Notes on Noah - 9 November 2009 |
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Some assorted scribbles about Noah.
- 6:1-8 sets the context of increasing corruption and ungodliness prior to the toledoth Noah, with which Noah’s godliness contrasts starkly, and against which Noah would have had to contend.
- Humanity’s heart evil (6:5); the LORD’s heart vexed (6:6).
- Noah found hen (favour, acceptance) in the eyes of the LORD (6:8).
- ‘Noah’ the first word in the toledoth Noah (6:9).
- Noah introduced immediately as ‘righteous’ (first occurrence of ‘righteous’ in the Bible). Cf. Noah as the one who had found hen (favour, acceptance – again, first occurrence in the Bible) in the LORD’s eyes. Bruce, Hebrews, p. 288.
- ‘Noah walked with God’ (6:9). We already know what happens to people who do this (5:22, 24). It won’t be surprising if Noah (like Enoch) is ‘taken away’ from the world that’s coming under judgment.
- ‘Walked with God’ in OT: Only (1) Noah and Enoch (Heb et); (2) Priests (Malachi 2:6 Heb et); [(3) basic requirement of all people (Micah 6:8, Heb im)].
- Lots of ‘earth’ (aretz) in Gen 6:9ff.
- Gen 6:11-13: repetition; God ‘seeing’. Earth ‘ruined’ x5 (spoiling of a garment or pot; Wenham, Genesis 1-15, p. 171).
- ‘Animals and men had been intended to fill the earth (1:22, 28); instead, violence (hamas) fills it’ (Wenham, Genesis 1-15, p. 171).
- It was specifically to Noah that God disclosed his plan to destroy the earth (6:13), followed by the instructions concerning the ark. Perhaps, then, it would have been down to Noah to proclaim the coming judgment to other people. Hence ‘herald of righteousness’ (2 Pet 2:5)?
- 6:18-19 ‘with you’ (itak) x3. God’ will establish his covenant ‘with you [Noah]’; therefore your relatives will be safe [only] ‘with you’; and the animals shall be kept alive ‘with you’. Cf. 6:20 ‘with you [eleyka] to keep them alive’. Similarly, Noah told to take ‘to you’ all the food, and it shall be food ‘to you and to them’ (6:21). Again, repetition of Noah in 7:13: lit, ‘Noah and Shem and Ham and Japhet the sons of Noah and the three wives of his sons [went] with him into the ark.’ Furthermore, 7:23b says that ‘Only Noah was left, and those who were with him.’ Every other living thing is sustained by its solidarity with, and provision at the hands of, Noah.
- 6:22 repeated emphasis on Noah’s obedience. 7:1 Emphatic placement of ‘you’. Lit, ‘for you, I have seen, are righteous before me in this generation.’ Moreover, ‘I have seen’ resembles ‘the LORD saw’ (same verb), which ‘[introduces] a decisive divine intervention’ (Wenham, Genesis 1-15, p. 143-144) and ‘a state of affairs that had long been in existent, and on account of which a decision has to be taken’ (Wenham, 144, quoting Cassuto). Again, more focus on Noah. Noah’s obedience again in 7:5, 9. 16.
- Noah doesn’t say a single word throughout Gen 6-8, despite the fact that the LORD says a lot to him. Noah finally speaks in Gen 9:25, his first words are somewhat surprising: ‘Cursed be Canaan…’ – ‘the first time a man is recorded as uttering a curse’ (Wenham, Genesis 1-15, p. 201). Maybe that’s what Heb 11:7 means when it says that Noah ‘condemned the world.’
- Noah’s curse is focused on Canaan, not Ham, which is surprising since Ham is the one who’s sinned. Perhaps Noah wants to avoid going against God’s blessing of Ham, along with Noah and his other sons, in 9:1. See further Wenham, Genesis 1-15, p. 201.
- Noah ‘condemned the world’ – how? Bruce: he built the ark in obedience to the Lord, and ‘in the event his faith was vindicated and their unbelief was condemned’ (p. 288).
Posted by Steve Jeffery · Topics: Bible, Minister's Blog