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 ⁹ This is the account of Noah.
      Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God. ¹⁰ Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.

 ¹¹ Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. ¹² God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. ¹³ So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. ¹⁴ So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. ¹⁵ This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. ¹⁶ Make a roof for it and finish the ark to within 18 inches of the top. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks. ¹⁷ I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. ¹⁸ But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you. ¹⁹ You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. ²⁰ Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. ²¹ You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.”

 ²² Noah did everything just as God commanded him.

Righteousness is believing God (Genesis 15:6) and obeying Him (Deut. 6:25).  Noah was righteous.  Of all the people descended from Adam by this time, Noah believed God and obeyed Him.

Notice that Noah had three sons.  They were born some time after Noah was 500 years old (Gen. 5:32), but before he was 600 years old (Gen. 7:6).  Noah was 480 when God first formed his plan to destroy mankind (Gen. 6:3).  This means his sons were born more than 20 years after God’s plan formed, but were adult when the flood came (Genesis 7:13).  Given Noah’s life as a comforter for his first 500 years (Gen. 5:28), it is possible that Shem, Ham, and Japheth were his only children, being born only after God realized he would be changing Noah’s role. As for Shem, Ham, and Japheth, it is likely that they had no children yet (because they did not bring them onto the ark), but that is not certain.

 ¹¹ Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence.

During this last 500 years or more, Noah had a very unique role within the violence of this world, as recorded in Genesis 5…

 ²⁸ When Lamech had lived 182 years, he had a son. ²⁹ He named him Noah and said, “He will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the LORD has cursed.” ³⁰ After Noah was born, Lamech lived 595 years and had other sons and daughters. ³¹ Altogether, Lamech lived 777 years, and then he died.

Interestingly, Lamech died when Noah was 595 years old when his father died… 5 years before the flood.  It makes me wonder if God approached Noah before Lamech’s death or after it.

¹² God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways.

God had cursed the soil that he forced man to work.  Apparently, they cursed Him in return.  All of them.  Wait.  All?  No, not all…

⁹ This is the account of Noah.
      Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God.

And so we see within the flood story, our first encounter with the word all, and it doesn’t really literally all.  Similarly, the word for earth.  According to Strong’s, the word used for earth is eretz and it means, ”the earth at large” or “the land”.  It is often used to refer to local regions of land in various contexts, such as a country or field, though it can mean the world.  A lesser used word for earth in the Flood narrative is adamah, and it means the soil.  It is also used to mean country, the earth, or the ground in general.  Adamah is used in the Hebrew prayer over vegetables.  In context, it would seem that eretz is a reference to the cursed soil being farmed; adamah seems to refer to the region itself, cursed or otherwise.  Both refer to where “mankind” was living.

Remember that “mankind” refers specifically to Adam’s descendants, and not the other people for whom archaeological evidence proves existed at the time throughout the world.  It is why God’s first pronouncement of destruction is in terms of mankind, and not the planet…

³ Then the LORD said, “My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal ; his days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

It was Adam’s descendants that were to be destroyed, not the rest of mankind.

⁷ So the LORD said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them.”

In other words, God was confining his plans to the amount of the earth necessary to destroy Adam’s descendants.  This would also destroy the animals and birds within that region as well, but so be it.

So back that word “all” in verse 12.  “All” would seem to mean “all except Noah, his sons, and their wives.”  So, why use the word “all”, when God clearly didn’t mean “all”?  Such a question is a trap.  God said to observe the sabbath and keep it holy, but He healed on the sabbath.  The holy men of Jesus’ time only saw a prophet breaking a commandment; Jesus was demonstrating that the commandment, though worded absolutely, was intended to keep the day holy.  Refusing to rescue or heal someone on the sabbath actually mars the day more than working it does.  And so Jesus healed on the sabbath.  In similar fashion, God’s intention in killing “all” mankind was to rid the earth of their evil.  Rescuing Noah and his family still accomplishes that.  It would seem then that we have an interesting guideline for interpreting scripture… absolute rules have exceptions.  But outside those exceptions, we are to treat them as absolute.  Hence the absolute wording.  Hence the exceptions.

Therefore, where we see “the earth” in the Flood narrative, it means “the region with Adam’s descendants”… they are separate from the rest of the world; where we see “all men”, it means “all people, except for the righteous.”  However, for simplicity, the narrative treats this region as if it were the all the world (it is all the world that counts at this point); and it treats Noah and his family as if they are not part of “all people”… they are separate from the rest of Adam’s descendents.  Beyond this, there is no need to criticize the scripture for it, no need to reject it, and no need to determine what the “real” literal interpretation is.  Such arguments are traps.  We need only realize what the scripture is saying, and proceed.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 13th, 2010 at 7:36 am and is filed under Bible Commentary, The Flood. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.