No Inconvenient Truth for Noah

[This was first posted May 28, 2012.  Recently Sinaites had a discussion about details of this narrative and none of us could remember exactly how old Noah was before and after the flood, how many years did it take him to build the ark . . . we don’t blame our forgetfulness on so-called ‘senior moments’ but on lazy minds and short-term memory which retains information only for as long as it is useful.  So now, our readers benefit from our memory failure. Updated with insights gained in 3 years since this was initially posted.—Admin1]

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Except for his drunken stupor after the flood, what’s not to like about Noah?  

The very first mention of his name—right after the Creator had decided to blot man from the face of the earth—immediately brings hope for mankind:

6:8  But Noah found favor in the eyes of YHWH.

9  Noah was a righteous, wholehearted man in his generation

in accord with God did Noah walk. 

Image from 220lily.wordpress.com

With that introduction, expect more unconditional obedience from this man to the God Who speaks to him,  as in “Yes LORD, anything You ask!

God spoke to Noah just as He spoke to the very first couple and the very first firstborn son Cain.

With no written instructions recorded for humanity, we suppose the Creator had to resort to speaking to specific people for specific reasons, in this case to prepare for the first destructive deluge that would wipe out evil humanity who, it appears, include everyone else outside of the Noah family.

 God shares with Noah His plan to flood the earth, gives Noah specific instructions about how to build an Ark, what to load on it, and best of all He establishes a covenant and saves Noah’s whole family.  

The narrative is silent about whether or not the rest of Noah’s family were worth saving;  God’s grace extends to them, evidently from the simple fact that they were related to Noah.  Here’s the first indicator that possibly, God’s wonderful grace covers not only a righteous person but extends to his loved ones as well regardless of their spiritual worthiness . . . but only to a certain extent and possibly, and applied only to physical protection.  As we will find out later, there are other reasons for saving the whole Noah family.

Later in Genesis, we see the same divine grace extended to Lot, Abraham’s nephew who merits nothing from his own righteousness but is saved from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by virtue of his relationship with his righteous uncle Abraham.  

But back to Noah, a “Yes” man, YHWH’s kind of devotee.

6:22  Noah did it, according to all that God commanded him so he did.  

“Noah did it” no ifs or buts!  Put yourself in Noah’s place.  How ‘inconvenient’, to say the least,  is it to start building an Ark at age 480 years that would take 120 years to finish? He could not have built the Ark by himself with the proportions instructed by God, so perhaps Noah’s family deserved to be saved with him after all, for surely they helped Noah in the construction.  Imagine doing this on dry land, amidst incredulous looks and probably jeers and mocking from people who must have thought them fools!  Why?  We surmise that since the earth was watered by mist or gentle rainfall, the ‘waters above’ described in the creation story were held back up there for this very purpose — a universal deluge.  Folklore in other countries and cultures include a flood narrative according to skeptics who don’t believe in biblical claims, so the point is . . . ???

But back to obedient Noah, the same phrase is repeated one chapter later.

7:5 Noah did it, according to all that YHWH had commanded him.

At age 600 years old,

 6:11 then burst all the well-springs of the great Ocean and the sluices of the heavens opened up.

12  The torrent was upon the earth for forty days and forty nights.

Did Noah complain at any time? The text doesn’t say so, not even when he and family had to load the Ark with a pair of every unclean animals and 7 pairs of clean animals. Not even when they were all cooped up for that length of time with the animals needing to eat and poop!  Someone suggested that God must have put all the animals in hibernation for all that time to lighten the chores of the family of eight.  Regardless, do we get a peep out of Noah? None recorded.

Question:  If we, readers, learn about “clean” and “unclean” animals only later in Leviticus 11,  how did Noah know as early as his time which is which?  Connect the dots when you read these narratives and hazard a guess: Noah must have been told by God Himself, except the narrative is not explicit about that. Noah knew, period.  [Worth investigating is the speculation that since there are two accounts of the loading of animals, the 2nd account mentioning ‘clean’ and 7 pairs comes from proponents of the Documentary Hypothesis; check out http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2010/09/24/the-documentary-hypothesis.aspx#Article.]

To Noah, there’s nothing inconvenient about the whole ordeal he and his family were put through! We have to hand it to Noah first, and second, his family who went along with him in accomplishing all that Noah was instructed to do.  But then why not, they WERE saved when everyone else perished.  

7:23  Noah alone remained,

and those who were with him in the Ark.

What a sight it must have been to see animals go in and out of the Ark; this is why the flood story is such a great visual story for children’s books. The imagery is so rich for illustrators.  But let us not miss the teaching for mankind with additional insights about this Creator God.

From Noah’s sons and their wives, the world is repopulated once more:

9:1  Bear fruit and be many and fill the earth!

We heard this first in Eden; then echoed here, implying a second chance for mankind to start afresh—-

• from a family handpicked by the Life-giving God,
• a whole family who obey all His instructions
• presumably because of the leadership of their patriarch
• whose faith in the God who spoke to him was unquestioning.

 Would that we could be like Noah in terms of trust and obedience!  

The rainbow covenant assures us that God will not do an encore of this particular manner of destroying all living things

8:21 I will never curse the soil again on humankind’s account,

since what the human heart forms is evil from its youth;

I will never again strike down all living-things, as I have done.  

9:12-17  This is the sign of the covenant

which I set between me and you

and all living beings that are with you,

for ageless generations:  

My bow I set in the clouds

so that it may serve as a sign of the covenant

between me and the earth.

 It shall be:  

when I becloud the earth with clouds

and in the clouds the bow is seen,

I will call to mind my covenant

that is between me and you and all living beings—

all flesh: never again shall the waters become a Deluge,

to bring all flesh to ruin!  

When the bow is in the clouds,

I will look at it,

to call to mind the age-old covenant

between God and all living beings—

all flesh that is upon the earth.  

God said to Noah:  

This is the sign of the covenant that I have established

between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.

For the first time, meat is introduced in man’s diet; prior to the flood, man was vegetarian, but since the earth was submerged in water for up to 150 days, all vegetation was soggy and unfit for food.  

The reason for 7 pairs of clean animals now becomes clear; they were fit for food [9:1-6] and the only prohibition is that the animal is not eaten alive. 

9:4 However: flesh with its life, its blood, you are not to eat!  

To us today, that sounds like a ridiculous prohibition, for who would want to eat a live chicken? Though, is eating a dead chicken more palatable . . . come to think of it, the flesh of dead animals is what we DO eat.  

At Weimar,  a 7th-Day Adventist Lifestyle Change Program called NEWSTART, [acronym for Nutrition/Exercise/Water/Sunshine/Temperance/Air/Rest/Trust in a Divine Power] they cure chronic diseases from lifetime lifestyle-abuse simply by returning to biblical principles on health and they do this primarily by recommending a strictly plant-based diet, in effect VEGAN. No animal products of any kind plus no substances that are addictive (throw out coffee and alcohol).  One sentence from one lecturer effectively sticks to one’s mind:  “Why do you turn your stomach into a cemetery for dead animals?”

It makes sense to be vegetarian and eat LIVE plant foods; “live” meaning the potential for life is there, throw the seeds of a tomato in your backyard and soon, a tomato plant sprouts up.  But going back to eating a live animal, God would not add a prohibition about eating live animals unless something was customary during the times.  [Why enact a law against jaywalking if the practice is not rampant and posing hazards to both motorists and pedestrians?]

Clean animals were fit for sacrifice:

 8:20 Noah built a slaughter-site to YHWH.  

He took from all pure animals and from all pure fowl

and offered up offerings upon the slaughter-site.

 Noah was grateful to God for sparing him and his family and his expression of gratitude took the form of “burnt-offerings.”  When Cain and Abel brought “offerings,” we are not sure from the text if they were “burnt” as specified in Noah’s offerings.  Later, offerings to God would be categorized for specific purposes, but for now, at this point in biblical history, the reader is not privy to more details.

We do know God’s reaction:

 8:21 And when YHWH smelled the soothing savor

YHWH said in his heart:  I will never curse the soil again . . .

A side comment about a pair of unclean animals — obviously, a pair means two, presumably male and female of each species and why? Obviously for procreation of their kind.  Let us connect this with the burning issue today about homosexual marriages.  Just think, if only one gender of every species, even if there were two of the same gender were loaded on the ARK, that would have been the end of man and beast. God so designed His living beings in such a way that some organisms could reproduce all by themselves, but others need two genders to successfully do it. 

It is taught that capital punishment as in the death penalty, is exacted here by divine justice: 

9:5 However, too:  for your blood, of your own lives,

I will demand satisfaction-

from all wild-animals I will demand it,

and from humankind, from every man regarding his brother,

demand satisfaction for human life.  

Whoever now sheds human blood,

for that human shall his blood be shed,

for in God’s image he made humankind.

Today, there are such groups called Noachides . . . TRUTH-seeking gentiles like ourselves who wish to abide by YHWH’s commandments except that they make a distinction between commandments for Jews and commandments for non-Jews.  They have figured out that what man would have known of YHWH’s requirements by the time of Noah are what they will apply to their lives.   We, Sinaites, claim that the Sinai Revelation (TORAH) has superseded the Noachide laws, and since TORAH is for all humanity, Jews as well as Gentiles, what we propose in this website is what we understand as applicable to non-Jews, those outside of Israel.

NSB@S6K

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Here’s the article about Noachides:

Image from arvin95.blogspot.com

The Seven Noachide Laws By Hillel ben David (Greg Killian)