(Here is another episode in my continuing exploration of the Bible. You can read my series introduction here. All Bible quote are NIV and cannot be used for commercial purposes. Read copyright information here.) ​ ​

Noah and the Flood

9 This is the account of Noah and his family.

Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God. 10 Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.

11 Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. 12 God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. 13 So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. 14 So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. 15 This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high. 16 Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit high all around. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks. (NIV)

In my research into the legends of the Great Flood, I’ve come across a lot of information to suggest it may have occurred at the end of the last ice age about 12,000 years ago. Whether the flood happened as a series of natural glacial events, or if it was direct divine intervention, is completely irrelevant. The only important fact relevant to the story of the Great Flood is God takes personal responsibility for it. 

In Genesis 6:13 God claims responsibility for the destruction about to be wrought. He causes it and thereby transforms from creator and divine father to judge and divine executioner.   However, God grants a reprieve to Noah and his family.

Here, the scripture establishes Noah’s character and rehashes God’s reasons for destroying the world. What made Noah “righteous”? What standard of conduct had God issued to mankind at this point? So far in Genesis, we know disobedience and murder are wrong, but what other guidelines had God set thus far? There are two more behaviors we can add to the list of sins in Genesis 6:11 – corruption and violence. 

I think it is important here to mention the scripture’s emphasis on corruption and violence, not just general wickedness. I think about the cruelty of ancient civilizations, and the horrors of the 20th and 21st centuries and I still wonder what was so terrible about this period that it called for such an extreme sentence upon humanity. Or maybe by now God has just grown used to our barbarism.

Like most of his forefathers, Noah had a stellar reputation among those of his time and was in good standing with God. I assume much of this was due to his upbringing. Other than that, we know little about him and his family.  It says Noah was “blameless among the people of his time.” I take that as he had a sterling reputation, which implies the people of that time somehow knew the difference between good and bad. Perhaps this has something to do with tasting of the tree of good and evil.

​This leads to the question – do humans have an inherent understanding of right and wrong, even when we choose not to act in the interest of righteousness? Is it hardwired into our DNA, or collective consciousness? According to Genesis 6, the people of Noah’s time knew what was right and wrong, and chose to do evil. Noah chose goodness, and was called by God to build the Ark. 

Ark. What a funny name for a ship. Why not just call it a ship, or even a boat? The dictionary defines ark as “a place of protection or security; refuge; asylum.” (SPOILER ALERT: The term “ark” is used later in the Bible for something else completely.) 
​
Genesis 6:14-16 is odd in its detail of the Ark. No physical object, or even person, has been described in such exacting detail up to this point. Two sentences betray the nautical purpose of the Ark: the need for pitch all around, and the reference to “decks” not floors.  What did this Ark look like? According to a group of people in Kentucky who invested a LOT of money to build one, the Ark looked little something like this. 

17 I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. 18 But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you. 19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. 20 Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. 21 You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.” (NIV)

I’m not going to talk about the feasibility of the Ark, or if the whole world was really flooded, or if every creature in the world was really brought on board. I don’t think any of that is really important. That conversation will go absolutely nowhere. If this happened, I think it happened this way: 

God said the world was going to end, and Noah and his family would be saved. That is Faith.  God called upon Noah to do his bidding, and Noah obeyed. That is Obedience. God’s influence in the world, and the earth’s salvation, were accomplished by human hands through the influence of God’s spirit on a human heart ready and willing to receive it through faith and obedience.  That is the take-away from Genesis 6. 

22 Noah did everything just as God commanded him. (NIV)

Noah trusted God and, in the end, all the animals in the world as Noah knew them were brought aboard the Ark. Noah obeyed and the whole world, as Noah knew it, flooded. Noah did as he was told and God kept his promise. In the end, that’s all that matters. 
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For the first time in the Bible we hear the word “covenant” regarding a relationship between God and humans. Webster defines a Biblical covenant as a “conditional promise made to humanity by God.”  Conditional on what? According to Genesis 6, the first covenant was conditional on Noah’s faith, obedience, and trust.
 
Conditional…that word won’t quit nagging me. I was always told that God’s love is eternal and unconditional. Yet, in Genesis 5 and 6, God says he regrets making humanity and planned to destroy us. Was his love, therefore, conditional? Is his love a covenant? Did he destroy the world because he no longer loved us, or did he spare Noah and the animals because he still loved us?  
 
I go back to how we are created in his image, and how God’s actions are so similar to a parent. I know my love for my children is not a covenant, its unconditional. Oh, sure, I make covenants with my kids all the time regarding stuff and behaviors. God’s actions are more in line with a farmer destroying a diseased crop, and salvaging the few remaining good stalks to all start over.  
 
That analogy seems to stick. Something else occurs to me, too. There is mention of sin, and judgement, but no mention of the devil or any other spiritual entity stirring up all this corruption and violence. Based on scripture, evil seems to radiate from humankind itself and nowhere else. Moreover, this evil is so bad it infects even nature itself, like a pathogen. It’s like God saving a few good files and wiping the hard disk in a last-ditch effort to purge a virus.  
 
Maybe that is what it took to save humanity from itself. Perhaps the Flood was the toughest medicine of all, the toughest love of all. I mean, humanity is still here, aren’t we?  It makes we wonder what manner of evil God saved us from, and what horrors we visited upon one another when the world was young. 
 
Next week, Genesis 7 and the 40 days and nights that changed the world. 


​Brian Braden is the author of THE ILLUSION EXOTIC, the historical fantasy novel BLACK SEA GODS and several other exciting books. Please support this blog with your patronage. 

Here is another episode in my continuing exploration of the Bible. You can read my series introduction here. All Bible quote are NIV and cannot be used for commercial purposes. Read copyright information here.) ​


When my oldest child was just a toddler, I remember giving him a Noah’s Ark play set. It was composed of a big, fat plastic ark with stickers for windows and a ramp on the side. All the plastic animals (sheep, giraffes, elephants, zebra and such) came in pairs, with one animal in each pair having thick eyelashes to let everyone know it was a she. Naturally, my kid put it in the tub, it tipped over and sank (if you’re going make a toddler Noah’s Ark, the kid is GOING to put it in the tub). The stickers came off. Animals went missing. Kids grew up and Noah’s Ark and its surviving crew sailed off into a Garage Sale sunset. That’s how I think most people think of the Great Flood today, a nice story about a kind old man, a boat full of cute animals, and a happy ending. 

Those who know me, know I’ve done a lot of research into The Great Flood. The vast majority of Northern Hemisphere civilizations have a Great Flood myth. Some believe it goes back to the end of the last Ice Age when the earth’s massive glaciers melted rapidly in a series of continental floods.  Maybe. Maybe not. This isn’t the place to speculate. Myth or fact – the realities of such an event wouldn’t have been cute; the fluff off children’s toys and coloring books. They would have been horrifying beyond belief, think 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami on a global scale. 

Genesis 6 is a turning point in the Bible. For the first time God raises his hand against humanity. What drove God to almost wipe mankind from the face of the earth? 

Wickedness in the World

6 When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. 3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. (NIV)

In my opinion, this is one of the most fascinating verses in the Bible, but I am at a loss to understand it. Essentially, earthbound angels mated with women and spawned a race of superheroes. I deduce these “Sons of God” were angels of sorts. (Are all angels male? Why were they on earth?) The Bible doesn’t answer on any of this, though it is discussed to some detail in non-canonized scripture.  For some reason, these earth-bound angels mated with women and had super-human children, the Nephilim. That’s it, that’s all we know.

If the Sons of God and the Nephilim were good or bad or had any role in God’s decision on what was to follow, we’ll never know. The scripture doesn’t explain why these “heroes of old” are important, nor do they seem to have any lasting impact on the Old Testament, or the Bible in general, though they are briefly mentioned in a few other places.  

Lots of people have written books about Genesis 6:1-4 (and I am one of them.) You can’t watch an episode of Ancient Aliens and not hear something about this verse.  I could talk about this piece of scripture all day long, but I’m not because, while it would be fun, it would just be speculation. In my opinion, this is an odd footnote. The more important aspects of Genesis 6 are to come. 

One more thing to note before moving on, here the Lord limited the years of human life to 120 years. This is interesting because God places this squarely on the lingering influence of his spirit on mortal flesh. I speculated about that in the last episode, but it also got me thinking.

In Genesis 3:22, God removes the Tree of Life from Adam and Eve’s reach expressly to keep men from living forever. Now, in Genesis 6, God says men have been living so long because of the lingering influence of his spirit.  Logically, this implies that the Tree of Life is simply another aspect of God Himself, another side of the same divine Creator.  This reinforces my analysis of the Tree of Life from Episode 6. If this is true, I believe the Tree of Life truly is a symbol of something much greater, a transcending life-giving force that has significant importance to the rest of the Bible. 

Let’s get back to God’s reason for destroying the world. 

5 The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. 6 The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. 7 So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” (NIV) 

This is perhaps the most stunning passage I’ve read in the Bible so far, and a disturbing insight into the nature of God. Yes, you heard me right - I said disturbing.  People were so wicked they despoiled all of the earth and everything on it. Everything had to go, not just people. What horrors could humanity have perpetrated in those ancient times that merited that level of annihilation? It would seem to me God would have flattened the planet several times over since then if the wickedness of men were the yardstick for a global purge. Yet, its not the decision to destroy humanity that really disturbs me, it’s how God came to his decision.
 
I have heard it is a sin to test God, but it is good to test God’s word through the Bible. Here, in Genesis 6, God’s word tested me. Words mean something, especially the Word of God. That’s why I had to read this passage over and over, to make sure I was reading it correctly.
Deep breath, here we go… 

NOT WHAT I LEARNED IN SUNDAY SCHOOL: I was told all my life in very clear terms that GOD IS PERFECT AND DOES NOT MAKE MISTAKES.  The dictionary defines “regret” as “to feel sorrow or remorse for an act.” “Remorse” is “deep and painful regret for wrongdoing.” Let’s look at Genesis 6:6 again: “The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.” 

One does not regret doing something right. One regrets doing something wrong. Does God believe he made a mistake? Does God make mistakes? Genesis 6 certainly sounds that way. Genesis 6:7 says “ - for I regret that I have made them.” God clearly puts it into the form of a personal regret. I don’t know about you, but I never look back at the things I did right in my life and say “I sure do regret that.” The only word I usually hear in conjunction with the word “regret” is “mistake,” like “I regret I backed into that car” and “I regret I drank that last margarita” and “I regret not going to the gym more often.”  Before you start yelling “heresy!” and let loose the stones in my direction, its not me saying this…it’s the Bible. I just don’t know how else to interpret except the most logical and direct way. Like I’ve said before, I am not a Bible scholar, I’m just a guy asking questions.  

How does the idea of the Lord making a mistake make me feel? First, he’s calling all of us a mistake. That’s kind of like your dad walking into your room with a disgusted look on his face and saying, “You suck and I wish you were never my son. I’m divorcing your mother and I’m jetting off to Cozumel with my secretary to start over. Oh, and there is a wrecking ball about to come through your wall in a minute to kill you. Bye.” Yep, that really sucks.  

On the good side, maybe even God is not too big to admit he made a mistake, even if it’s your species. If we are truly created in his image, and his nature is that of a loving parent, maybe that is a good thing. Seriously. Think about it for a moment. God’s words sound like those of a parent, and parents often say mean things to those they love in times of anger, words they wish they could take back. Parents only want what’s best for their kids, and they want their kids to love them. SPOILER ALERT: God later admits to  jealousy issues. I’m not kidding or being flippant. It’s true.  

As crazy as it sounds, in my mind, this  humanizes God. It makes him more accessible, more relatable. I don’t know how evil people were back were then compared to now, but I suspect a just and righteous God would be pretty disgusted with people nowadays, too. I also think he’d find islands of goodness, like he did back then, because just when we think there isn’t any hope….there is hope. 

8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. (NIV)

God pulls back his full wrath, and humanity gets a second chance, but only after the terror of the Cataclysm. We’re going to learn more about Noah, and the disaster to come, in the second part of my look at Genesis 6.  

Brian Braden is the author of THE ILLUSION EXOTIC, the historical fantasy novel BLACK SEA GODS and several other exciting books. Please support this blog with your patronage.