Genesis 7
the original world, erased
This, again, is a most and well agèd tale. So old that it has a title in two languages - Hebrew and Greek - rather than a strap-line. A title such as the 20th century Jewish ‘Holocaust’ or the Irish ‘An Gorta Mór’. In each case half the world population of a race was destroyed by an event that was not in any way accidental. In chapter 7 of Genesis we are faced with a horrific event that has gained a name. In the Hebrew Bible it is called ‘ha-mobbul’; this is likely an ancient Assyrian word with a meaning related to ‘destroy’ or ‘destruction’. The Assyrian root places the event north of Israel towards the ancient lands of Mesopotamia, or modern Iraq.
In the third century BC LXX translation, which uses the same language as the New Testament, the title is ‘kataclysmos’ (or ‘cataclysm) meaning ‘an outpouring upon’. In both the Hebrew and the Greek the word is only used once. This is much the same as how the ark of Noah and the basket of baby Moses are the only places where the ancient word ‘thibin’ for ark is used, and the Egyptian root of the word places it from the mouth of Moses, himself raised in Egypt.
The fingerprints of God in the Bible are ever the fingerprints of Man in a place and a time. The Bible is not a magically appearing book as is claimed for the Quran or the Book of Mormon. We are not required to ignore or contradict good scholarship. Of course we can debate and discuss the implications and the gaps in our knowledge, for each chapter of the Bible was written by a certain man for a particular audience. It is our role to understand what this means for us and in our day.
We must, however, discard the childish simplicities of this mass-death event, the Flood, even if it is also as startlingly one of particular salvation. Noah and his family survive, due to his effective and practical faith in a long direction, but everyone around drowned, together with cats, dogs, camels, horses, donkeys, rats, mice, birds, and many more insects.
What questions should we ask and which ones are not worth the effort. Questions of physical capacity, Mount Ararat, etc. are of little consequence to our actual lived lives. Even if we tackle whether this was a global or local destruction, we face certain ultimate questions which should trouble us greatly. Again, we can locate the centre of each question in such a way that it doesn’t actually affect us as individuals or groups:
Is God really an emotional firecracker who flip-flops on his most profound decisions?
Can we repatriate the rainbow symbol as our flag?
Has God mellowed progressively in the intervening years?
Fascinating though these debates can be, even filling hours and hours of YouTube debate and podcasts, they avoid the core feature behind the story. We read,
“YHWH said to Noah, … ‘I see you are just in this generation …
“Noah did all that YHWH had commanded …”
And it is here that the rubber, IMHO, meets the road. For there are many who say, ‘just do this’ or ‘just believe that’ and you shall be saved. But, this is not the clear message throughout the scriptures. Noah and his extended family were saved because he was seen by God to live as required by God, and because he was obedient to the will of God. This is all, and this is everything.
But, what is the will of God? This can be taken negatively and positively. It is not doing what we want to do, but a matter of bending our will from our internal north, for we have lost that true North. We are like an old compass I once had: it pointed anywhere but true North! Indeed, if you feel an urge to do so, this is often directed deliberately against the will of God. Fot, if we feel an urge to act against our personal will this can be an indication that we are being pulled by an outside force towards true North, by the will of God.
This may seem perverse, but it is we that are perverse, for perverse means a tendency to point or go in the wrong way. And, as we read on in the Bible we see this fundamental rule repeated again and again. There are some notable exceptions of people who are not recorded as showing this tendency (Ruth, Joshua, Enoch, Samuel, Mary) but these are exceptional people. For the rest of us the truth is that we live with a bent towards going our own way and not that of the will of God.
Even if we know the right way to live, we deliberately disobey. Eve knows she is not to eat the forbidden fruit, but she does. David knows he should be at war, but he spends his time ogling naked women. Pilate knows that Jesus is innocent as a lamb, but he has him brutally murdered to cover his own back.
There are moral questions that we must face. Does God kill the innocent along with the guilty? At face value, yes. Perhaps the linked question is whether God judges everyone equally. The answer is again, plainly yes. I shall stand before the bar of God’s justice, as shall you, Joseph Stalin, and Mother Teresa. This does not imply that there is somehow some change of the rule book between Moses and Christ, or even between Christ and the Apostle Paul. God is just, and his justice ever and unwaveringly measures all on the same scale.
What then of the dead livestock and wild animals who died in the flood? We are not told whether our current obsession with pet dogs and cats means to them. Each is to be judged according to his lights and by his master. Eve will be judged by the same scale as Mary Magdalene, which is right for they are equally human and imaged to become like God. We humans are the servants of God by design, and we shall therefore be judged by the God who stamped this design in each of us by main force.
It is a feature of modern day mankind that we wish to be proved right by the powers of our own will. This has long been known as the British Heresy, named after the fifth century British-born theologian, Pelagius. Pelagianism is the belief that people should live more upright lives, and act morally, by deciding to live better lives. I think this is tough on us Brits, for it applies equally to much of the Modern Anglo-Saxon world in the Americas, Australasia and elsewhere touched by British rule. But it has had powerful religious outgrowths such as the Watchtower Society and neo-Calvinists who practice a faith of rule-following.
The problem is that no set of rules can save you. It is only by grace you are saved, that is, by God’s powerful provision. This was true of Noah as it was of Moses. It helps not to start a list of who in the Bible is or is not saved, for we are told that by the measure we assess others we too shall be assessed. If I judge anyone I usurp the Judge, who will turn my thoughts towards me. The powerful lesson of the life of Noah is in his sticking to living a godly life, insisting his family do likewise, and obeying the voice of God in his life, and all of these for a period of many scores of years.
Pope John XXIII (‘the twenty-third’) kept a daily journal throughout his adult years. He reflected on 22nd August 1900 about the need to ensure purity if he was to fulfill his call to the priesthood. He wrote,
“I renew my resolution to make myself really holy. Oh most loving heart of Jesus, my Teacher, my wish is to love you as you desire, and to be filled with your Spirit. I resolve: (i) to have the spirit of union with Jesus. (ii) always to remember the saying age quod agis (‘pay attention to what you are doing’). (iii) to be most careful in modesty with my glances, words, etc., for we all know what this means (iv) and to be tranquil, calm, cheerful, good mannered, simple, cordial, sincere, and brave.”
This is an excellent prayerful request, and we all would be the better of for saying this at the start of each day. We may never become a Pope, Angelo Roncalli never intended to become so either, but it was this daily course-setting which ensured that what God had begun in his life he would also bring to completion.
This must be balanced by a comprehensive reflection of the life lived, preferably towards the end of the day. Benedictine monks say Psalm 51 (Hebrew) / 50 (Greek) early day while it is yet dusk,
“Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions …
“Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me …
“Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering: then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar.”
Finally, living in the presence of God as Noah did does not necessarily provide you with any extra human privileges. The rich, powerful, famous and their ilk will continue to accumulate human wealth and privileges; such is their wont. But, in a way most profound and beyond human comparison you shall be blessed and counted among the blessed. It is a narrow road, and few are there who find it - and fewer still who can stick with it in our demoralised and demoralising society.
But, look away, look out, and look up! As Jesus said, the great holy faithful of the past are not dead, for God is not the God of the dead but of the living. The author of The Letter to the Hebrews reminds us to think on Noah, as well as Abel, Enoch, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab and many more who have lived the same life of faith, hope and love as John XXIII also did not so long before us. Let us take heart as we roll up our spiritual sleeves and muck in with the daily grind of the life God has given us, encouraged by,
“Such a great cloud of witnesses who surround us!”