of creating, he has bound himself to creation (esp. humanity?) in a covenantal relationship.  Since the act of creation, God’s “well-being” is intertwined with humanity’s[16] (un)faithfulness to the covenant.  In his grief over humanity’s wickedness, God decides to destroy his creation.  However, Noah, the righteous one, is spared in view of new beginnings beyond the disaster.[17]  In spite of this caveat, there is no easy resolution to this story.  There is great irony in the law against murder after the Flood (Gn. 9.5-6), seeing that the Creator has just wiped out all his human creatures save eight.  Perhaps the (seemingly) ethical difficulty is somewhat attenuated by Blenkinsopp’s reading of Gn. 1—11, which considers the entire pre-historical narrative to be a single story of “creation—un-creation—re-creation”.  This narrative – taken as a whole – tells the story of the world’s origins as well as that of evil’s entrance into the cosmos.  This is a strange story of beginnings, full of ambiguity and – as Cain discovered – a strange God who refuses to be manipulated and whose ways often strike humans as arbitrary and unfair.  And yet, humanity – and thus the story – goes on.[18]

2. Situation

     Again, the (presumed) post-exilic context of Genesis is made sense of by the Flood story.  A remnant (like the one who came off the ark) returned from Babylon to renew a life of (“please God”) covenant-faithfulness to Yahweh after the “cataclysm” of exile.  As Noah built an altar upon disembarking the salvific vessel, so the Jews rebuild the altar in Jerusalem and offer sacrifices before commencing construction of the second temple (cf. Ezra 3.1-7).  Indeed, (Second) Isaiah described the return from exile as an act of (new) creation (cf. Is. 40—45).  Jeremiah spoke of a new covenant (Jer. 31.31-34).  Yahweh, after the Flood, had made a covenant with Noah and with all of creation and had granted a (renewed) cultural mandate to him and his sons (cf. Gn. 1.26-31), a mandate that heralded the launch of a new world.

3. Putting the text into practice

     Due to its affinities with the book of Revelation[19], the story of the Flood can be of service to us as we consider the subject of eschatology, of the final fulfillment of the Creator’s purposes of justice and mercy, of his determination to rule over his world through his Messiah and his people, and of his fundamental and unshakable commitment to creation.  Perhaps meditation upon the Flood story may help us avoid any vindictiveness as we contemplate the (possible) fate of those who presently reject God and his gospel.  Perhaps this will stimulate us to greater participation in God’s mission of mercy and grace towards his world, of communicating the good news that salvation has been made possible by God’s creative Word becoming flesh and sharing our ambiguous human condition “east of Eden”. 

Conclusion

     The ambiguity of Gn. 1—11, I suggest, reflects the instability following upon the return from the Babylonian exile.  Like all the disasters of the pre-history – Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the garden, Cain’s banishment “from the face of God”, the Flood and the dispersion from Babel – the deportation(s) of the Judahites and the destruction of Jerusalem did not spell the end for either the purposes of God or the people of God.  The revenants from Babylon (cf. Ez. 37.1-14) found themselves to be survivors in a world (and a Land) where covenants could be broken, where curses would surely follow, but also where – somehow – life went on.  Life on the far side of exile – i.e. life back in the land of promise – was a new opportunity to “walk with God”.  Would the people of Yahweh seize this new day?  Or would the cycle of rebellion-judgment-restoration continue…?

     Also, those who had returned to Zion – retracing Abram’s steps – did so with an imperial mandate to embark upon a construction project – with all the inherent ambiguity and risks associated with that (cf. Gn. 4, 11).  Would their “new Jerusalem” be “Babel” or would it succeed in capturing something of the walled garden – would it be characterized by nationalistic hubris or would it strive to be a city on a hill, an oasis for the nations (cf. Ez. 36.33-36; Micah 4.1)?  Once again, as the primal woman and man had done in the mists of time, the people of Yahweh were faced with a choice – to be or not to be faithful to the covenant.  Her stories in Bereshit had wisdom to offer, if Israel would but listen (cf. Dt. 6.4ff; Prov. 1.20-33).

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[1] An echo of Noah’s name (nhm: 5.29): Hendel, Ronald, The Anchor Yale Bible: Genesis 1—11, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2024, p. 297.

[2] Cf. Kass, Leon R. The beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003, pp. 162-63, who contrasts the description of Noah with that of the “heroes” of 6.1-4.

[3] Noah never speaks during the narrative: Hendel, Ronald, The Anchor Yale Bible: Genesis 1—11, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2024, p. 297; cf. Brueggemann, Walter, Genesis, Atlanta: John Knox, 1982, pp. 79-80.

[4] Cf. Hendel, Ronald, The Anchor Yale Bible: Genesis 1—11, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2024, pp. 299-300, which claims that Yahweh’s moral dilemma is a monotheistic translation of the moral conflicts within a divided pantheon, e.g. as seen in the Epic of Gilgamesh.  Cf. Kass, Leon R. The beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis, p. 164, who points out that the word sahat (“destroy”: 6.13) is the same word rendered “(all flesh had) corrupted (its ways)” in 6.12.  Tit-for-tat.  Cf. Miles, Jack, God: A Biography, New York: Vintage Books, 1995, pp. 42ff, 46.

[5] His previous mercy to the man and the woman (3.20-21) and to Cain (4.15) notwithstanding.

[6] Cf. Hendel, Ronald, The Anchor Yale Bible: Genesis 1—11, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2024, p. 298.

[7] Cf. Ibid, p. 340.  The collocation of “wind, ocean, earth and heaven” in 8.1-2 repeats the cluster of primeval substances from 1.1-2, also signaling a recapitulation of creation.

[8] Ibid, pp. 339f.

[9] Ibid, p. 341.

[10] Cf. Brueggemann, Walter, Genesis, Atlanta: John Knox, 1982, pp. 83-84.

[11] Cf. Brueggemann, Walter, Genesis, Atlanta: John Knox, 1982, p. 81.

[12] Cf. Kass, Leon R. The beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis, pp. 184, 190-93.

[13] Brueggemann, Walter, Genesis, Atlanta: John Knox, 1982, pp. 84-85 draws a parallel between God resting on the seventh day of creation (2.1-4) and God “resting his bow (weapon)” in the clouds as he completes his (re)creation of the cosmos (9.12-16).

[14] Hendel, Ronald, The Anchor Yale Bible: Genesis 1—11, p. 297.  On Gn. 6—9 consisting of a doublet of J and P flood stories, cf. Ibid, pp. 334-35.  Cf. Brueggemann, Walter, Genesis, Atlanta: John Knox, 1982, p. 75 who claims that it is “beyond dispute” that this text conflates two strands of tradition; be that as it may, Brueggemann also insists on dealing with the text “as it now stands”.  Cf. Miles, Jack, God: A Biography, New York: Vintage Books, 1995, p. 45, advances the claim that a serpentine, watery destroyer (elsewhere called Rahab: e.g. Is. 51.9) has been wholly absorbed into the LORD/God, the Creator (Miles also draws a parallel btw “God as destroyer” and Tiamat in Enuma Elish).  Miles describes the one Deity of Genesis as having (at least) two personalities: Ibid. p. 41.

[15] Ibid, pp. 335-36.

[16] Eventually, Israel.

[17] Cf. Ex. 32.10.

[18] Cf. the Jewish proverb: “God made man because he loves stories”.

[19] Especially chapters 21-22 of Revelation.  However, “the wrath of God and of the Lamb”, revealed in the triple 7-fold series of judgments in chapters 6—16, resulting in the (apparent) death of vast numbers of people as well as the devastation of much of the natural world, also come into play.  God may have promised to never again destroy the world by water, but in Revelation, we (are perhaps dismayed to) see that the Creator has other means of destruction at his disposal… cf. Rev. 21.1.