Genesis 6:9-14

Genesis 6:9-14

An introduction to the Narrative.

Today we begin the toldot of Noah. This toldot runs from Gen 6:9-9:29, but before we begin I want to give you a little thought experiment. Imagine you could see the whole earth all at one time. You could somehow see the motives, thoughts, and actions of each living man. You could see every natural occurrence at the same time, whether that be rain, snow, drought, a tornado, a thunder storm, a hurricane, a flood, a volcano, an earthquake, whatever it is, you can see it. And now you are asked to give a one word explanation of it all. Some word that would unify, clarify and make it all explicable and understandable?

The Biblical answer to this thought experiment is the word sin. Sin explains why men are the way they are and why the earth is the way it is. In a sense the Bible is a book of the history of sin. It is also a record of how sin is divinely dealt with. So as we approach this narrative of Noah and the flood we should keep seven principles in mind.

1. The Bible teaches that all calamity, all natural and human disasters, are the result of sin. Whether it is a simple lie your child tells you about cleaning his/her room all the way to genocide, or from a wildfire to a flood, the Bible records how sin entered the world and details its many consequences going forward. In Noah’s time, what scholars call the antediluvial period, Gen 6:5 tells us that, 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. Gen 6:11-12 says, 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. So this was a time characterized by evil, violence, corruption, and willful rebellion.

2. In the course of history, God sometimes superimposes special judgements in response to egregious evil activity. Above and beyond the general curse brought upon nature and mankind, there are times when God lowers the hammer against a family, a people, a city, or nation. Jeroboam, Ahab, the Ammonites, Edomites, Sodom and Gomorrah, Ninevah, The Northern Kingdom in 721, or the Southern Kingdom in 586 are all examples. Here in Gen 6, the sin of the world is so egregious that God takes special action against the whole earth.

3. However, before such a special judgment, God always gives fair warning. He gave Noah’s generation warning. He gave the Northern kingdom and Southern Kingdom warning. Jesus gave his generation warning regarding the destruction of Jerusalem.

4. Before special judgment, God is extraordinarily patient. He is long suffering and gives people time to rethink their ways and repent. In Gen 6:3, the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with^[a] humans forever, for they are mortal^[b]; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.  No matter which way you interpret this, whether God limits man’s lifespan to 120 years, or it will be 120 years until the flood, God gives this generation ample time to repent. And so this is the pattern throughout the Bible, man is evil, and God gives him mercy and time to repent before facing special superimposed judgement.

5. When the iniquity is full or complete, God then steps in and brings judgment. This phrase-to fill up the measure of their sins, or the iniquity is not yet full, is used over and over in scripture. It has three implications (from W. F. Adeney).

a. There is a fullness of sin which brings its own penalty. In other words, sin can reach a point where its penalty can no longer be delayed. As Adeney says “it is though forbearance and guilt were in the scales. When guilt is full the balance dips. There is an end to all possible long-suffering. The more men go on in excesses of sin, the faster do they approach the inevitable day of reckoning. The sooner the sin is filled up to the measure which passes endurance, the sooner must the stroke of doom fall.” In other words, at some point the hammer falls.  

b. Therefore the greatest sin is sinning without restraint. In other words. To be on a path of continual unrepentant sin hastens the day of “full measure” that triggers a reckoning with Divine judgement.

c. There seems to be a limit tosins. As Adeney says, “There is a fullness of sins. There is no fullness of virtues; these can be developed indefinitely. The good man is growing up to a perfection. The bad man is being corrupted, not to a perfection, but to a fullness. Evil has limits; goodness has none. Satan is let loose for a time. God restrains the wrath of the wicked. Sin, through rebellion against God, cannot break away from all Divine control. Sins are limited by several means:

1. Capacity. We have a limited power of sinning.
2. Time. God sometimes cuts the sinner off in the midst of his days, and brings the guilty nation to destruction.
3. Providential control. The fullness of sins is not the amount which God predestines to be committed, for God is not the author of sin, nor does he will or permit it. This fullness is the measure beyond which God stays the evil from proceeding. When the tide of iniquity, driven onwards by rebellious powers, reaches this fullness, God says, “Here shall thy proud waves be stayed,” and the storm beats itself out in impotent fury. – W.F.A.

In summary, only God can measure when enough is enough, but when it is enough, judgment comes quickly and decisively (think the Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, Jerusalem in 586 BC and 70 AD).  

6. The greatest calamity and Judgment of all is coming in the future at the time of the Tribulation (see Dan 8:23-25).

7. Therefore the two main messages of the Bible are, God punishes and judges sin, and God mercifully provides a path of forgiveness and redemption.

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^[c] wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. In verses 9-12 we have a summary description of the world before the flood while in verse 13 we have a command to build the ark.

The World before the Flood, 6:9-12.

We touched on this situation when we looked at Gen 6:5 which characterized the state of the earth during Noah’s time, 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. From our study of Gen 4 and 6 we were able to characterize this period,

1. It is violent, Cain kills Abel, Lamech killed a man who had attacked him (4:8, 4:23).
2. It is rebellious, Cain was told to wander, yet he settled down and built a city (4:16-17).
3. It is sexually immoral, Lamech had 2 wives, angels and women intermarried (4:19, 6:2).
4. It is prideful. Lamech boasts (4:23-24).
5. It is technologically advancing, a society that trusts in tech rather than God, (4:20-22).
6. It is obsessed with wrong doing (6:5).
7. Evil is ubiquitous and pervasive (6:5).
8. It was corrupt in God’s sight (6:11).

We know from Gen 6:6-7, that God, in response to the general state of wickedness, would bring judgement, 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.” And now in verse 12 we have a summary, God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. 

But we see a thread of grace in the situation as Gen 6:8 says, But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Last time we noted this verse introduced the concept of the remnant.  The idea is no matter how terrible things get, God will always preserve a group of people (could be one or many) who express faith. In Noah’s case his preservation would preserve the line of the Messiah that God had promised in Gen 3:15. So now we come to verse 9 which focuses on Noah and his family.

Vs 9a, This is the account of Noah and his family.

We know we are in a new toldot, as we come across the familiar line, this is the account. In this toldot the focus will be on Noah. The fourth toldot will focus on Noah’s sons and starts in Gen 10:1.

Vs 9b, Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God.

Verse 9b, Proverbs 27:19 says, as water reflects the face, so one’s life reflects the heart. Here in verse 9b we have a description of Noah’s character. Note the three phrases,

1. He was a righteous man. The Hebrew word is tzaddick and means righteous. It is indicative of Noah’s standing before God. In Gen 15:6 we have a clarification of this idea.  God takes Abraham outside and shows him the stars of the sky and says, so shall your offspring be. The text says Abraham believed the Lord and he (God) credited it to him as righteousness. Righteousness is to be right in God’s sight, and Abraham received it through faith. The word credited is a banking term. We all have a spiritual bank account. But the Bible says that account remains empty until we come to God in faith, at which time God puts righteousness into our account. So when God looks at the banking books of your life, He sees it is there. And when he sees it, he declares you justified. This is Noah. He had righteousness in his account.  Note the emphasis here is inward.
2. He was blameless among the people of his time. The emphasis is now external.  This is the description of the outward manifestation of the inward righteousness. What it is saying is Noah was a genuine Godly man. The Hebrew word for blameless is tamim and means perfect, or without blemish. It was used of the sacrifices (Lev 1:3, 1:10, 3:1, 3:6) and also means without defect. In other words, Noah’s outward actions, his speech, his works, his life, matched the inward righteousness that he had.  A man is known by his fruit. What is jarring here is the social pressure he faced, and how alone he must have felt. He was the only righteous person on earth! No one to share his faith with, no church to go to, no home group, or fellow believer to cling to.  Noah lived in the midst of a society of rampant evil. Paul described the evil dysfunction of his own day in Galatians 5:19, The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; ²⁰ idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions ²¹ and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. But Noahs’s day was worse in that evil was more widespread and prevalent.
3. He walked faithfully with God. In the midst of this evil chaos, Noah remained faithful; day after day, month after month, and year after year, Noah stayed the course. Heb 11:7 describes him well, By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.

The question is how did he walk with the Lord and against the tide of his culture?

1. Know the Lord sees you (Gen 6:8, but Noah found favor with the Lord) (see also Prov 5:21, Heb 4:13)
2. Anchor yourself in God’s Word (Ps 119:105, Jn 6:68).
3. Count on His Faithfulness and Sovereignty even though things are disintegrating around you, (note Caleb and Joshua Num 13, SMA Dan 3:17-18, Jehosaphat 2 Chron 20, Hezekiah 2 K 18:13-2 K 19:37, Jeremiah Lam 3:1-24).
4. Connect with your Spiritual family (Gen 4:26, Seth and Enosh called on the name of the Lord, Noah and his fam Gen 8:18-20). Some of you don’t have biologically believing fam—so connect with Church fam.
5. Embrace Separation (Abraham and Lot –Gen 14, 18, 2 P 3:7-8).
6. Live for today; not yesterday, and not tomorrow (Mt 5:25-34).
7. Know you are salt and light, people are tasting and watching (Mt 5:13-15, Enoch Gen 5:21-24).

Vs 10, Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.

We will get a much more detailed look at these three in Gen 9 and 10. Shem means name, Ham means warm or hot, and Japheth means fair or beautiful.

Vs 11, Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence.

Verse 11 gives us additional insight as to the earth’s condition along with Gen 6:5. The word corrupt refers partly to the unnatural marriages and relationships of the fallen angels and the daughters of men, but also to the whole state of the earth at that time. The amplified states the earth was depraved and putrid in God’s sight. One author described it as man had made it unusable for God.   Verse 12 goes on to say all the people on earth had corrupted their ways, which means Noah was the only exception. We are not sure of his family but we assume they were saved because of their association with him.

The word violence refers to the general disposition of people. They were angry and acted upon it. Again the amplified gives us a good description, The land was full of violence, (desecration, infringement, outrage, assault, and lust for power).

Vs 12, God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. 

Verse 12 summarizes things, all the earth had corrupted their ways. Once more the amplified gives a good description, And God looked upon the world and saw how degenerate, debased, and vicious it was, for all humanity had corrupted their way upon the earth and lost their true direction.

The Command to build the Ark, 6:13-22.

Vs 13a, So God said to Noah,

The verse starts with, So God said to Noah. We are not sure as to the form of this revelation. Was it a dream?, a vision?, an angelic appearance? We note a similar approach taken with Abraham in Gen 12.  God said to Abraham.  In both cases, when God said, it made a life changing impression on the two men. Noah began the construction of an ark and Abraham took his family and moved away from all he knew to a foreign land he had never seen, all because God said.  This phrase appears seven times in the narrative, yet there is no verbal response recorded of Noah. Not until we get to 9:25-27 does Noah speak and his only quote is the curse pronounced on Canaan, one of Ham’s sons. The only thing we see when God says something to Noah is that he responds with an action that is in complete obedience to what God asked him to do. If we think about it for a moment we have all that God said right here in this book. How are we responding?

Vs 13b, “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.

What God said to Noah was that He was going to destroy all the people of the earth and the earth itself.  God lists the reason as it is filled with violence because of them. We have talked about violence in verse 11. The Hebrew word for destroy is shachat, which is also used for what man was doing to the earth In that he corrupted it. The Hebrew reads, they (mankind) ruined the earth with sin, so now God will ruin man with water. Peter reflected on this in 2 P 3:6, By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed.

Vs 14, So make yourself an ark of cypress^[c] wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out.

Vs 14 initiates the command to build the ark. It is a summary command of what the ark was to be. But it is important to note the three phrases God gives.

1. Make yourself an ark of cypress wood. The word for ark is actually an Egyptian word that is transliterated into Hebrew as the word teivah. The word does not refer to a boat but rather a box. This word is only used here and in reference to the much smaller ark the parents of Moses used to hide Moses in the reeds of the Nile river (Ex 2:3-5). There is a similarity between the small ark in which Moses was placed and the large ark that Noah is asked to build. In both cases, the ark saved the two men from drowning; and through the ark, Noah brought deliverance to humanity while Moses would bring deliverance to Israel.

The second key word here is cypress wood.  Other translations have gopher wood. The better translation is gopher which is the transliteration of the Hebrew word. The problem is there is no such thing as gopher wood so we have no idea what type of wood this was. Translators inserted cypress because it is present in the Middle east and would be a good boat building wood. It is a mystery as to what type of wood was used.

• Make rooms in it. The Hebrew word for rooms is nest, like a bird’s nest. In other words, Noah was to construct a box with many rooms that would serve as nests for the animals to reside there. They each had their own place.
• And coat it with pitch inside and out. The purpose for the pitch was to waterproof the boat, but it is interesting that Moses did not chose the regular Hebrew word for pitch. Rather he used the word kapher, which means a covering. It is the same root word used for atonement. There is a correlation because the covering of the outside of the ark with pitch saved the inhabitants from the judgement of the water, just as we are saved by the covering of Christ’s blood, thus from the judgement of God’s wrath.

Some Literary Considerations (from Fructenbaum).

The Toldot consists of twelve paragraphs,

1. The first describes the corrupt situation of the world before the flood, 6:9-12.
2. The second describes the command to build the ark and why, 6:13-22.
3. The third is the command to enter the ark, 7:1-5
4. The fourth is the entrance into the ark, 7:6-9.
5. The fifth is the start of the flood, 7:10-16.
6. The sixth is the description of the flood, 7:17-24.
7. The seventh is the end of the flood and the return to normality, 8:1-14.
8. The eighth is the command to exit, 8:15-17.
9. The ninth is the exit and Noah’s sacrifice, 8:18-22.
10. The tenth is God’s blessings on Noah and his sons, 9:1-7
11. The Eleventh is the Noahic Covenant, 9:8-11.
12. The Twelfth is the sign of the Covenant, the rainbow, 9:12-17.

Note the first six paragraphs describe the acts of God which bring about the destruction of the earth, starting with the proliferation of evil and ending with a lone ark bobbing on the sea. The second six paragraphs describe the acts of God to renew the earth beginning with the world destroyed by water and ending with a promise it will not happen again.

The number seven is prominent in the narrative. There is a mention of seven days (7:4, 7:10, 8:10, 8:12). There are seven pairs of clean animals (7:2-3). God spoke to Noah seven times (6:13, 7:1, 8:15, 9:1, 9:8, 9:12, 9:17).  The second paragraph uses the Hebrew root asah seven times which means to make.  In the 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th paragraphs, the root “to come” is used seven times in reference to entering the ark. The root “to destroy or “wipe out” is used seven times. In the last two paragraphs the word “covenant” is used seven times. The word “water” is used twenty one times which is a multiple of seven. The word “flesh” (in ASV) is used fourteen times which is two times seven. Noah’s name appears 35 times which is five times seven.

This whole section can also be seen as a chiastic. A chiastic is a literary device where a sequence of ideas is presented and then repeated in reverse order creating a mirror image of each other. Note how this works,

1. God resolves to destroy the earth, 6:11-13.
2. Noah builds the ark, 6:14-22.
3. God commands Noah and his family to enter the ark, 7:1-9.
4. The flood begins, 7:10-16.
5. The flood prevails for 150 days with the mountains covered, 7:17-24.
6. God remembers Noah, 8:1a.
7. The flood recedes after 150 days and the mountains become visible, 8:1b-5.
8. The earth dries up, 8:6-14.
9. God commands Noah and his family to exit the ark, 8;15-19.
10. Noah builds an altar, 8:20.
11. God resolves not to destroy humanity, 8:21-22.

The point of all this is the symmetry and poetry of the writing. Very few of us could sit down and write a narrative with these types of characteristic woven into the text.