Noah
and the ark is perhaps one of the most well-known stories from the Bible. If you also take into consideration that many
other Ancient Near-Eastern cultures had stories about great floods, it becomes
obvious that something happened, with
the shared experience of that event being recorded in various ways, by various
peoples. So what does the Bible tell us
about the flood, Noah, and the ark?
The
flood was not so much an act of destruction by God, as it was an act of self-destruction
by humanity. While it’s true that it was
God’s might that drove the flood waters, it was man’s wickedness that made the
flood a reality. Who were the sons that
so offended God? The possibilities include descendants of Seth, angels, or a
dynasty of tyrants who succeeded Lamech.
Whatever the answer, the result was the same. Their actions followed in the footsteps of
Adam and Eve’s original sin. Our Bibles
say that they saw something beautiful, and they sought to make it their
own. If you read the passage in the
original Hebrew, the phrasing is literally what we find in Genesis 3:6 when
Adam and Eve’s sin is described: they “saw” what was “good”, and they “took”
it. This selfish behavior passed down
through the generations, has caused God to look down and see not the goodness
and beauty that was present in creation, but the wickedness that is the result
of human sinfulness and rebellion. Man’s
wickedness has spread from being reactionary, to being of the proactive
sort. The heart, the locus of thought,
feeling, volition, and morality has turned to planning methods of carrying out
the wickedness found in its inner depths.
After seeing this disastrous turn of events, God responds. The Spirit of God hovered over the waters during
creation, now that same Spirit is about to be withdrawn. Why doesn’t God act immediately? Why does God delay 120 years? The
truth is that even when God is prepared to react to human disobedience with
vengeance, He withholds His wrath long enough for Noah to build the ark. The word used to describe God’s intention,
“destroy”, is the same word used to describe human actions in Genesis 6:12,
though it is often translated “corrupt” instead of “destroy”. The use of the word “corrupt” or “corrupted”
makes plain that what God intends to destroy has actually been self-destroyed
already. Nahum Sarna would say, “The idea is that
humankind cannot undermine the moral basis of society without endangering the
very existence of its civilization. In fact, through its corruption,
society sets in motion the process of inevitable self-destruction.”
In
the midst of all the wickedness and God’s plan to destroy the earth, we find
obedient faith in the person of Noah.
God has delayed His plan to wipe out mankind because in Noah He sees a
glimmer of hope. Noah found grace in the
eyes of the Lord, and through him we found grace as well. It isn’t that Noah is perfect, but he is
obedient. When God speaks, Noah listens.
The delayed entrance of Noah in the
story opens up a new possibility, that of obedience and faith. With Noah’s
appearance on the stage, the words “righteous”
and “blameless” are used for the first time in the Bible. Righteousness is a combination of piety and
ethics, while blamelessness denotes an abstention from sin, even if one is not
entirely without fault. Noah is
described as one who “walked with God”, which links him with Enoch. While Enoch is saved from death, Noah is
saved from the flood. If Noah isn’t
perfect, he is a man of action. He is
not a man who professes something, but then fails to validate that profession
with his actions. The simple statement
that “Noah did” underscores his living by faith. It also puts the emphasis on God’s actions,
rather than Noah’s, because Noah simply does what God tells him. Today’s Christian should note that Noah’s fulfillment
of God’s plans would have been a life-long endeavor, not one emotion-filled
response. Noah didn’t agree to build the
ark after his heart-strings had been plucked by a well-orchestrated combination
of emotional appeal and mood-lit praise music.
Noah’s “yes” to God is one that will cost him dearly. One-hundred and twenty years Noah labored to
build the ark. How much did he have to
pay for materials? Did he have to go
chop down every tree with the help of his sons.
What did it cost him in terms of his social standing? How did people refer to this crazy man whose
faith led him to build a huge boat? A
better question is ‘What if we were more like Noah, caring more about God’s
plans for our world rather than our popularity with the world?’
God
sees Noah’s faithfulness, and responds in-kind.
No matter how faithful Noah was, that faith could never save him without
God’s intervention. In Noah’s case, God
intervenes in three major ways. First of
all, God designs. Noah receives from God
plans for a boat 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet
high. In the Babylonian flood epic, the
boat used by the hero is a 180 foot cube, hardly a vessel likely to be
seaworthy. Here however, we find a boat that is large, and yet proportioned to
sail. Its plans make it bigger than the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, and yet with a 20 foot draft it is shallow enough to
not ground on the mountains. Noah’s
obedience brings God’s expert design to fruition. After God designs, God guides. There are no
navigational aids, so that once in the ark the humans are totally reliant on
God. While there is relative safety
inside the ark, there is also a degree of helplessness, as Noah and his family
rely on God to deliver them safely through the flood. Even the animals seem to be guided to
Noah. Just as God brought the animals to
Noah’s ancestor Adam to be named, so He brings them now to Noah to be
saved. After God designs and guides, we see
that God saves. God shuts them in the
ark, showing the grace and salvation of the ark to be a result of divine action
rather than Noah’s. The ark serves not
just an immediate purpose, but also a more enduring one as it serves as a
prefigure of the salvation that God will deliver to humankind through Jesus
Christ. While in Noah’s day God blots
out humanity, when Jesus Christ comes, God blots out our sins. It’s the same exact verb used in both
instances! The ark, in many ways, foreshadows
our own salvation. God opens the door to
the ark and offers to bear us safely through the waters of sin and death, which
threaten destruction just as surely as those torrents did so many millennia
ago. Will you, like Noah, have the faith
to step inside?
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