Genesis 7:17-24

2006.Sep.29 19:17

Destruction

Read Genesis 7:17-24 | Full Chapter

For forty days the rain poured down without stopping. And the water became deeper and deeper, until the boat started floating high above the ground. Finally, the mighty flood was so deep that even the highest mountain peaks were almost twenty-five feet below the surface of the water. Not a bird, animal, reptile, or human was left alive anywhere on earth. The LORD destroyed everything that breathed. Nothing was left alive except Noah and the others in the boat. A hundred fifty days later, the water started going down.
(Genesis 7:17-24, CEV)

I thought I’d branch out a little on my version quoting. I’ve never read the CEV (that I remember) but I do enjoy when a translation doesn’t bother trying to fit everything exactly into verses. The verse numbers such as “19-20” are refreshing. Of course, I know nothing of the quality of this translation.

This is a plain and direct story of a creator destroying the vast majority of his creation. If I felt the need to destroy this much of say, a website I was working on, I’d probably just dump the whole thing and start from scratch. But I’ve already written about God’s decision to save some.

So, instead, let’s take this at the surface. Jehovah is a sustainer, but he’s also a destroyer when called for, and this is one of his most powerful acts of destruction. This is just a taste of God’s raw power and it is awe-inspiring. Awe-inspiring in the sense that it’s none of my family or friends being wiped out in this flood.

We Christians tend to distance ourself from Jehovah’s “destructive” works. We’re convinced that he at least allows bad things to happen, but they tend to happen to others, and when they happen to us, we grab hold of truisms–at lest that’s my impression. I don’t have a deep point or a lesson here, but I don’t want to detach myself from the times when God obliterates something. First, because I want to be his friend, and destroying something you’ve created is a good time to have friends. Second, because, well, that’s part of this life, and I don’t want to turn a blind eye to it. What does that mean for me? I don’t really know. But I think I need to care.

Genesis 7:1-16

2006.Sep.18 21:28

Statistics and Obedience

Read Genesis 7:1-16 | Full Chapter

Then the LORD said to Noah, “Enter the ark, you and all your household, for you alone I have seen to be righteous before Me in this time.”
(Genesis 7:1, NASB)

So, now the ark is completed, and God gives the go ahead for Noah, his family, seven pairs (I think) of clean animals and birds, and a pair each of unclean animals, (Assumedly, he made the clean/unclean distinction to Noah at some prior point.) “For”, states Jehovah, "after seven more days, I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights; and I will blot out from the face of the land every living thing that I have made." (Genesis 7:4, NASB) . So, Noah does as commanded, and his family and this array of animals load onto the boat, and, on the seventh day after God tells them it’s going to start raining in seven days, it starts raining.

So, yeah, that pretty much covers this section. What it is replete with is numbers, especially seven, and including to the day of Noah’s life on which this occurred; and the refrain that Noah did as God had commanded him. What strikes me about the numbers is that Noah obeyed to very specifics. It appears he actually bothered to get seven pairs of each clean animal, etc., and to be in the boat and ready on the seventh day. This was not a, ‘Yeah, I’ll get to it’ obedience, but a ‘Yes, God, I’m listening and now I’m doing and not delaying or modifying’ obedience and the guy is six hundred years old, which is not a spring chicken even by pre-flood Genesis standards.

When I put that level of concentrated obedience together with God’s comment that Noah alone has he “seen to be righteous…in this time”, I remember that while relationship is very important to God, the quality of that relationship is determined largely by my obedience to His laws and his specific will for me. And I have a couple of advantages over Noah. I have immediate access to the readable Word of God in the Bible, and I have freedom in Christ. How much more then ought I, if I really desire to be a friend of God, be obedient to Him.