Genesis 6:5–8:22

Original Meaning

Length of Flood (7:4) and Length of Stay in Ark

WHILE THE MESOPOTAMIAN sources indicate that the Flood lasted seven days, the biblical text sets the period of rain at forty days and nights. Beyond that, however, the text recognizes that the rain is only the beginning. The one hundred fifty days that the water prevails (7:24) and the additional one hundred fifty that it recedes (8:5), added to several periods of waiting (7:10; 8:6, 10, 12), add up to just over a year spent on the ark.15

Bridging Contexts

TRADITIONS. Growing up in the church we accumulate various traditions about the Flood. It is not uncommon for Christians to believe some of the following:

• It took Noah and his sons 120 years to build the ark.

• Noah preached to his neighbors (or even to all the lands) during this time to urge them to repent.

• Noah and his sons were ridiculed by people who considered him crazy and had no inclination to accept his repeated invitations.

Some of these traditions have developed from deductions drawn from the textual material, but most have roots in Jewish and Christian literature from the second century B.C. on. The preaching of Noah is referred to in passing in 2 Peter 2:5 but finds much more elaborate antecedents in intertestamental and early Christian literature. L. Bailey conveniently summarizes the information:

Such a portrait of Noah had already been reported by the Jewish historian Josephus, about the time of the New Testament: “But Noah was very uneasy about what they [his neighbors] did; and being displeased by their conduct, persuaded them to change their dispositions and their acts for the better—but, seeing that they did not yield to him . . . he departed out of that land.” (Antiquities, I.3.i., trans. Whiston). Similar claims may be found in other early Jewish literature (e.g., Jubilees 7:20–39, ca. 100 B.C.E.) as well as in the writings of early Christians (e.g., Saint Augustine, fifth century) and of Muslims. The author of the Sybilline Oracles supplied Noah with a lengthy speech (I:175–233) in which Noah condemns his society for its belief and acts and warns of the impending flood.22

These traditions do not find confirmation in the pages of Genesis. We have already indicated that the 120-year period attributed by some to the building of the ark derives from assumptions connected to 6:3 (see p. 296). There is no justification in the text for seeing the construction as extended over that long period. Furthermore, we are not told that Noah’s sons helped him (though that would be a logical enough deduction), nor are we told that Noah did not hire laborers for the work. After all, even those who may have considered Noah crazy would not necessarily turn down well-paid employment.

Though the New Testament refers to Noah as a proclaimer or herald of righteousness, it offers little detail to support the elaborate speculations of the extrabiblical sources. We can easily imagine that Noah was involved all of his life in trying to make an impact on his world for righteousness. Usually the tradition today, however, implies that Noah was trying to persuade them to join him in the ark and gain deliverance. The evidence of the text argues against that possibility. Noah was told exactly whom to bring into the ark, and space was made for these eight passengers. Even if others wanted to gain sanctuary in the ark, it is not a given that such an option was available to them.

It is interesting to compare the mentality reflected in Gilgamesh on this issue. There it is assumed that if the general population were told that a flood was coming, they would all readily believe and want to be delivered. In the Mesopotamian versions, since no humans were supposed to be saved at all, widespread alarm would have been disastrous. Consequently, Utnapishtim and his god, Ea, have to devise a half-truth to deceive the population of Shuruppak so that they will not become suspicious of the building activity. They contrive a story that Utnapishtim is out of favor with Enlil, so he must build a boat to go to the great sea to live with Ea, his patron god, lest his presence bring Enlil’s wrath on the city.

Ea opened his mouth to speak, saying to me, his servant, “Also you will say to them this: ‘For sure the god Enlil feels for me hatred. In your city I can live no longer, I can tread no longer [on] Enlil’s ground. I must go to the Ocean Below, to live with Ea, my master, and he will send you rain of plenty.”23

Certainly we would not attribute such deception to Noah, but this section illustrates well how different the ancient world was from our modern thinking. Skepticism about the punitive intentions of the gods was far more rare in the ancient world than it is today. People back then would have found it intrinsically credible that deity would send a flood to wipe out life. It is far more likely that people would have clamored to get on board than that they would ridicule Noah for his undertaking.

In conclusion, it is important as we study Genesis to separate tradition from text. Too often traditions can create presuppositions that in turn regulate the interpretive process. When we approach a text, we must be able to set our presuppositions off to the side as much as possible so that we do not impose them onto the text. It is not wrong to have presuppositions, but it is important to have a realistic grasp of what our presuppositions are so that we can assess their impact on our interpretation. Some of the traditions we carry as baggage are blind presuppositions—that is, we don’t even realize they come from tradition rather than text. Blind presuppositions are the worst kind because we think we have gotten them from the Bible when in reality they lack that authority. We don’t even realize that they are imported into the text, and we must evaluate their relevance and truth rather than assume them to be accurate.

Ancient culture and literature. What is the significance of extrabiblical Flood stories24 for our understanding of the biblical text? One can look at this information in several ways, and we must think carefully through the options and assess what our expectations are.

(1) We do not read these stories as having equal credibility as the biblical account. For instance, when we read the Gospels with their varying accounts of the life and ministry of Christ, we accept them all on equal footing and use one to augment or explain the other. But regarding the Flood stories, we do not look to them for added details to enhance the Genesis narratives.

(2) Given the relatively sparse amount of literary information we possess, it is fruitless to discuss which account came first. It is true that Mesopotamian culture preceded Israelite culture, and generally the flow of culture was from the former to the latter. But it is also true that Abraham came out of Mesopotamia. While the literary documents we have from Mesopotamia are older than the book of Genesis as a work of Moses, Moses likely used older literary sources when compiling the book. If the book of Genesis is arguing against some of the points in the ancient Near East material or trying to set the record straight, it would have had to come after them in time. Yet the possibility cannot be ruled out that the Genesis account is a pristine record of the event as passed down from Noah, which suffered corruption when transmitted in the hands of other cultures. Such decisions cannot be made on the basis of current evidence, but only on the basis of presupposition.

(3) We do not garner the cumulative evidence of all the other Flood stories to prove that the Bible is true. Some have used the argument that if all of these various cultures have stories of destructive floods from which only a small portion of humanity was spared, some historical event must be the kernel of truth on which all of the accounts are based. Unfortunately, even if only the few accounts compared are those closest to the biblical account, the differences are too extensive to allow confident claims that they must be narrative reflections of the same event.

We know . . . that numerous peoples have no flood legend in their literature. Flood stories are almost entirely lacking in Africa, occur only occasionally in Europe, and are absent in many parts of Asia. They are widespread in America, Australia, and the islands of the Pacific. In addition, many of the known flood legends differ radically from the biblical story and stand independent of it and of one another. Many do not know a world-wide flood at all, but only a local inundation; not all relate the rescue of a man or a family who “found favor in the eyes of the Lord.” Often the heroes save themselves in boats or by scaling mountains, without intervention of the gods. Further, only a few of the flood stories give the wickedness of man as the cause for the Flood. In many instances nothing is said about either the characteristics of the Flood or the means of its origin. Often storms cause an inundation, sometimes rains and ocean tidal waves, occasionally earthquakes. The saved may be a single person (man or woman), a couple, an entire family, a definite or an indefinite number of people. Only in a few sagas are seeds and representatives of various species of animals taken into the vessel of deliverance. The duration of the Flood, if given, varies from a few days to many years.25

The author of this quote goes on to conclude that “facts of this kind disprove the claim that the biblical account is the parent of all flood stories.” Perhaps we cannot go so far as to say that the claim is disproved, but it is legitimate to conclude that the existence of all of these stories fails to prove that there was a biblical sort of flood that eventuated in all of these accounts.

The most important significance of all of these stories in my estimation is that they provide a contrast against which the biblical narrative can be appreciated. One example, and perhaps the most important, is that the picture of God offered in the Genesis narrative of the Flood shows him to be distressed over injustice and violence. Even while he is responding to this situation with dramatic punitive action, his grace and mercy are evident.

The human race has always struggled with the question of why huge natural disasters take place, and especially what divine purpose there may be in the events that we still refer to as “acts of God.” What is one to think of a God who could do or even allow such mayhem? Extrabiblical accounts have little to offer in response. The best they can do is to suggest that capricious anger motivated the gods to their destructive behavior. Perhaps the biblical narrative was offering a corrective reaction to the corrupt accounts circulating about the ancient world rather than reflecting a pristine and unadulterated tradition preserved from antiquity (though the latter is certainly not ruled out).

Archaeology. Levels identified as Flood deposits have been found at several Mesopotamian sites. These include Ur, Uruk, Shuruppak, Nineveh, Lagash, and Kish. The levels at Ur and Nineveh date to the fourth millennium, while the others date to the early third millennium.26 These may offer evidence of the Flood recorded in Mesopotamian literature, but can be associated with the biblical only by those who considered it local in extent. Other cities in the region show no evidence of alluvial deposits in that period, and even other areas of the towns in question show no evidence of flooding. As a result, only those who endorse the most limited view of the Flood can claim archaeology as support.

Quests. Quests for the ark have been taking place at least since medieval times.27 Unfortunately, there is little to show for all the effort, time, and expense. Despite media productions, news programs, books, magazine articles, and claims made by various organizations and individuals, the hard evidence that Noah’s ark has been found is simply not there.

Research into this type of evidence for the ark’s survival is . . . fraught with difficulties. The sources are often third- and fourth-hand. Years could be and have been spent in trying to verify some of them. The original documents often cannot be found—if in fact they ever existed. Alleged eyewitnesses have died and thus cannot verify the reports attributed to them, or clarify critical details. The reports are filled with discrepancies, some minor but others so substantial as to raise the question of credibility. A few are expressed in such strident, polemical tones as to destroy any claim of objectivity. Without questioning the integrity of some reporters, it appears that details have been added as their observations were retold.28

In summary of the above two sections, we must conclude that neither archaeologists nor adventurers have provided any significant evidence for the Flood or the ark. We must then proceed without their help.

How big was the Flood? Science is not in the position to dictate what claims the text may or may not make. Scientists can offer suggestions or raise objections, and these can be appreciated, but these must be evaluated in light of the statements that the text makes—such is the evangelical commitment. As has been discussed in earlier chapters, it is not hermeneutically sound to try to sidestep by means of word games what the text is clearly trying to say, nor is it acceptable to make common Hebrew vocabulary carry sophisticated scientific meaning. We neither want to dismiss the text or to create an artificial construct to put in place of the text.

Many feel they are protecting the reputation of the Bible by devising scientific theories that account for the details of the traditional interpretation of the text. Too often these theories prove implausible and are easily discredited by the scientific thinkers they intend to win over. These well-meaning individuals have consistently demonstrated that they are willing to “think outside of the box” scientifically but are rarely willing to do the same textually. By “thinking outside of the box” textually, I do not refer to implausible reconstructions that are dismissive or disrespectful of the text, but to credible hypotheses founded on research into the text, the language, and the culture. It must therefore be stated unequivocally from the outset that whatever it can be determined that the Bible requires, we must be willing to accept. Additionally, we cannot come with the mentality that we can wiggle around the statements of the text or with a method that attempts to read scientific detail between the lines. We must deal with the language of the text in light of the audience’s understanding of that language.

The options concerning the extent of the Flood are not just “universal” and “local.” It is preferable to identify four alternatives as follows:

1. Global. This position is the most extreme. Some believe that the waters of the Flood covered the entire globe to a height that was higher than the highest mountains.

2. Known world. This position believes that the Flood was universal relative to the world known to the audience of the Old Testament. This is a massive flood, but did not include other continents or areas of the world, such as China.

3. Regional. This position holds to an extensive regional flood. It may have centered in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, the Mediterranean basin, or the area of the Black Sea.

4. Local. In this view the Flood wiped out several towns along the river.

Sometimes it is helpful to frame a discussion like this by asking why someone would not be inclined to believe one position or another. What obstacles are there to accepting the global flood view? What stands in the way of thinking that the Flood was restricted to the known world? Answering these questions demonstrates that we are again locked in a situation where science and logic are pitted against the text. Let us consider, then, the case that can be made against a global flood:

According to the conventional interpretation of the Genesis version of Noah’s story, the sea level rose for 150 days until it covered the tops of the mountains and then subsided for another 150 days. It is easy to prove that this is physically impossible. The local sea level can rise several feet for a few hours during a hurricane, but if the sea level rose to the 16,946 foot peak of “Mount Ararat” for 150 days, the sea would have had to rise approximately 16,946 feet all over the planet earth. That would require about 630 million cubic miles of additional water weighing 3,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons, or three quintillion tons. That is an enormous volume of water. The oceans would have to triple in volume in only 150 days and then quickly shrink back to normal. Where would the 630 million cubic miles of water go during the second 150 days? There is nowhere an ocean can drain to, because the oceans already fill the lowest places. There is no geological evidence that the ocean basins that now exist formed in only 150 days. The excess water could not evaporate into the air because it would still be there and it is not.

It has long been known that rain clouds cannot possibly hold even a tenth of one percent of the water required by the conventional interpretation of the flood story. Soroka and Nelson calculated that three quintillion tons of water vapor would make the earth’s atmospheric pressure about 840 times higher than it is now and sunlight would not reach the surface of the ground. Such an atmosphere would be incompatible with life as we know it.29

Another researcher focuses on the problems concerning the care of the animals:

Assuming that the 21,000 species of amphibian, reptile, bird, and mammal had to be represented on the ark, it would require around 42,000 individuals. Assuming that each of the eight people on the ark had to take care of their share of the animals, each person would have 2,637 cages to visit each day for feeding and cleaning. If each person worked a 12-hour shift, then each cage would only get three and two-thirds minutes of attention per day. . . .

A straightforward reading of the chronology outlined in Gen. 7:1–10 indicates that Noah and his family had only one week during which to load all the animals. If the eight people were required to lead the 35,000 animals from the ark’s door to its cage, the work load would have been crushing. Each member of the ark’s crew would have to climb the equivalent of a 19.5 story building every hour, day and night, for the entire week prior to the Flood. Even the time constraints are imposing; two pairs of animals per minute must be loaded. Other physical problems include the generation of 78, 750 liters of urine per day. To carry fresh water on board to replenish the lost water would occupy 70% of the ark’s volume. . . . 30

These paragraphs raise some of the logistics problems from a scientific standpoint. We can also ask questions such as these: How can there still be some freshwater lakes and seas if salt water had mixed with all the bodies of water? How did freshwater and saltwater fish survive? And how would animals today found only in Australia have gotten to that continent?

Other logistics problems arise within the text itself:

1. If the Flood were severe enough to reach 17,000 feet in 150 days, it would have had to rise at the rate of over 100 feet per day, almost five feet per hour. Even if such a rapid rise were possible and could be sustained over a five-month period, it would have created currents that would have made survival in the ark unlikely.31

2. Those searching for the ark have had to use very sophisticated mountain-climbing equipment to scale the heights of Mount Ararat, and at times have had to abandon the effort. How would Noah and his family and animals such as elephants and hippopotami make the trek down the mountain?32 And how did they make their way across mountain chains and over deserts to return to their native habitats?

3. What did the carnivores eat until their prey populations were replenished?

4. If the ark ran aground on the still-submerged summit of Mount Ararat on the seventeenth day of the seventh month (8:4) and the tops of the mountains became visible on the first day of the tenth month (8:5), the water receded only 15 feet in 75 days. Yet it would have had to recede 17,000 feet in the next 75 days because by the first day of the first month, the earth was dry (8:13).

5. The dove flew down into a valley to get an olive leaf (only growing in low elevations) in 8:11. How did it manage to fly back up to 17,000 feet to the ark? Doves are not physically equipped to fly at those altitudes.33

The main questions, however, concern what is demanded by the language of the text. Four textual issues contribute to the discussion and require investigation: universal scope of the language (7:21–23), covering the mountains (7:19), fifteen cubits above (7:20), and the tops of the mountains becoming visible (8:5). If an interpreter maintains the support of the authority of the text but does not believe in a global flood, how can these four issues be handled?

Universal language. It may sound strange to say, but the word “all” is not always absolute in biblical usage. Look, for instance, at Deuteronomy 2:25, where the Lord says, “This very day I will begin to put the terror and fear of you on all the nations under heaven.” This verse even uses “under heaven” in the same way that Genesis 7:19 does. Yet in context, few would contend that this refers to more than the nations of Canaan and perhaps a few others. In Genesis 41:57, Joseph opens the storehouses of Egypt and “all the countries came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph, because the famine was severe in all the world.” I do not know of anyone who contends that therefore the Eskimos must have been included.

Similar use of language can be seen in Akkadian texts. Most instructional is a text called the Sargon Geography, which names the lands of the known world one by one and concludes that “Sargon, King of the Universe, conquered the totality of the land under heaven.”34 Based on such examples, it becomes clear that it was perfectly acceptable, and not at all deceptive, to use the word “all” to encompass all those of a more regionally delineated area. Such usage does not violate biblical authority because the Bible does not intend to claim more than regional impact.

Covering the mountains. When 7:19 refers to the mountains being covered, it uses the Pual form of the verb ksh. This verb is used for a wide variety of “covering” possibilities. A people or weeds can be so vast that it covers the land (Num. 22:11; Prov. 24:31); a blanket or clothing covers someone (Ex. 28:42; 1 Kings 1:1). Something can be covered in the sense of being overshadowed (cherubim wings covering the ark, 2 Chron. 5:8; clouds covering the sky, Ps. 147:8).

What about being covered with water? Aside from the two occurrences in 7:19–20, thirteen references have water as the explicit or implicit subject of this verb. Of those thirteen, five refer to the Red Sea covering the Egyptian army at the time of the Exodus (Ex. 14:28; 15:5, 10; Ps. 78:53; 106:11); four refer to the waters in creation and nature (Ps. 104:6, 9; Isa. 11:9; Hab. 2:14); one is metaphorical for judgment (Job 22:11). It is the remaining three that are of most significance to this discussion: Job 38:34; Jeremiah 46:8; and Malachi 2:13. In these three passages it appears that water does not cover by submerging as much as by drenching. Even today when someone walks in from a downpour we might say, “You’re covered with water!”

If Genesis 7:19 is taken the same way, it suggests that the mountains were drenched with water or coursing with flash floods, but it does not demand that they were totally submerged under water. One can certainly argue that the context does not favor this latter usage, and I am not inclined to adopt it. The point is that it is not as easy as sometimes imagined to claim that the Bible demands that all the mountains were submerged.

Fifteen cubits above. In 7:20 this phrase is difficult to decipher, largely because of the word that the NIV renders “depth.” The Hebrew text says, “Fifteen cubits from above [milmaʿla] rose the waters, and the mountains were covered.” It is therefore not at all clear that it is suggesting the waters rose fifteen cubits higher than the mountains.35

The word under discussion occurs twenty-three times in a number of different syntactical situations. Its most common use is to delineate the position of one object relative to another. In this kind of context the preposition ʿal is consistently attached to the one noun with milmaʿla connected to the object that is being located.36 It can also mean “above” when it is used as an adjective (Jer. 31:37, “heavens above”). When it is used as an adverb without a preposition to relate it to another noun, translations such as “upward” (Ezek. 1:11, “spread upward”) or “upstream” (Josh. 3:13, 16) are better choices. It is this last category to which Genesis 7:20 belongs. As an adverb modifying the verb “rose,” it suggests that the water reached fifteen cubits upward from the plain, covering at least some part of the mountains.

Tops of the mountains visible. This is the most difficult statement to explain for those arguing that the text does not require a global flood. In saying that the tops of the mountains became visible, this verse conveys that the tops, not just the flanks of the mountains, had been obscured. This still leaves two possibilities: They have been obscured by the horizon and this represented the sighting of land,37 or they have been obscured by (i.e., submerged under) water. The latter appears to be the necessary conclusion in that the ark stops moving in verse 4 on the seventeenth day of the seventh month and that the tops of the mountains do not become visible until two and a half months later, the first day of the tenth month.

Most interpreters have inferred that the ark became lodged on the tops of one of these mountains that was still under water and that the mountains did not become visible for ten more weeks. If this were a proper inference, the observation in the text would be a matter of experience, not perception. Noah did not just assume that all the mountains were under water; he was in the mountains and they were under water.

If it were not for 8:3–5, an interpreter can easily claim that the face value of the text does not demand a geographically global flood. All of the other statements are compatible with a flood of the known populated world. Given the apparent clarity of 8:3–5, however, it is difficult to see how the Flood could be less than global if the waters reached a height of 17,000 feet. So how do we reconcile the apparent clarity of the text with the extremely difficult logistics?

We must still consider whether 8:3–5 strikes us the way it does because we are thinking in terms of our understanding of the world. Would this text have meant something different if we could read it with an ancient Near Eastern mindset?

Mesopotamian geographers had no way of knowing that Babylonia and Assyria were part of the Eurasian land-mass that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Arctic to Indian oceans. The ancient geographers imagined that the continent they lived on was much smaller. On the World Map, the cosmic ocean marratu is drawn just beyond Assyria, Urartu, and the mountains where the Euphrates rises [the Ararat chain].38

In the Mesopotamian worldview the known world was comprised of a single continent fringed with mountains (such as the Zagros mountains in the east and the mountains of Ararat in the north) and ringed by the cosmic sea. The fringe mountains were believed to hold up the heavens and have roots in the netherworld. In the east, the mountain primarily associated with this role is Mount Mašu. Gilgamesh travels there on his way to find Utnapishtim, the survivor of the Flood, whose ark had arrived at the eastern mountains (Mount Nimush) by the end of the Flood. In the north is Mount Simirriya. Sargon, king of Akkad in the twenty-fourth century B.C. and ruler of the first-known empire in the history of the world, describes this in his eighth campaign to Urartu.

Mount Simirriya, a mighty mountain-peak, which spikes upward like the cutting-edge of a spear, on top of the mountain-range, the dwelling of Belet-Ili, rears its head. Above, its [Mount Simirriya’s] peak leans on the heavens, below, its roots reach into the underworld.39

Moreover, Sargon’s Geography has this to say:

Sargon’s empire in The Sargon Geography, excluding the lands across the seas, corresponds to the continent on the World Map. On the map, the northern edge of the continent is occupied by an oval shaped region marked ‘mountain,’ where the Euphrates begins. This region must be the mountains of modern Turkey by the sources of the river. In The Sargon Geography, these mountains form part of the Cedar Mountain. Because there are no lands beyond the Cedar Mountain in the text, it is reasonable to assume that the author of The Sargon Geography believed that a northern arm of the cosmic sea lay beyond the mountains, just as the marratu flows along the northern rim of the continent on the World Map. A tradition of a northern ocean may have been based on the locations of the salt-water Black and Caspian Seas. On the World Map, the cosmic ocean flows beyond the far border of Urartu.40

What happens if we try to read the Flood narrative against the background of this sort of worldview? What follows is an illustration (not even a hypothesis) of the sort of option that may be available if we start to think outside the box by trying to understand the culture of the text.

Is it possible that the ancient writers did not count the mountains at the fringes of the world among the “high mountains” that the water covered? Cosmic mountains were places of the gods and would be impervious to floodwaters sent by the gods. In this scenario, the ark drifts to the edge of the known world41 and rests against the mountains of Ararat42 (or perhaps on the foothills of Ararat). Noah views this as the edge of the world, just as some before Columbus’s day believed they could reach the edge of the world. There the ark sits while the water recedes and the tops of the mountains in the occupied portion of the continent become visible.43 This means that when the waters totally dissipate, the ark is at the foot of the Ararat chain. The logic of not including the fringe mountains is that they were believed to support the heavens, and the waters are not seen as encroaching on or encountering the heavens.

This way of thinking yields a flood of the then-known world (with boundaries as described, for instance, in the Sargon Geography and in the list of Noah’s descendants in Gen. 10); it covered all the elevated places that were within eyesight of the occupants of the ark. Though this would be a geographically limited flood, it could still be anthropologically universal if people had not yet spread beyond this region. One of the advantages of seeking out views such as this is that they allow us to affirm the truth of the text without getting tied up in complicated logistical and scientific discussions.

Any solution must take the text seriously, yet be willing to see the text in ways that the original author and audience may have seen it. It likewise needs to take logistical problems seriously. It is a weak interpretation that has to invent all sorts of miracles that the text says nothing about in order to compensate for the logistical problems. While there is no view that I am yet comfortable with, I am committed to the text first (handled with hermeneutical propriety). Though the issue may have to remain for the time being unresolved, we must remember that this in no way leaves the passage a mystery. All agree on the theological teaching and significance of the passage, regardless of the extent of the Flood.

Before we leave the issue of the extent of the flood, we need to look at what the New Testament tells us and at what hydrology theorists say about the history of flooding in the region.

New Testament. The New Testament refers to the Flood a few times in passing but does not offer any unequivocal statements about its extent. In Luke 17:27 Christ describes the indifferent routine of the people of Noah’s times, yet the Flood came and destroyed them all. To this he likens the day when the Son of Man is revealed. The point is that people were unprepared for the disaster that was to strike. Likewise 2 Peter 2:5 indicates that God did not spare the ancient world but preserved Noah, referring to people, not land. Finally, 2 Peter 3:5–6 declares that “the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed.” These passages speak respectively about being prepared, about God’s willingness and ability to rescue the righteous, and about God’s ability to bring destructive judgment. Little can be inferred from them about the extent of the Flood.

Oceanography theories. Scientists have identified a number of different occasions during which massive flooding in the Near East occurred. These include a flooding of the Mediterranean and one of the Black Sea. In a theory proposed by Glenn Morton, a variety of geological data show that until 5.5 million years ago the Mediterranean was not a sea at all. The water was dammed up at Gibraltar. Morton’s evidence suggests a fairly sudden collapse, causing a break more than three thousand feet deep and fifteen miles wide filling the Mediterranean basin in less than nine months.44

As the water rushed in, the first phenomenon which would occur is that the air would begin to rise as it was replaced by the fluid filling the basin. The air would pick up the moisture via evaporation from the flood water as it continued to pour into the Mediterranean. As the air rose, adiabatic cooling would take place. Adiabatic cooling is the cooling that occurs in a rising body of air which cools at 10º C per kilometer. As the air cools, the moisture contained in the air condenses to form clouds which eventually will produce rain. Since the air over an area of 964,000 square miles was moving upwards simultaneously, the rains from this mechanism would be torrential! The modern world has never seen such a convection cell. Forty days of rain is easy to account for.45

If the reader finds it difficult to put the Flood 5.5 million years ago, the Black Sea theory may be more palatable. In the mid-1990s geologists and oceanographers began investigating a huge, catastrophic flood in the region of the Black Sea.46 Their findings indicate that in about 5500 B.C. there was a sudden rise in water level in the Mediterranean, which brought a thunderous waterfall through the Bosporous and into the Black Sea. Over the course of a year it flooded out 60,000 square miles of land and raised the water level of the Black Sea approximately five hundred feet.47 Prior to this time the Black Sea was a fresh water sea (as the fossils at the original beach level indicate). As the salt water poured in from the Mediterranean, “the sea’s surface must have risen a foot a day for perhaps 100 days at the height of the flood. For that to occur, torrents of water must have poured through the Bosporous into the Black Sea at a rate some 400 times that of Niagara Falls.”48

Both of these theories fit into the “regional” category. They are examples of theories that attempt to identify some geologically known natural catastrophe with the biblical Flood instead of trying to come up with possible scientific explanations of how a global flood could have theoretically occurred.49 I have not yet seen any such theories that are persuasive and still find it difficult to assign a date to the Flood based on the biblical information.

Blessing and curse. The curse on the ground from Genesis 3 is not revoked, but in 8:21 God commits to withhold the “curse” (qll) from the ground. Only here is God the subject of this verb, and from the context we infer that it involves taking punitive action against someone or something.50 Blessing in its postcurse form (with reproduction and food procurement) therefore continues as status quo, and a cosmic equilibrium is maintained even if a moral equilibrium constantly hangs in the balance. That is, there will be no further reversions to precreation chaos, but neither will people find their own way back to Eden.

Parallels between Genesis 1–3 and 6–9. The literary elements in Genesis 6–9 demonstrate a parallel structure set up with Genesis 1–3.51 The Flood recreates the watery chaos of Genesis 1:2. The waters of the Flood are acted upon by a wind sent from God (8:1), as are the initial waters (1:2). After the waters have receded and the dry land has appeared, God brings out Noah and his family and the animals, just as he brought them forth in creation. In 8:19 the text even emphasizes one family after another, reminiscent of their being created after their kind. This bringing out is connected with a reference to the blessing in 8:16–17.

This motif repetition continues in chapter 9, and we will pursue it more there. For now it is important to note that theologically this is being presented as a re-creation. The Flood story is not just a story of indescribable judgment but one of indescribable grace. It shows God’s victory over chaos of both sorts. The deluge eliminates the chaos of society’s corruption.

Divine judgment, consequently, reflects creation’s downward slide into chaos. God’s declaration to “destroy” all life from the earth means literally to “corrupt” (šḥt), taking the earth’s corruption to its cosmic conclusion, judgment by unbounded water. The earth’s violence bears its own self-destructive reward. Chaos . . . is the natural consequence of corrupt conduct, which afflicts the earth like a virus, attacking its stability and demoralizing its integrity. . . . The deluge that follows is the final outcome and remedy.52

Then God’s power reasserts control over the chaos he unleashed in the Flood as the waters return to their boundaries and cosmic equilibrium is again established (8:22).

The flood is creation’s counterpart, a once perfect creation beset by a “perfect storm” at God’s behest. . . . If the deluge is to be considered a form of chaos, it is only of a derivative nature, one that mirrors social chaos. The flood has the focused aim of bringing creation back to the drawing board by means of a controlled cosmic meltdown, or more accurately, dissolution.53

When the cosmic equilibrium is reestablished, note how the pronouncement again addresses the three foundational functions of the universe, in reverse order from Genesis 1: agriculture, weather, and time. This again demonstrates the biblical focus on functions.

Noah. When the text identifies Noah as “righteous,” it does not imply that he deserves to be spared or that he has earned God’s grace. It indicates rather that God takes careful note of righteousness. Blamelessness matters to God. It is an accolade to be called righteous in one’s generation, but undoubtedly Noah was considered by many in his generation simply as an oddball. Chesterton straightens us out on that account:

A man with a definite belief always appears bizarre, because he does not change with the world; he has climbed into a fixed star and the earth whizzes below him like a zoetrope. Millions of mild black coated men call themselves sane and sensible merely because they always catch the fashionable insanity, because they are hurried into madness after madness by the maelstrom of the world.54

We can all learn from Noah’s refusal to conform to his world, but in the end we are not supposed to be impressed with Noah but with God. The text is in fact oddly silent about Noah on a number of serious counts; more to the point, Noah is silent—he never speaks through the whole Flood account. He has no response to God’s announcement, no questions about the ark or the animals, no plea on the behalf of anyone else, no cries for mercy, no bursts of joyful gratitude at the prospect of being saved, no grief for a world destroyed, no impatience in the ark, and no prayers of thanksgiving accompanying sacrifice.55 The narrator leaves Noah a “flat” character. The only personality he has is found in the characteristics attributed to him by God. The text could not be clearer that Noah is a bit player and that the star of the account is God. Whatever we might learn from Noah is totally eclipsed by what we learn about God. So what is it that the text teaches us about God?

Contemporary Significance

EVERY SUNDAY SCHOOL curriculum for little children goes all out on the story of Noah, because, as everyone knows, kids love animals and boats. Unfortunately, the stories rarely go beyond the animal motif to the unimaginable destruction from which the animals are being saved. In this reorientation of the Flood account the story is effectively diluted—we can say that the Flood becomes watered down.

But I acknowledge my own complicity in this selective association. When my kids were young, their playpen was decorated with a Noah’s ark motif. I admit I did not desire or expect them to think of the playpen as a place where they were drowned out in the waters of chaos revisited. But we are not kids anymore, and it is important to appropriate the Flood story for what it is. Neither animals nor ark nor righteous Noah is the focus of this narrative. It is all about God.

In the 1999 TV miniseries on Noah’s ark starring Jon Voigt, Christians and critics alike bemoaned the extent to which the movie took license in altering the content of the story. Among the most obvious examples were the inclusion of the destruction of Sodom as a prelude to the Flood and the acquaintance between Lot and Noah. As distorted a picture as these presented, a far greater travesty was committed in how the screenwriters portrayed God, for they reshaped him in the image of pagan deities. Like them, God was depicted as capricious as he told Noah on the ark that he had decided not to spare anyone after all and was going to wipe them out. He was shown as human in nature as he identified this decision as difficult, requiring a lot of time to think about. In recognizably Babylonian form, he confessed that he needed Noah and therefore would not destroy him. This God with needs and moods is the antithesis of the biblical God. For this reason the movie can justifiably be called blasphemous.

But what picture of God does emerge from the Flood narrative? How can we merge the images of judgment and grace that crisscross the narrative? What should we make of the God who is responsible for this judgment-grace combination? Our first path should be to follow the lead of the New Testament, which consistently indicates that the Flood should be a reminder to us of the reality of final judgment.56

Peter brings out this exhortation most clearly: “If this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment” (2 Peter 2:9). He also admonishes us not to allow God’s delay in bringing about judgment to cause us to join the ranks of the scoffers: “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (3:9). Just as the destruction of the Flood initiated a new beginning for those spared, so Peter indicates that the final judgment will do the same: “But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness” (3:13). But the bottom line for Peter goes beyond hope for the future, for it impacts the way we live our lives today: “Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives” (3:11).

Both God’s justice and his grace are real and will be exercised in mighty ways in the end, as they were in the Flood. Our response should not be one of fear but of godliness. God does not desire to scare us by threats of judgment but to win us by acts of love, mercy, and grace. His grace is most strikingly evident when set in contrast to the darkness and gloom of a sinful world racing toward its perilous doom.

Checks and balances. Our treatment in the Original Meaning section on the grief of God in 6:6 led to an interpretation of the Hebrew terminology as reflecting God as One who maintains a system of checks and balances. Perhaps our best understanding of checks and balances comes in connection to the stock market. The economy maintains a complicated equilibrium based on thousands of factors. The stock market is a reflection of the economy because it reacts to the factors that drive the economy. There are periods of “bull market” when there is a lot of buying and the values of stocks are driven up, and there are periods of “bear market” when the market is selling off and prices are going down. Both types of markets have economic advantages, but neither is good in the extreme. Long-running bear or bull markets lead analysts to expect “market adjustments” because that is how the ebb and flow of the economy typically works. In this way, a market-driven economy has built-in checks and balances.

If we can transfer ideas such as these to theology, we get a good idea of the picture of God presented here. God is the One who operates a system of checks and balances. There is a certain range of variation that is possible in the domain of human behavior. As with the stock market, this range of equilibrium is based on thousands of factors. When a situation needs a “market adjustment,” God is responsible for doing that. Just as the chairman of the Federal Reserve oversees the economy and initiates certain adjustments as he deems necessary to sustain a healthy economy, so God oversees the world. The difference is that the chairman of the Federal Reserve does not have absolute control of the economy, whereas God is truly sovereign.

Let’s return for a moment to the issue of “being sorry” in contrast to the maintenance of a system of checks and balances. President Truman was sorry he dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That does not mean he wished he had not done it. He knew well what he was doing, yet chose to do it because it achieved his purposes—purposes he considered paramount. Even so, he regretted the outcome though it was fully anticipated. In the same way we can understand that God was deeply grieved over the escalation of sin and human suffering that were the outcome of his creation. But I have suggested that the verb used in the text has less to do with grief or sorrow and more to do with checks and balances. The bomb can also be seen in that light. It represented drastic measures taken in dire circumstances. The issue really is not how sorry Truman felt. It was essential for the war to end and equilibrium to be reestablished.

Sometimes we feel that our lives, our country, or our world have gotten out of balance, and we wonder where the checks and balances are in the system. How far will God let things go before he steps in as the auditor general? The truth is, there are far too many factors that we can never be aware of for us to know when God should step in. Part of his transcendent wisdom is associated with his ability to manage all of those factors and do what needs to be done at precisely the time it needs to be done. Passages like the Flood narrative should help strengthen our faith that God is indeed functioning at the helm of this checks and balances system. We rest secure in the hands of God and trust his timing.

One of the great “market adjustments” in our contemporary world occurred with the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the demolition of the Berlin Wall in the late 1980s. As the decades-long reign of communism came to a grinding halt in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the world heaved a collective sigh of relief and settled back into a more comfortable equilibrium. But this does not mean that all political and economic problems disappeared. Some may even say conditions have become more desperate because the system that was in control, however unacceptable, left a vacuum in its wake. As Christians we believe God is engineering such market adjustments; he is sovereignly active at every level. We also must wonder if American culture is due for a “market adjustment” to check, for instance, its raging materialism.

Chaos unleashed on chaos. “I have warned you twice now about hitting your little brother. It is unacceptable behavior. Perhaps this will help you remember and control yourself.” With those preliminary remarks, a father spanks his son. This scenario always made me feel somewhat uncomfortable as a father. Indeed, when my sons became old enough and bold enough, they questioned the logic of hitting someone to teach them not to resolve their problems by hitting. In societal contexts, we follow the same logic in discussion of capital punishment. In its baldest form, the procedure is that we teach how bad killing is by killing those who do it.

This is the same sort of issue we encounter when we find God unleashing chaos in response to chaos. In each of these cases, the differences between the action of the one being punished and the one doing the punishment are in the areas of control and responsibility. The child who is in the habit of hitting his siblings is usually striking out in uncontrolled anger. The father who disciplines this child is responsible for the child’s behavior and is seeking to discharge that responsibility in effective disciplinary actions. When he chooses to spank the child, then, it is not an act of uncontrolled anger but a controlled act of discipline. He is not trying to teach the child that physical responses are never valid. He is trying to teach self-control of violent physical aggressiveness in responding to others. If by spanking the father is acting out his violent physical aggression and is not under control, it is no longer discipline; it is abuse.

In society, the murderer is likewise acting out his physical aggressions in reaction to any number of stimuli. Here the motivations may be more complex and require the expertise of the sociologist or the psychologist to do them justice. Society, nevertheless, has the responsibility of maintaining the peace and protecting the rights and welfare of its citizens. The laws that require due process are predicated on the belief that though society’s response may result in death, just like the criminal’s actions did, that response is necessary for society to discharge its responsibility. If the execution of capital punishment is not a controlled, thoughtful process but simply a tool of repression and tyranny, it is no longer justifiable. It has become equal to the murder as a selfish, vindictive act of wanton violence.

When God unleashes the chaos of the deluge as punishment for the chaos of society’s violence, his action is likewise distinguished by control and responsibility. God has the responsibility of caring for his creation. That cannot be discharged by simply letting sin run amok. Responsibility implies response. In contrast to the uncontrolled violence that characterized the antediluvian world, the chaos unleashed by God is totally under his control and is effectively accomplishing his will. Yet this is one of the most difficult aspects of God’s character for people to accept. Above and beyond the suffering they see in the world, people look at events like the Flood or the tenth plague or the decimation of the Canaanites and perch on the dichotomy that the loving God in the New Testament is a harsh, judgmental God in the Old Testament.

In addition to the chaos that God unleashes on a global or national level, the Bible is full of examples when he works in similar ways on the personal level. When someone’s own personal circumstances appear to be a case of chaos unleashed, it is easy to lash out at God, as illustrated in Archibald MacLeish’s play about Job, J.B.:

Never fails! Never fails!

Count on you to make a mess of it!

Every blessed blundering time

You hit at one man you blast thousands.

Think of that flood of yours—a massacre!

Now you’ve fumbled it again:

Tumbled a whole city down

To blister one man’s skin with agony.57

Nevertheless, we all know that hard times have the impact of helping us to address sin in our lives and turn us around. God is still willing to unleash chaos in an individual’s life against the chaos that sin can create. Examples of the dramatic effects of impact can be found in the Old Testament in someone like King Manasseh (2 Chron. 33:10–20) and in the New Testament in the thief on the cross (Luke 23:40–43). History can offer us many more examples, but we will pause to consider only one, the life of Charles Colson.

Chuck Colson was not raised in a religious family, but it was a family of character and integrity. These qualities he admired and aspired to attain. His drive and ambitions brought unabated success in all he endeavored through his early career in law and politics and led to an influential position in the Nixon White House before he reached the age of forty. His strong sense of loyalty and his striving for excellence, however, began to eclipse his commitment to integrity. He became a master of manipulation and gained the reputation of someone who could get the job done, whatever it took. Colson writes of himself:

I entered government believing that public office was a trust, a duty. Gradually, imperceptibly, I began to view it as a holy crusade; the future of the republic, or so I rationalized, depended upon the president’s continuation in office. But whether I acknowledged it or not, equally important was the fact that my own power depended on it.58

Suddenly Colson found himself caught up in the Watergate cover-up, and his life of privilege and power began to unravel as God unleashed chaos in his life. This chaos brought him to his knees and led to his conversion. When the dust of Watergate settled, Colson had pleaded guilty and found himself facing a prison term, of which he served seven months. Despite the scoffing of skeptics, his faith took root and grew. Today Colson’s prison ministry reaches thousands, and his stature as a Christian statesman gives him opportunities for influencing many for the cause of Christ. His life is an example of what can happen when God’s chaos is unleashed against the sinful chaos of our lives.

Re-creation. We can also see from the Flood narratives that God is able to bring restoration where he has brought destruction. The re-creation theme in the Flood narrative shows God’s starting again with humanity. This theme is developed later in Scripture in relation to Israel’s great political and theological crisis, the Exile. In that context, the prophet Jeremiah is initially given a message that focuses on plucking up, breaking down, destroying, and overthrowing (Jer. 1:10). Yet in the introduction to the new covenant (31:27–28), God shows the flip side of these actions in another re-creation context:

“The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will plant the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the offspring of men and of animals. Just as I watched over them to uproot and tear down, and to overthrow, destroy and bring disaster, so I will watch over them to build and to plant,” declares the LORD.

It is more than just salvation here; God is committed to salvage operations. Noah and his family are saved; the world and human civilization are salvaged. Salvaging involves retrieving that which is valuable from the wreckage. This concept is at the heart of Israel’s remnant theology, but we can also find God’s salvage work in individual lives. It is this quality of God that finds, amidst Saul’s destructive, skeptic zeal, Paul’s apostolic vision for the church. This is the God who, amidst the carnage of carnality, finds in Augustine a philosophical thinker who lays the foundation for the church’s systematic theology. The same God finds and nurtures in each one of us that which transforms our lives from sinful rubble to useful ministry. God is in the business of re-creating, and our lives testify to that grace. We are saved from our sin and its condemnation; we are salvaged for ministry and its service to God.

One of the most famous fairy tales of the brothers Grimm is the story of Cinderella. The timeless portrait of elevation from rags to riches that keeps embers of hope glowing for the disadvantaged has been recast in many different forms. One recent retelling can be found in the movie Ever After. The plot is built on the concept that when obstacles of social station are set aside, the value of the person can be recognized. Similarly, God can look beyond the factor of sin that defines our position to see the value of the person he has created. It is because of that value that salvage becomes worthwhile. We are nothing but Sinderellas who are given the chance to take up the role of the bride of Christ.

Where the Cinderella analogy breaks down, however, is in the nature of the value that is salvaged. The prince notices an intrinsic value in Cinderella. We need to remember that the value that motivates salvage operations is not always intrinsic value (like retrieving bars of gold from the wreckage of Spanish galleons), but is often attributed value. In the story of Robinson Crusoe, the castaway makes a life for himself on the island through salvage. Things that would have value in the civilized world mean nothing to him as a shipwrecked recluse. But many common or ordinary things take on great value as he puts them to use, often a use that was totally different from what they had been designed for.59 In the same way, the value that God finds in humanity is only intrinsic insofar as we have been created in his image. Otherwise our value is an attributed value as God finds innovative and unexpected ways to use us in his service.

Original Meaning

Reason for the Flood (6:5 , 11–13)

THE TEXT MAKES it clear that the problem leading to the Flood was simply the wickedness of the human heart and the behavior that resulted. Hardly a better description of total depravity can be given than “every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.” Some elaboration of this occurs in 6:11–13, which specifically cites “violence” and “corruption.”

The Hebrew word translated “violence” (ḥms) is a general term that ranges from international contexts to social injustice. It can be used regarding the behavior of individuals or groups and can be either physical or psychological.1

The word for “corrupt” (Niphal of the root šḥt) is taken up in a number of ways in this chapter. After its introduction in 6:11, God indicates that all people have corrupted their ways (6:12, Hiphil of šḥt). As a result, he has determined to “destroy” them (6:13, also Hiphil of šḥt). He then specifies that he will use floodwaters to “destroy” all life under the heavens (6:17, Hiphil of šḥt).2 This use of šḥt conveys that the advancement of sin has reached its apex, permeating every corner of civilization.

It is important to notice what is not mentioned in this context. Genesis 6 does not say that other gods are being worshiped or that the concept of God has become distorted. It does not say that people have adopted carnivorous eating habits (as some have speculated). It does not say that some transgression of boundaries between divine and human has taken place so that hybrid creatures need to be destroyed. It does not follow the pattern of the ancient Near Eastern Flood accounts, which indicate that the gods sent the Flood because of overpopulation and the resulting noise that emanated heavenward from the clamor of unrest, protest, or distress. Violence and corruption are the types of offenses that have been illustrated in the text up to this point, so the conclusion is that sin has reached critical mass and divine response is now inevitable.