Genesis 6:9 – 7:24
9 These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. 10 And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
11 Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. 12 And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. 13 And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. 14 Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. [1]
As bad as our world is today, it has not sunk to the depths of depravity that God saw in the days of Noah. We read in 6:5, “5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”[2] It’s true that every part of our individual existence is tainted with sin. It’s true that believers are also at constant war against the world, the devil, and our own sin natures (Rom. 3:9-18). But it is not now true that “every intention” of the thoughts of every human being’s heart is “only evil continually.” Imagine an entire world full of nothing but Charles Manson’s or Jeffrey Epstein’s or Ted Bundy’s or Adolf Hitler’s. Everyone was always and only self-centered to the core. Every forming of their thoughts was only evil all the time.
It was a world of predators and schemers dominated by violent warrior-kings who snatched everything and everyone to feed the lust of their eyes. Every aspect of life – from marriage to commerce to government – was demonized. The social pressure to conform was such that the evil warrior-kings and their descendants were the superheroes of their putrid world. The numerous descendants of Godly Seth had simply given in and been absorbed into the demonized cesspool that was the pre-flood earth. Satan and his minions were determined to wipe out the line of the Promised Seed (3:15). So, God announced that, in 120 years, he was going to blot out life on earth (6:3). Only eight people would survive. “8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.” [3] So ends the second toledoth of Genesis.
THIRD TOLEDOTH
The third toledoth, or account, begins in 6:9 and runs through the end of chapter 9. It is the longest of the 10 sections in Genesis and is the centerpiece of primeval history. It’s the bridge between creation and the stories of the patriarchs. “It is key to understanding ourselves today because we see how a soul is saved from destruction and is instructed in the doctrine of salvation. And we also see what kind of man Noah was, because though Noah was exemplary throughout the flood, Noah’s behavior was disappointing after the deluge. The story actually ends on a lower note than it begins. Furthermore, the sin of Noah’s son Ham foretells the moral setting of the world into which Abraham was born and ultimately in which we live. It explains life.”[4] It shows that sin is a condition all humans carry – even righteous Noah and his family. The ending of the flood account creates a longing for a perfect garden-temple where sin has been thoroughly judged and eternally abolished.
Moses structures his flood account as a chiasm, dividing the story into two parts that turn upon a single sentence. Both halves are mirrors of one another in reverse order. The first half of the chiasm covers the 150-day rise of the flood and describes the de-creation of earth. Then comes the turning point: “But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark.”[5] Following 8:1, there are 150 days in which the waters begin to dry up and it serves as a sort of re-creation account. Moses’ literary structure is his way of signaling that this is no mere fable, but rather a historically and theologically important event in the life of humanity and the history of salvation.
This chiasm of de-creation and re-creation creates a deliberate parallel between Adam’s story and Noah’s. Noah is pictured as a kind of second Adam. He is the sole survivor who walks with God as Adam did. Both received promised blessings. Both were caretakers of the animal realm. Both father three sons. Both tend the soil. Both sin by the fruit of a plant. Both father a wicked son who is cursed by God. Adam’s conduct accounts for the state of the pre-flood world. Noah’s conduct accounts for the state of the post-flood world.[6]
In writing Genesis and Exodus, Moses couldn’t help but see the parallels between his life and these accounts of early mankind. The only other place the Hebrew word for ark is used is in Exodus 2:3, 5 where it describes the pitched basket of reeds into which Moses was placed to float down the Nile, escaping certain death. Both Noah and Moses experience salvation through an ark. Later in his life, Moses and the Israelites were again delivered from the waters of judgment as Pharaoh’s army was deluged by the Red Sea (Ex. 14:26-31).
That event was a type of Noah’s flood, preserving a people dedicated to serving God. Finally, like Noah, Moses received detailed instructions for a religious building project. “Noah had been given detailed instructions for the ark, even down to specifications regarding clean and unclean animals. These parallels suggest that Moses saw a comparison between the salvation in the ark of Noah during the forty days and forty nights of rain and the salvation in the presence of the tabernacle during the forty years in the wilderness.”[7]
NOAH VS. THE WORLD (9-12)
Moses begins the third account, “These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. 10 And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.” [8] Noah was righteous and blameless in the middle of an evil culture marked for annihilation. We have to read verse 9 in light of verse 8, “Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.” Some people read these verses as if Noah found favor with God because he was righteous and lived a blameless life. But to read it that way is to get it backward.
Verse 9 does not come before verse 8, nor is there even a connecting or causal participle between them, as if to say, “Noah found grace because he was righteous.” Actually, Noah’s righteousness was the product of his having found favor (grace) and is therefore the proof of that favor, not its basis.[9] Like Abraham after him, who “believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness,”[10] Noah trusted into God’s Promised Seed. Both went on to commit notorious sins, proving again that sin is a condition and grace does not produce perfection in this earthly life.
The fact that Noah’s blamelessness as a result his trust is made very clear by St Author of Hebrews in Heb. 11:7. “By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.”[11] Genesis 6:9 is the first mention of “righteousness” in the Bible. The biblical doctrine of imputed righteousness came before the flood. That he was “blameless in his generation” give us insight into his moral conduct in the surrounding demonized culture. Grace does matter in the lives of God’s people. It does produce holy fruit.
Unlike almost all of his Sethite ancestors, he could not be diverted, perverted, or indicted. He was the last flickering candle in the gathering pre-flood darkness. And like Enoch, he “walked with God.” Enoch and Noah were the only pre-flood patriarchs said to have walked with God. They experienced a taste of the intimacy and obedience that Adam and Eve knew when God walked with them in the garden-temple before the fall.
Surrounded by total corruption and violent blood lust (note the 3x repetition of “corrupt” in v. 12), Noah stood alone. Peter wrote that Noah was “a preacher of righteousness.” Noah proclaimed righteousness. Neither Moses nor Peter tell us exactly what his message was. Most likely he preached the same message Jonah preached: destruction is coming; repent and trust into the Promised Seed. Noah’s message would remind us of any of God’s prophets. It was the great biblical Two Step: repent and trust. Jesus heralded, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”[12] Noah’s preaching would not have been popular to a people so given over to their own wants and demands. Peter added that God “preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness.” Noah and his family would not have survived otherwise.
ARK-KINGDOM (6:13-22)
Having established Noah in his context, Moses turns to how God will preserve through Noah the line of the Promised Seed from the coming judgment:
13 And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. 14 Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. 15 This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark 300 cubits, its breadth 50 cubits, and its height 30 cubits. 16 Make a roof for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above, and set the door of the ark in its side. Make it with lower, second, and third decks. 17 For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die. [13]
When began constructing a 450-foot keel – one and half football fields long – his neighbors must have thought this man was completely crazy. We don’t know where Noah lived. But even IF he lived by the sea (and likely he did not), how was he going to get this giant vessel into the water? The ark was greater than the size of any ancient sailing vessel. In fact, it was not until 1858 that a vessel of greater length was constructed: the Great Eastern (692 by 83 by 30 feet).[14] As best we can tell, the ark was shaped like a shallow box topped with a roof, with an eighteen-inch space under the roof interrupted only by the roof supports, so light could get into the vessel from every side. Noah had more than enough work to keep him and his three sons occupied for a century of building. Remember, there were no trucks, no chain saws, and no cranes.[15] What a sight this crazy construction project must have been!
All Noah had to sustain him through the back-breaking labor and the constant derision of his neighbors was the bare word of God. God made a promise – a covenant – with Noah, given in abbreviated form in verses 18-21 as part of God’s instructions for the ark:
18 But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. 19 And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female. 20 Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground, according to its kind, two of every sort shall come in to you to keep them alive. 21 Also take with you every sort of food that is eaten, and store it up. It shall serve as food for you and for them.” 22 Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him. [16]
The details of God’s covenant with Noah come in 9:1-17. But certainly, Noah knew as his project began that he would be the bearer of God’s promise for the saving Seed in a new age. What sustained Noah through 100 years of intense labor and constant harassment from everyone else in the world? The bare promise of God. God’s word of salvation. And we know Noah believed God because he obeyed God. Verse 22 says, “Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.” Three more times in chapter 7, Moses will repeat this refrain that Noah did everything God told him to do (7:5, 9, 16). Calvin noted the detailed obedience of Noah:
For we ought to consider the assaults of temptation to which [he] was continually exposed. First, the …size of the ark might have overwhelmed all his senses, so as to prevent him from raising a finger to begin the work. …reflect on the multitude of trees to be felled, on the great labor of conveying them, and the difficulty of joining them together. The matter was also long deferred; for the holy man was required to be engaged more than a hundred years in …labor. …Besides, it was scarcely to be hoped, that the men of his age would patiently bear with him…. But this was what chiefly tended to inflame their rage, that he, by building an asylum for himself, virtually doomed them all to destruction.[17]
Noah completed the ark and brought in all the animals and his family as God commanded. Now we have some idea of what it means to be righteous. The righteous person rests everything on the bare word of God and obeys it. We also glimpse what it means to walk with God, because to walk with him is not a stroll. It means to go the same way in obedience— in spite of the world, the flesh, and the devil. What is the person God saves like? He trusts in God’s promise to him, and it is counted as righteousness. As a righteous man he lives not a perfect but a blameless life. He walks with God. And everything about him is steeped in trust of God’s perfect word.[18] The most important thing to know about his obedient righteousness is that Noah was a type of Christ, whose righteousness secures eternal salvation for his people into an eternal kingdom.[19] The ark itself is a type of kingdom. During the flood, it becomes the kingdom of God on earth – sinners saved from eternal destruction they deserved as much as those perishing outside.
THE FLOOD (7:1-24)
The first 4 verses of chapter 7 record God’s final words to Noah a week before the flood. Then, verses 5-16 restate in more detail what Moses wrote at the end of chapter 6. All of the short paragraphs that follow expand on what God has already told Noah, “Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate ….”[20] This is God’s promise the Family Noah will come safely through the voyage. It looks forward to the sacrificial system of the Mosaic Law and points out that the Noah Family would carry their sin into the new world. It suggests God’s judgment on sin is only partial because nothing less than complete death and rebirth will cure the condition of sin. In 7:4, God promises total blotting out (washing with water) of all earthly life outside the ark-kingdom. Lastly, verse 16 reveals, “And the LORD shut him in.” The single heavy, pitched-over door of the ark was locked by God himself.[21]
Then, down came the rain. Verses 17-20 read:
17 The flood continued forty days on the earth. The waters increased and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. 18 The waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters. 19 And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. 20 The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. [22]
Moses’ words paint a picture of a violent upheaval of earth and sky. In verse 11, Moses wrote, “on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.”[23] The unleashing and merging of these two water sources was a reversal of the separation of the waters above and below on creation day two (cf. 1:6, 7).[24] The repetitions in verses 17-20 of “waters” (5x), “increased” (2x), “rose”( 3x, NIV), and “greatly” (3x in the Hebrew) show us something of Noah’s wild ride and the ferocity of God’s judgment on the demonized world. In this supernatural storm, only the coffin-like ark-kingdom survived. Moses recounts, “22 Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. 23 He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. They were blotted out from the earth.”[25]
Both the language of the Old Testament and the testimony of the New Testament writers seem to make it plain that this deluge was universal, world-wide. As God’s creation of earth was not partial, so his de-creation was not partial. I have great skepticism of scientific/observational conclusions that contradict God’s revelation. I have even greater skepticism over the so-called creation scientists who purport to “prove” the word of God is true using the same methods of scientific naturalism as their contradicting peers. The question always remains: Do we believe the self-attesting Word of God to be the revelation of all truth, or do we rest upon observation to help us “prove” to ourselves God’s Word is true? Noah trusted the bare Word of God when not a drop of rain was felt. For 100 years, not one human’s observation could prove a flood was coming. But God revealed otherwise, and Noah trusted God’s revelation over Noah’s own observation.
As the waters rose, we can imagine there were numerous people shaking their fists at the sky and complaining that their gods and their shamans had given them no warning of this doom even though Noah had been preaching repentance and trust into the Promised Seed for over 100 years. Consider the picture John paints in Revelation 9 of God’s judgments in our own day:
The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, 21 nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts. [26]
Today, through his perfectly lived life and sacrificial death, the resurrected, ascended, and glorified Jesus has provided an ark of salvation from the coming judgment. He has warned explicitly of the coming judgment; and so, have his apostles and prophets (cf. Matthew 24: 36-44 and 2 Peter). As do they, so do I. Only those who enter the ark through trust into Christ’s perfect performance and redeeming blood will be saved. This has been the message in these last days— for more than two thousand years.[27]
So writes Peter:
5 For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, 6 and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. 7 But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. [28]
[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ge 6:9–14.
[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ge 6:5.
[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ge 6:8.
[4] Hughes, 131-132. Kindle Edition.
[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ge 8:1.
[6] Hughes, 133. Kindle Edition.
[7] Id.
[8] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ge 6:9–10.
[9] Boice, 320.
[10] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ge 15:6.
[11] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Heb 11:7.
[12] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mk 1:15–16.
[13] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ge 6:13–17.
[14] Boice, 327.
[15] Hughes, 135. Kindle Edition.
[16] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ge 6:18–22.
[17] John Calvin, Genesis, electronic ed., Calvin’s Commentaries, 1998, Ge 6:22.
[18] Hughes, 137. Kindle Edition.
[19] Meredith G. Kline, Genesis: A New Commentary, ed. Jonathan G. Kline (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2016), 34.
[20] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ge 7:2.
[21] Hughes, 138. Kindle Edition.
[22] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ge 7:17–20.
[23] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ge 7:11.
[24] Kline, 37.
[25] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ge 7:22–23.
[26] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Re 9:20–21.
[27] Hughes, 139. Kindle Edition.
[28] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 2 Pe 3:5–7.
