Introduction

Humans have been expelled from the Garden, but God does not abandon them. While we will pass over the record of the effects of a Fallen World and its consequent aggrandizement under the decisions of Cain (envy leading to murder) and Lamech (boasting of pointless murder), it is worth mentioning that God continues to treat with his Creation, seeking relationship with them. We also see natural death (e.g., Adam in 5.5), the fate awaiting all of humanity in a Fallen World. We also, however, see people being fruitful and multiplying, building cities, and making music. Nevertheless, Genesis 6 opens with the condemnation that ‘the wickedness of Man was great in the earth’, but also of hope: that God was still interested and invested in this pinnacle of his Creation (cf. God’s interaction with Cain in Genesis 4).

This lesson focuses on the wickedness of humanity such that God decides to Flood the world. He chooses one family to preserve, but the effects of sin are still felt after the Flood as Noah and his children fall into sin. Even choosing to only preserve a righteous Man and his Family cannot remove the stains of Sin. This problem must be handled differently. In setting his rain-bow in the sky, God commits himself to finding a different way of dealing with the problem of Sin that restores rather than destroys his Creation.

Lesson

To set the story, we should start with a brief update on the state of humanity, and our introduction to the figure of Noah: read Genesis 6.5-13. Pay particular attention to how the author describes God’s response to the wickedness of Man.

Human sin remains and has impacted everything: ‘every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually’. God, however, does not respond in the anger and wrath of which the ‘Old Testament’ God is so often maligned (even by ancient writers like Marcion and certain gnostic texts). Instead, he is grieved by the besmirching of his created masterpiece, as we may be saddened by the fading/soiling/falling apart of our own creations (be they art, carpentry, or decorating). It is with great sadness that he chooses to burn his tattered masterpiece and haul his rusted creation to the dump, but he chooses Noah to save.

We must carefully separate 6.8 from 6.9: there is no indication that God chose Noah because of the righteousness mentioned in 6.9. The word translated by the ESV as ‘favor’ is grace: God chose to preserve Noah (and the animals of his Creation as they too enter the ark), and to use him and his family to preserve a remnant of his Creation which he could eventually restore.

God then provides instructions to Noah for the ark’s design, construction, and loading. If the narrative isn’t familiar to you, it’s definitely worth reading (see Genesis 6.14-8.19). For those too familiar with the story, we can take a lesson from this: God was perfectly capable of creating an ark, loading it with creatures (or creating new ones), and packing any human he wanted inside. God, however, tends not to work apart from his creation: humans are his image (his icons/idols/stewards) on earth, and he chooses to work with them rather than apart from them. We will see this throughout the remainder of the Old Testament (and the New), where God uses his Creation to bless the world and solve its problems.

Noah does all that God commanded him: building the giant box and loading it with two (or seven) of each creature. God closes the door, and the rains begin, enduring forty days during which the separation of the waters effected on the second day of Creation (Genesis 1.6-8) was undone. Life would be destroyed because of its wickedness, and the world would be reset to the chaotic, primordial waters before the Creation. Eventually, Noah and his family (and a likely large number of disgruntled and rather seasick animals) emerge from the ark. Had evil now been erased? Was wickedness been wiped away? Let’s read Genesis 8.20-9.17.

The flood waters have failed to cleanse the world of wickedness. Noah built an alter (one imagines, of gratitude), and as the water-logged billowing clouds of smoke into the heavens, God came to Noah and spoke to him. He made a covenant (i.e., a promise) to never seek the complete destruction of mankind even though sin and evil had so corrupted the human heart. God would find another way to restore this relationship. The rainbow across the sky would serve as a reminder and signifier of this promise (much as a wedding band serves as a reminder of one’s wedding vows), but also as a persevering condemnation: that mankind has been and continues to be so corrupted as to merit destruction by flood. But, God would show mercy. This is particularly clear in the next section, Genesis 9.18-29, where soon the favored figure of Noah is lying naked and drunk, and one of his sons was guilty of other shameful misbehaviors. The world (and humans) has not been fixed.

Nevertheless, God has not given up on them. This is what the rainbow is all about: God is choosing to continue engaging in human affairs despite human nature. He thus re-establishes humans with the commission he had given on the Sixth Day: fill the earth with more images of God (i.e., humans) and rule the world justly and wisely.

Reflections

God reacts to human sin with grief and sorrow. It is a destruction of his priceless masterpiece, the willful self-harm that a parent cannot bear. Why do you do this to yourself? Why wreck this Beauty that God has created? Perhaps it would have been better to never have created children? To let the masterpiece burn in flames? We could turn to a new project…new children… But that is not how God behaves: his love is so vast that in the rebellion of Man — their disobedience and self-harm — he continues to pursue his beloved child, to extricate them from their wickedness. He has committed to not abandon his children, even as his children turn their backs on him.

It is only a few generations later that the Tower of Babel is constructed — a structure resembling the ziggurats of Sumer — where people seek equality with God (i.e., wanting to place themselves in that position of power and authority) as Adam and Eve did in the Garden. 

The flood narrative will provide a potent symbolic theme which will recur through the rest of the Bible. The image of being saved by God through water will recur in the Exodus, the entry in Canaan, and in instances of healing (e.g., Naaman in 2 Kings 5). In the New Testament, the floodwaters are tied to the waters of baptism: reminding Christians of their own salvation, rescued, baptized, and saved in the ‘ark’ of Jesus.