Noah Already? (Gen 4:17-9:17)

I wonder how frequently I'll be beginning or ending with genealogies...

Before the next post (because there's more family tree listings coming then, I'm sure), I'll be starting a visual representation of the biblical genealogies. I don't know about you, but it'll make them easier for me.  The end of Genesis chapter 4 and all of Genesis chapter 5 are devoted to who married who, had which son, and how old they were when they died.  Spoiler alert: They were freaking old.  Methuselah old, literally (nine hundred sixty-nine years old! 969!).  The youngest person listed is Enoch, and it's actually unclear what happened to him, at three hundred and sixty-five years old.  Everyone else is listed with "and he died" at the end of their little blurb, but Enoch "walked with God" after his son Methuselah (the very same) was born. And he kept on "[walking] with God" for three hundred more years, and "then he was no more, because God took him." Okay...? Could this be like, a comatose situation? Literal walking with God? Or maybe severe depression at the wickedness of humankind that after three hundred years he could stand living no longer and took his own life?  Either way, at the end of this branch of humanity's family tree, we get to Noah and his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

While those boys were up and kickin', the world was a bad place. Humans were wicked and violent. The sons of God came down and took human wives because the ladies were so pretty. It seems like God wanted to get a handle on the situation because God cut human lifespans way down to a measly 120 years. Guess we can't go for Methuselah's record now unless we change the calendar and counting system all around... Are we sure they hadn't done that in the first place? Anyways. The Nephilim also get mentioned in the wickedness, and my footnotes say that they are possibly synonymous with the sons of God. What is this nonsense you say? Well, when in doubt: the Internet. I found some pretty weird things, and a lot of photoshopped pictures, but Wikipedia seems to have an okay page about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephilim  So with all the wickedness abounding, God saw that humans are inclined to be evil. It seems to be our nature. Evil enough that God regretted making us so much that God decided to Etch-a-Sketch the Earth clean. I don't know how I feel about God regretting humankind, even if it was before starting over. While I understand that God is supposed to be infallible, don't you think that that would mean that God is incapable of making bad things? I know that with choice, good things can go bad, and choice makes life interesting, but still. When I read Gen 6:6-7, it sounds like God is saying "My bad. This sucks. Let me clean up after myself." And after fessing up to that, God noticed Noah, like some kind of happy accident of righteousness.

Noah is described as "blameless in his generation" and walking with God (like Enoch?). Because of Noah, God decided to not kill off everything... just, you know, most things... except fish. The whole story only ever discusses fleshy things that depend on the breath of life and that walk or creep on the earth or fly in the heavens. Apparently the fish were right the first time. So God tells Noah to build an ark, which can also be translated as chest, box, and basket. Picture that. Big floating wooden box... weird, but kind of neat. In the ark, Noah is to take his whole immediate family (wife, sons, and sons' wives), and two of every land dwelling creature. Not that it's said in so many words, but mating purposes.  Oh, but there should be some extra sets of the clean animals. Not for eating though, because animals aren't food yet, just for fun. And it's an itty-bitty living space for all of that. 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, 45 feet high (yeah, I did the math). For two of each animal, bird, and creeping thing in existence, plus Noah and family, plus food for everything/one. But Noah did it, and God made the waters come (not only rain, but from under the land as well) for forty days and nights, as promised earlier, and then leaves it sit for 150 days.

"But God remembered Noah" and caused the waters to start receding. Nothing else is said about God remembering here, but to me, that implies forgetfulness. It's not like God had a million other people to watch over. They've all just recently drowned! Isn't God also supposed to be omniscient? How does forgetfulness play into that? So far God is not being painted as the picture of divinity in this story. Let's see how they deal with that later...  Anyway, Noah starts using birds to test out the waters and to find land.  First a raven, an unclean animal, that finds nothing, nothing, and more nothing. Then, a dove. First try, nothing. Second try, an olive leaf! Third try? One less dove. Presumably it's off nesting somewhere, building a pretty home for its lover that it met on its Gilligan's Island style three hour tour.

Now that land is back, Noah and his family venture out.  Noah being the stand-up guy that he is builds an altar and gives a burnt offering to God of those extra clean animals he was supposed to bring along. Because God so liked the smell of the offering, God resolved to do a few things:
1. Never again curse the ground (like God did when Adam and Eve ate from the special tree, or when Cain murdered Abel).
2. "Destroy every living creature as I have done," i.e. with a flood.
3. Give humans complete reign over the animals, including when to kill and eat them. Yep. As long as humans kill the animals wisely, and there's no blood left in 'em, beef is what's for dinner.
4. Requires blood for blood as far as humans go, establishing law essentially. Even animals can be held accountable (and will be apparently) to this if they kill a human.
God then seals this covenant with a rainbow. How pretty! Granted, it's a large scale symbolic representation, where "hanging up a bow signifies retirement from battle." God reiterates though that God will never again wipe the earth clean with a flood. I spy with my little eye a loophole... hm...

Until the next genealogy,
<3 Agnostic in the Pews