The Big Idea: God saved sinful humankind from the waters of the flood, with the promise of a whole new start.
Learning Goal: Learners will trust that God’s covenant with Noah is a covenant of love with them too.
It takes only five short chapters in the first book in the Bible for things to get pretty ugly and messy. By chapter 6 of Genesis, human violence and willfulness have corrupted God’s good creation so thoroughly that God is “sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (6:6). In this story we find humanity at its worst, God brokenhearted with an extreme plan for ridding creation of this awfulness, and only one righteous man and his family for God to work with. Whether Noah was righteous in the truest sense or just relatively so might be debated, but the story tells us that Noah “walked with God,” and indeed, God picked Noah to be the initial partner in this first universal covenant. The earth was threatened by watery chaos, but “God remembered Noah” (8:1) and the ark kept Noah’s family and the animals safe. The water was driven back by the wind/breath/spirit of God (8:1; compare to 1:2) and the universal promise made to Noah is marked with the sign of the rainbow.
Reading the Noah story straight through (chapters 6-9) is a little repetitious and circular. In fact, it seems like two accounts at times. Many biblical scholars agree that the three chapters probably reflect two different sources: the J and P of source scholarship. We are the recipients of a fuller story because of these two accounts.
The flood story in Genesis is similar to many flood stories in the literature of other ancient civilizations; however, there is an important difference in the Genesis account. Most ancient flood stories feature a god or gods sending a flood upon creation without much reason. Whimsy and caprice seem to be the motives. In Genesis, God used the flood as judgment with the end goal of redemption. The flood’s purpose is to allow a new beginning.
The divine judgment in this story is unleashed for the sake of redemption. God is not taking revenge on anyone or just looking for something to do. God wills to save, not destroy. Humanity has apparently become so unbalanced by this time that drastic measures are necessary, but the object is not terror or even “getting rid of evil.” The goal of the flood is restoration.
A covenant is a binding promise between two unequal parties. The covenant with Noah is just that, a bit one-sided. God’s promise to Noah in particular, and humanity and the rest of creation more generally (9:8-11), is universal in scope, and its grace is expressed in the regularities of nature (8:22). There is no mention of Noah’s part of this promise. We’re only told that God makes a promise. And indeed, the rainbow, the sign of the covenant, is a reminder to God, not humanity, of this promise (9:14-15).
God limits Godself in this covenant. Never again will judgment and ultimate restoration come through flood. On the other side of the flood it is not humanity that changes, but God! (Indeed, Noah is in trouble within a few verses, and the descendants of Noah’s sons are wreaking havoc in the next chapter.) God commits to an imperfect world in this story. God decides to grieve but stick with it, working with the imperfections and even the wickedness. It seems as though God realizes a couple of things in the course of the flood. If humans are to live, they need rules and boundaries (9:1-7), but they also need grace and unconditional promises. The Noah story is a story of both realism and promise.
