Noah. And the flood.

 

I have been contemplating writing about the flood for quite some time. Recently, I actually sat down and began, but with a slight twist. That twist is Noah. I want to look at Noah (and the flood) in Genesis, then at what is said about him in the rest of the Bible. You see, it turns out Noah is mentioned quite often in the Bible. I believe that if Scripture mentions something just one time, it is important; if it mentions that something more than once, yea multiple times, God wants us to really pay attention to it. This is similar to everything Jesus said should be heeded; but when he introduces a statement with Verily, he really wants you to listen; and when he says Verily, verily, he really, REALLY wants you to listen!

If this is a correct way to look at biblical things, Noah is rather important. He is mentioned by name 39 times in Genesis in 6 chapters (chapters 5 through 10). He is also mentioned 12 other times in the rest of the Bible: 4 times in the Old Testament, 8 times in the New. He is therefore a key figure in Genesis, and the flood is a pivotal event in human history. That’s why I am calling this series: Noah. And the Flood.

Let’s begin with Genesis 5.

1 This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; 2 Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.

There is a subtle word play here. Adam can be both an individual man and mankind: v 1 is the individual, the first man; v 2 is the whole race, male and female. This chapter is the genealogy of the righteous line of Adam through Seth (chapter 4 was the line of Cain). We will skip down to v 28 because we are focusing on Noah.

28  And Lamech lived an hundred eighty and two years, and begat a son:
29  And he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed.
30  And Lamech lived after he begat Noah five hundred ninety and five years, and begat sons and daughters:
31  And all the days of Lamech were seven hundred seventy and seven years: and he died.
32  And Noah was five hundred years old: and Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

Noah is introduced. He was the 10th generation from Adam. Ten is a significant number in Scripture. It “is one of the perfect numbers, and signifies…completeness. It implies that nothing is wanting; that the number and order are perfect; that the whole cycle is complete.” (Number in Scripture, E.W. Bullinger). This is the line of the righteous from Adam to Noah, from the Creation to the Flood.

One thing that will be noticed right away, both throughout the chapter as a whole and verses 28-32 in particular, is the age of the men mentioned. For example, v 31 says Lamech lived to be 777 years old! And when Noah is introduced he is 500 years old! 

I know that there are many who mock the flood and deride those who believe it to be a historical event. I am fully aware that they also stumble over the ages of the patriarchs in ch 5. Do I accept these ages as literal? Yes. Why?? I accept the Bible. How do I explain it? Well, the Bible says so! But then:

1) God made man to live forever, and earth to sustain him. Both the people and the environment were healthy, so they lived long lives. Death and all it’s allies took a few generations to fully permeate the race. Despite their lengthy lives, they all have the same testimony, and he died.

2) We tend to view the past as if everything was just like it is now. In our experience, a 100 year old man is weak, frail, sickly. So 500 years is out of the question, but if it were to happen, what a miserable existence that would be. But with both a healthy body and environment, such need not be the case. At 500 Noah was basically middle aged!!

3) Something significant happened as a result of the flood; ch 11 shows that the length of life began to shorten drastically and rather quickly after the flood. I can’t prove it, but I think it was the result of an environmental impact of the flood.

Noah’s wife is mentioned five times in chapters 6-10, yet we are never told her name. An old Jewish tradition says that Noah’s wife was Naamah, sister of Tubalcain, daughter of the Lamech in Cain’s line (4:22). Why? It was an attempt to explain why Naamah is mentioned. Their reasoning went like this:

“The extraneous information about the family of Cain, and the missing information about that of Noah raise a question. If all the descendants of Cain perished in the flood, why do we need to know their names? In contrast, the wife of Noah is the mother of mankind - a second Eve - mother of all who live - surely, we, her descendants, should learn who she was and why she deserved to be saved from the curse of the flood.

If the wife of Noah had no merit in her own right , why mention her at all, since she had no role in the life of Noah after the flood. Noah is unique among all those mentioned in the genealogical lists from Adam to Abraham. Of Noah it is not said "and he begat sons and daughters" after the births of Shem, Ham and Japheth, therefore the Torah wrote of them "these three are the sons of Noah and from these did all the earth spread out" (Gen. 9:19) .

The identification of Na'amah, a descendant of Cain, as the wife of Noah, solves the structural flaw in Genesis. The family of Cain is described at length in order to reveal the identity of the second mother of mankind. Her name indicates that she deserved to survive.”

There are two obvious problems with this: (1) Scripture doesn’t say this, it is conjecture; (2) Na’amah is only the 8th generation, while Noah is the 10th (although when you are living 500+ years, that may not be much of an issue). We don’t know for sure the name of Noah’s wife, nevertheless I am drawn to the explanation.

Noah is the 10th generation in the line of the righteous. We can conclude from this that he was a righteous man. This genealogy is too detailed and specific to be allegory, fable, or myth; their ages are all different, I believe this indicates Moses intended for us to understand this literally. This matter of detail will also help us in our understanding of the flood as we shall see in the chapters to come. 

This is the introduction for chapters 6-9. This is clearly something God wants us to pay attention to.

Next: Noah. And the flood. Genesis 6