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Building an ark is a whole lot more complex than, say, building remote control helicopters, but then again, Noach was given 100 years to complete the project. Here’s Part 2 of my first-ever full-length sermon on Noach and the flood. Or listen to it!

Before we can address that, let us take a look at the conditions that surround Adonai’s decision to send a flood on the Earth. The Torah paints the picture this way in:

Genesis 6:11-13 (CJB)
The earth was corrupt before God, the earth was filled with violence. God saw the earth, and, yes, it was corrupt; for all living beings had corrupted their ways on the earth. God said to Noach, “The end of all living beings has come before me, for because of them the earth is filled with violence. I will destroy them along with the earth.

The part that stands out to me there is that violence is the reason cited by Adonai as his motive for sending such destruction on the Earth. Think about that. In our time, we have wars going on throughout the world, terrorist bombings, all sorts of violent crime from muggings to shootings and stabbings to rapes and other atrocities, more than we have time here tonight to name. As much evil as there is in the world today, yet Adonai is showing us mercy, but this generation of Noach’s, He destroyed. Was the level of violence then greater than it is now?

Some would argue, definitely not. That’s because there is a minority theory out there that the real reason behind the flood was not violence, but the presence of the Nephilim, which Simon spoke about last week. While there is some support for that as a contributing factor, I do not believe we can lay all the blame for the violence in the world at the feet of the Nephilim alone; if that were true, then Adonai would have found more righteous in the Earth than Noach alone.

One thing I find very important about the flood narrative, which also underlines Noah’s righteousness, is the parallel with the life if his great-grandfather, Enoch. Enoch walked with God, and as a result, was spared from physical death. Noach also walked with God, and it should be noted that by being selected by Adonai as the sole righteous person of his generation on the Earth, Noach was similarly spared from a type of physical death – in his case, death in the flood, rather than from all death.

Now, nearly all of us are familiar with the account of Adonai’s instructions to Noach on how to build the ark and what kinds of creatures, and how many of them, he was to gather together with him, so I’m going going to spend a lot of time on those details.

Instead, I want to focus on some issues I feel are often overlooked in relation to the flood. First, Adonai begins to establish his covenant with Noach before the first raindrop ever falls.

Genesis 6:18
But I will establish my covenant with you; you will come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife and your sons’ wives with you.

After the flood, Adonai reaffirms this covenant with Noach. As it is written in:

Genesis 9:8-11 (CJB)
God spoke to Noach and his sons with him; he said, “As for me––I am herewith establishing my covenant with you, with your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you–– the birds, the livestock and every wild animal with you, all going out of the ark, every animal on earth. I will establish my covenant with you that never again will all living beings be destroyed by the waters of a flood, and there will never again be a flood to destroy the earth.”

This covenant led to the establishment of the Noachide laws … those commands of God which are incumbent upon all mankind to obey, and not just Jews living in the land if Israel. According to the parashah and further explained in the Talmud, here are the seven Noachide laws:

Sanhedrin 58b
1. Do not murder.
2. Do not steal.
3. Do not worship false gods.
4. Do not be sexually immoral.
5. Do not eat a limb removed from a live animal.
6. Do not curse God.
7. Set up courts and bring offenders to justice.

These are the laws generally considered incumbent upon all humanity to obey, since all humanity is descended from Noach.

And now, to get back to the flood.

As I pointed out earlier, the flood has been a major bone of contention between believers and scientists ever since science arose. It is important to remember, however, that science is limited to the realm of the observable, and even in that arena, science can fall short if limited by a preconceived set of notions.

Let’s start with what the Bible teaches as true, as it relates to the flood itself. As it is written in:

Genesis 7:17-24 (CJB)
The flood was forty days on the earth; the water grew higher and floated the ark, so that it was lifted up off the earth. The water overflowed the earth and grew deeper, until the ark floated on the surface of the water. The water overpowered the earth mightily; all the high mountains under the entire sky were covered; the water covered the mountains by more than twenty–two–and–a–half feet. All living beings that moved on the earth perished––birds, livestock, other animals, insects, and every human being, everything in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life; whatever was on dry land died. He wiped out every living thing on the surface of the ground––not only human beings, but livestock, creeping animals and birds in the air. They were wiped out from the earth; only Noach was left, along with those who were with him in the ark. The water held power over the earth for 150 days.

Later, it is started in:

Genesis 8:13-14
By the first day of the first month of the 601st year the water had dried up from off the earth; so Noach removed the covering of the ark and looked; and, yes, the surface of the ground was dry. It was on the twenty–seventh day of the second month that the earth was dry.

This is what science has a problem with: that the entire earth flooded, and that it lasted a year.

Recently, the cable channel History International did a one-hour documentary called “The Real Noah.” In it, they put forward a theory completely in conflict with the Biblical account, but one which, apparently, science is willing to accept.

In the account, Noach is transformed into a Sumarian trader, famous for trading in livestock on a boat that goes up and down a major river in the Middle East. The massive ark of the Biblical account is traded in for an average trader’s vessel, and the flood little more than a localized anomaly that may have flooded several cities in a valley after the bursting of a natural dam. In this documentary, this Noah’s boat wasn’t large enough to carry more than Noah and a few animals – there would have been no room for his wife, sons and their wives at all. And the idea put forth by this so-called scientific and historical Noah is that his legend grew in the retelling and retelling, until this small flood he weathered became the Biblical account we are familiar with.

Of course, it’s all nonsense. And I’m not the only one to say so. In his book, The Bible Has the Answers, Dr. Henry Morris puts it this way:

Dr. Henry Morris, The Bible Has the Answers
In fact, the ark was so commodious that the whole story makes sense only if the Flood were a universal flood. The ark was far too large for only local animals. For that matter, if the Flood were only local, no ark would have been needed at all! The problem of preserving human and animal life could have been solved far more easily by merely moving out of the endangered flood plains.

If one doubts that the flood was deep enough to cause th cessation of all life from the earth, a tradition from the Rabbis has it covered. We read in:

Sanhedrin 108
The generation of the Flood was judged with boiling water.

Now, this is where it gets kind of interesting. Science claims an Earth that is billions of years old and affected by an ice age, right? Yet is this an observable truth? Or simply a way of reinterpreting the facts in a way that cuts God out of the picture?

Let me start with the example of the dinosaur and the dragon. For millennia, people have told tales of dragons – which at their core are large lizards that at one time roamed the earth. Science calls belief in dragons superstitious nonsense. And we all know that the Bible does refer to dragons, as well, if only as an image of haSatan. However, when the fossil record reveals the existence of giant, lizard-like creatures, what do they do? They invent a new word: dinosaur.

Yet according to Merriam-Webster’s Online dictionary, the term dinosaur was coined in 1841 by Sir Richard Owen, a Victorian-era anatomist; he combined two Greek words, “deinos,” meaning “terrible,” and “sauros,” meaning “lizard,” to create the word. Suddenly confronted with evidence of giant, lizard-like creatures, do scientists admit the Bible is correct? No! They create a new word and suddenly belief in dinosaurs is scientific, but belief in dragons is not! But really, it’s just looking at the same information in two different ways.

I would like to offer the idea that it is the same way with the flood. Science finds polar ice caps, these huge blocks of ice; they find woolly mammoths in these icebergs – like the one shown here:

Often, such creatures are found frozen standing completely upright, in poses that do not indicate freezing to death, as the theory of Ice Ages would have us believe, but poses which would seem to indicate… drowning.

Now think about it: a flood covers the entire Earth. The destruction is vast and radically changes the entire face of the Earth, possibly even tearing continents apart. In fact, the theory of one pre-flood supercontinent, Pangaea, which was followed by the breaking up of the lands into the modern continents, was a theory first put forward by scientists who believed the Biblical account.

This slide shows how the sons of Noach may have spread out after the flood, before the continents separated completely, to populate the entire Earth. Consider the jutting mountains and deep valleys we now enjoy. What is the better explanation for them: a slow, centuries-long ice age process? Or a sudden and terrible worldwide deluge?

This may sound strange to many of you, but that’s because we live in a society trained from the earliest ages to look as the data in one way: the way of science. What I submit to you about the flood of Noach is not an insistence that you must believe it occurred contrary to all the evidence, but that it is possible to believe not only that it occurred, but that the evidence is there, but has been misinterpreted by a scientific culture bent on disproving the truth of Adonai’s Torah.

It’s food for thought and my only hope is that if you happen to be someone who believes in evolution, that this will at least pique your curiosity about whether there’s another way to interpret observable data.

Now we move into our third point: the effect of the flood on Noach. One thing we can be sure of is that, however wicked was the generation from which Noach emerged, it could not have been an easy thing to witness their total destruction. We get this insight from:

Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible
The narrative is vivid and forcible, though entirely wanting in that sort of description which in a modern historian or poet would have occupied the largest space. We see nothing of the death-struggle; we hear not the cry of despair; we are not called upon to witness the frantic agony of husband and wife, and parent and child, as they fled in terror before the rising waters. Nor is a word said of the sadness of the one righteous man who, safe himself, looked upon the destruction which he could not avert. But an impression is left upon the mind with peculiar vividness from the very simplicity of the narrative, and it is that of utter desolation.

Certainly being witness to such a tremendous loss of life – like none the world has known before or since, must have had a great impact on Noach – an impact that could not be explained by a mere local flood. Louis Ginsberg offers this insight from the Sages:

Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, vol. 1
When he stepped out from the ark into the open, he began to weep bitterly at sight of the enormous ravages wrought by the flood, and he said to God: “O Lord of the world! Thou art called the Merciful, and Thou shouldst have had mercy upon Thy creatures.” God answered, and said: “O thou foolish shepherd, now thou speakest to Me. Thou didst not so when I addressed kind words to thee, saying: ‘I saw thee as a righteous man and perfect in thy generation, and I will bring the flood upon the earth to destroy all flesh. Make an ark for thyself of gopher wood.’ Thus spake I to thee, telling thee all these circumstances, that thou might entreat mercy for the earth. But thou, as soon as thou didst hear that thou wouldst be rescued in the ark, thou didst not concern thyself about the ruin that would strike the earth. Thou didst but build an ark for thyself, in which thou was saved. Now that the earth is wasted, thou openest thy mouth to supplicate and pray.”

This guilt-trip by God is most likely a Rabbinic tradition meant to teach a point about showing mercy to others, rather than acting selflessly, for it does not portray Adonai in a way that would fit with the Torah. I would suspect these are the same Rabbis who view Noach’s righteousness as relative only to his generation, and being inferior of that to later Biblical figures.

Yet we do know something of how the flood affected Noach. As it is written in:

Genesis 9:20-21 (CJB)
Noach, a farmer, was the first to plant a vineyard. He drank so much of the wine that he got drunk and lay uncovered in his tent.

Now, in a way, although it is sinful, doesn’t that make sense? If anyone has ever had cause to suffer from the condition we today call “post-traumatic stress disorder,” it was Noach. Turning to drink is an example of that type of reaction.

There is also a measure of irony in Noach’s fate, if the traditions of the Rabbis are valid. Just as Noach became the second father of all humanity, after Adam, so too did he fall from grace in the same way. According to:

Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, vol. 1
This deterred Noah no more than did the example of Adam, whose fall had also been due to wine, for the forbidden fruit had been the grape, with which he had made himself drunk.

Most of us think of an apple when we think of the forbidden fruit, but here the possibility of the grape as the forbidden fruit offers an ironic counter-point to the story of Adam, and it underlines the need for the promised Messiah. For it shows that, however much he walked with God prior to the Flood, after Adonai wiped the slate clean, Noach proved no better an example than Adam. Even the most righteous of men were still subject to sin, unable to break those bonds on their own. We needed Adonai’s help. We needed Messiah Yeshua.

Now, what became of the Ark of Noach? It’s hard to say, although there are historical witnesses to it. Josephus confirms its existence in his day, though he pointed out that so many people were carrying off bits of the ark as souvenirs and amulets, they he was now nothing more than “remains,” and he was a late contemporary of the generation of Messiah Yeshua. The 13th-century explorer, Marco Polo, also claims to have seen it during his travels, although he said it is covered in snows that never completely melt. Either way, we know that the Torah says the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.

What became of Noach?

Well, many legends, most of them probably false, surround his latter days. They include tales of him writing a series of testaments that did not survive ancient antiquity and, according to some, were destroyed with countless other ancient works when the ancient Library at Alexandria was destroyed.

Others insist he became the father of ancient medicine, writing a tome on the use of herbs and medicinal plants which, being passed down many generations formed the core of medical knowledge for doctors from India and Greece.

Are any of these legends true? Who knows? We do know Yeshua referred to him, so he must be an historical figure.

What we can know, what we can trust about our knowledge of Noach, is what the Torah clearly teaches. Whatever our traditions are, whatever we believe about Noach beyond the Torah, we know that he was in the line of Messiah Yeshua, and without Noach, none of us would be here today.
Shabbat Shalom.