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As I have written in Jesus, the Father’s Proxy on Earth, a Christophany is the appearance of Jesus on Earth, predating his life in the Gospels.  I document a few, and go into great detail about my favorite Christophany in Jesus on Mount Sinai, where Jesus was meeting was Moses in his tent, and Moses begged to see Him in His glory.  So, Jesus showed him His glory from behind on Mount Sinai… and then showed Himself to Moses from the front in the Gospels, on the Mount of Transfiguration.  It is that example that firmly establishes that inter-workings between Jesus’ ministry in the Gospel is intertwined with His work in the Old Testament.  Another example, is the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, where Jesus scouted it out for the Father, and then the Father destroyed with fireballs from Heaven… just like the Father will do upon the world at large in the Book of Revelation.  But you can read about those examples in the links above if you want.  My point is that when you look for the connections between important events in Genesis and Jesus, they are there to find.  In fact, in Genesis 7:4 - When the Father Judges, Jesus Grieves, we have already discussed one, where Jesus grieved over the creation of Adam’s descendants, finding only Noah to be righteous.  Well, I believe the Flood foreshadows the life of Jesus in some very interesting ways, that go beyond mere appearance, and explanation of God’s personality.

⁴ Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.

Forty days and nights.  What else takes forty days and forty nights in scripture?  According to Genesis 50:2-3…

² Then Joseph directed the physicians in his service to embalm his father Israel. So the physicians embalmed him, ³ taking a full forty days, for that was the time required for embalming. And the Egyptians mourned for him seventy days.

What does embalming have to do with the flood?  Embalming is described at http://www.answers.com/topic/embalming.  Here is an excerpt (emphasis mine)…

Although the embalming methods of the Egyptians varied according to the wealth and rank of the deceased, bodies were usually immersed for several weeks in a soda solution after the body cavities had been filled with resins and spices.

40 days is almost 6 weeks, which is consistent.  Well, The Flood was certainly an immersion of the “world” (or at least the region inhabited by Adam’s descendants).  But, what was preserved by it? Adam’s body was preserved so to speak, through Noah and his family!  So indeed, the Flood was an embalming of sorts, making a duration of 40 days and nights quite appropriate, according to Egyptian ritual.

I am fascinated that The Flood would line up with Egyptian ritual so well.  Now, some skeptics would use this as proof that Moses was repeating a myth he had heard growing up under Egypt’s culture.  Isn’t it as likely that stories of the flood, including its duration, found its ways into Egyptian culture over the succeeding centuries?

What other significance there is to 40 days and nights in scripture.

Well, Moses spent 40 days and night on Mount Sinai before God gave him the tablets.  It is described in Exodus 24…

 ¹⁵ When Moses went up on the mountain, the cloud covered it, ¹⁶ and the glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai. For six days the cloud covered the mountain, and on the seventh day the LORD called to Moses from within the cloud. ¹⁷ To the Israelites the glory of the LORD looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain. ¹⁸ Then Moses entered the cloud as he went on up the mountain. And he stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights.

If you have read Jesus on Mount Sinai, this might seem a little familiar to you.  Recall Exodus 33:9-11a, when it would seem Jesus later hid in the cloud of the Holy Spirit, so He could talk to Moses in person…

And it came to pass, when Moses entered the tabernacle, that the pillar of cloud descended and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the LORD talked with Moses.  All the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the tabernacle door, and all the people rose and worshiped, each man in his tent door.  So the LORD spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.

It was in that tent where Moses asked to see God in His glory, and later in Exodus 34 when it would happen.  So, going up into a cloud upon Mount Sinai definitely suggests Jesus would be there with Moses to give him the tablets.  Perhaps Jesus made the first set of tablets by hand!  And when Moses broke them? He went back up into the mountain for another 40 days and nights.  First Moses had to chisel out two new stones for the tablets.  Genesis 34…

⁵ Then the LORD came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the LORD. ⁶ And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, ⁷ maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.”

He then spoke with Moses, had him write the words of the 10 commandments upon them himself.

 ²⁷ Then the LORD said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” ²⁸ Moses was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments.

Both times Moses went up onto the mountain for the stone tablets, he was there with Jesus for 40 days and 40 nights. (Notice that this is an example of God saying He would do something, then recording that His servant did it… I had a post on this, where God said he would bring an army victory, then the army attained victory, but I cannot find it right now. Argh…)

So, what is the connection between The Flood and Moses being on the mount 40 days and nights to receive God’s covenant?  For that, we sneak a peak at Genesis 9…

 ⁸ Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: ⁹ “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you ¹⁰ and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. ¹¹ I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

 ¹² And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: ¹³ I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. ¹⁴ Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, ¹⁵ I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. ¹⁶ Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”

 ¹⁷ So God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.”

In other words, through this “embalming” period, The Flood set the stage for God’s covenant with mankind.  Similarly, Moses’ 40 days and nights on the mountain set the stage for God’s covenant with the Israelites.  As the clouds cleared from The Flood, God’s sign of the Noahic covenant (a rainbow) emerged; as Moses cleared the cloud of the Holy Spirit enshrouding Mount Sinai, notice the similar sign in Exodus 34…

 ²⁹ When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the LORD. ³⁰ When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him. ³¹ But Moses called to them; so Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him, and he spoke to them. ³² Afterward all the Israelites came near him, and he gave them all the commands the LORD had given him on Mount Sinai.

And so we see that a period of 40 days has the significance of preserving a body within a cloud (e.g., rain cloud, Holy Spirit), the expelling of a body’s impurity through immersion (e.g., flood, embalming), and establishment of a covenant’s sign using light (e.g., rainbow, Moses’ shining face).

And these were just the first two references after the flood!  Let’s keep going…

In Numbers 13, Moses sent men to scout out Canaan…

 ¹ The LORD said to Moses, ² “Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites. From each ancestral tribe send one of its leaders.”

—

²⁵ At the end of forty days they returned from exploring the land.

Now, the men were too afraid to take over Canaan, even though it is quite clear that God would have given it to them right then and there.  Would he have immersed them, and led the Israelites to take over in His light?  I believe so, but here is what I know.  Due to their fear and disobedience, God punished the Israelites by keeping them in the desert.  As recorded in Numbers 14…

³³ Your children will be shepherds here for forty years, suffering for your unfaithfulness, until the last of your bodies lies in the desert. ³⁴ For forty years—one year for each of the forty days you explored the land—you will suffer for your sins and know what it is like to have me against you.’ ³⁵ I, the LORD, have spoken, and I will surely do these things to this whole wicked community, which has banded together against me. They will meet their end in this desert; here they will die.”

And so we God’s purification process turned against the Israelites.  Their 40 days of scouting could have been a new beginning for them, the purification of the land that God had for them.  Instead, it was Israel who needed purification, and so those 40 days became 40 years.  The immersion this time was not water, but the complete opposite of it… it was desert.  Instead of protecting the remnant in a cloud, there was not a cloud in the sky.  Instead of ending the 40 days with light, the light’s heat would pound on them mercilessly.  As for part of the body that survived this immersion of light, they would never forget it… the Jews still talk of it to this very day.

And lest you think God forgot the light at the end (of the tunnel, so to speak), let us jump ahead to Numbers 8…

 ¹ Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today, so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land that the LORD promised on oath to your forefathers. ² Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. ³ He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. ⁴ Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. ⁵ Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the LORD your God disciplines you.

In my next post, we will discuss Jesus’ own 40 days and nights in the desert.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 18th, 2010 at 9:47 am and is filed under Word Studies, Bible Commentary, The Flood, Walking with God. 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.