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,1 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.2 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,3 its breadth 50 cubits, and its height 30 cubits. 16 Make a roof4 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. 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.
Section Overview
One of the distinctive features of Israel’s God is his propensity to announce ahead of time his great works, both of salvation and of judgment. As Amos 3:7 says,
The Lord God does nothing
without revealing his secret
to his servants the prophets. (cf. Gen. 18:17)
Unlike the gods of the ancient Near East, who were capricious and acted on a whim, the Lord has a purpose and plan from the beginning that he will carry out, for his own glory and for the good of his people. These two things are connected: as God announces his works ahead of time, humans may acknowledge that these are the Lord’s work, not merely random chance events. When the work is one of judgment, people may have the opportunity to repent and be saved out of the coming judgment; when it is one of salvation, people may have their faith in God’s power and goodness increased.
Israel will have its own formative moment of judgment and salvation involving water at the exodus, when God drowns the Egyptians at the Red Sea and brings his people safely through (cf. Exodus 12–14). But even that mighty work is only a faint echo of the flood, when God brings watery judgment on almost the whole world, delivering only one family through that trial.
Other ancient Near Eastern societies had their own flood narratives, with similarities and differences to the biblical account.115 This is as one would expect, as memories of such a catastrophic ancient historical event would have tended to be preserved, in forms that cohered with and revealed a culture’s worldview. The differences between the stories are often more significant than the similarities, since they highlight the uniqueness of Israel’s (inspired) version. For example, the boat that Utnapishtim—the Noah figure in the Gilgamesh epic—is instructed to build is a perfect cube; this is the ideal form for a sacred place in the ancient Near East (compare the Most Holy Place of the tabernacle and the temple) but hardly ideal for an actual boat. In comparison Noah’s ark, although massive, is more nautically appropriate.
In the Akkadian Atrahasis epic116 the cause of the flood is human overpopulation, which leads to the gods’ being troubled by noise pollution, while in the biblical account it is caused by human sin. Moreover, in the Akkadian account it is an accident that any humans survive, due to differences of opinion among the gods, while the gods themselves are terrified by the forces they have unleashed, cowering before them like dogs. However, it is just as well for the gods that Utnapishtim survives, since they are dependent upon the sacrifices offered by humans for their food, and so they gather like hungry flies around Utnapishtim’s altar. These accounts have a very different worldview than that of the biblical picture, which shows a single God who sovereignly executes his plan of judgment and salvation by unleashing the mighty forces of nature according to his will and to accomplish his own purposes.
Section Outline
IV. The Family History of Noah (6:9–9:29)
A. Announcement of Judgment and Salvation (6:9–22)
Response
There were (broadly speaking) two kinds of covenants in the ancient world: (1) suzerainty treaties, in which a great king (a suzerain) entered into a relationship with a lesser king (a vassal), promising protection and reward in return for future obedience to the specified terms of the covenant, and (2) covenants of grant, which were unconditional promises of favor, often based on past acts of faithfulness.129 The Sinai covenant is often classified as belonging to the former category, while the Noahic covenant, like the Abrahamic and Davidic covenants, is generally regarded as being more like a covenant of grant. That is, it reflects a reward for Noah’s past history of serving and walking with God and is not dependent upon his future obedience.
These distinctions are helpful in focusing our attention on some crucial differences between different biblical covenants. Yet covenants—even of the suzerainty variety—always have an inherently gracious quality in that there is nothing forcing the great king into making this commitment to the vassal. Moreover, covenants of grant may sound entirely unconditional, but that does not mean that future obedience is unimportant if the grant is to be maintained.130 God owes Noah nothing in return for his years of walking with him, which is simply what humanity owes God, and God could equally easily have preserved Noah by taking him out of the world, as with Enoch. Yet through this covenant God promises that he will preserve not only Noah’s life but the lives of his family as well. His righteousness brings blessings not only to himself but to his entire household, as is typical of biblical covenants.
It is in this way that the passage points us forward to Christ. The Father has made a covenant with the Son that, through the righteousness of Christ, salvation will come to all those who are in him. Jesus has fulfilled the conditions of the covenant through his perfect righteousness of life and his self-offering as the blameless Lamb of God, whose death atones for our sins. In him God accomplishes the complete new creation that the flood was never able to establish, pouring out his Spirit on believers and their children (Acts 2:39). To paraphrase the writer to the Hebrews, the blood and water that flows from Jesus’ side on the cross speaks a better word than that of the water that fell from heaven in Noah’s days (Heb. 12:24). We who have benefitted from this new covenant should respond as Noah did, with gratitude-infused obedience to all that God has commanded us through his Word.Genesis 6:9–22