Genesis Chapters 5-9
“The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the lord said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created-people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.’ But Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord.”(Genesis 6:5-8)
In this essay I will take an interpretive look at Genesis chapters 5-9. The main focuses will be: the relationship between God, Noah, and Noah’s generation of mankind; the barriers and boundaries for humankind that were present and created by God in these chapters, the characteristics of God throughout the text and the overall importance and message of this passage in the Bible.
In the days of old -when life could reach more than nine hundred years- “sons of god”(6:2), angels and warriors ruled the earth. One walked the righteous path in the land of the wicked; one saw the grace of the Lord. In these chapters of Genesis, God is seen as an active participant in the story. Through His words and interactions, we can see that His character and relationship towards man is ever-changing and evolving. God is a ruler with expectations. What He had sought out to create in mankind was not being represented, all He saw was evil all the time.(6:5) In Genesis 6:6 we see a God that feels pain from a broken heart. From the grief he has sustained, he demands judgment and justice. His decision and reaction is to destroy all that He has created.(6:7) The Lord’s character here is repentant, judgmental and a potential destroyer. In His grief He finds “favor” for one man: Noah.(6:8) Though it was only one man in an entire generation, we see the grace of God present here. Because of Noah, God finds himself modifying his plans, “the planned destruction becomes a reconstruction” of this earth.(Harper Collins, Study Bible, Notes pp.13)
In Genesis chapter 6, we begin to see a God that is forewarning. The lessening of life, to that of one hundred and twenty years, is a disciplinary measure taken due to His displeasure with humankind. This punishment was a warning in and of itself. In Genesis 6:13, God gives a direct warning to Noah ab...
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...his creating of the flood. If not for Noah there would have been no human community left at all. Though some may disagree with me, I believe the decreasing of the human life span to be the biggest boundary God has ever put on mankind. Besides the spirit of God, what is more than life itself in this existence of being?
Most everyone knows something about the story of Noah and the great flood. It is one of the most illustrated and common stories from the Bible. The knowledge that God was angry, Noah built an ark to carry animals and then there was a flood that killed everything. Though this is the basic picture of the story, it does not capture alone the main point of the story. God’s saving grace is the message. Believe and follow in the path of the Lord and salvation will be yours. All of God’s characteristics and boundaries he conveyed spawn off of the following of this or the ignoring of His omnipotent power and being. Just like in much of the text in the Bible, you have to read between the lines to find the meaning; the same is true for Genesis 5-9.
Works Cited
Meeks, Wayne A., ed. The Harper Collins Study Bible. New York: Harper Collins Publishers Inc., 1993.
Noah’s Flood in Bible begins with God, who grieved over the wickedness of men, deciding to wipe out mankind on the face of earth. However, he spares Noah because he found favor in God’s eyes. God tells Noah how he should prepare to survive the flood that God will cause soon in following quotation:
God is the creator, sustainer, judge, and redeemer. However, the most important characteristic of God is love. Love is an admirable quality. Genesis is an account of God’s magnificent creations. God saw that everything he created was good. The book of Genesis focuses on six persons and their families: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. God blessed man and all of his creations. For a moment, God’s creation was as He intended; paradise. Man sinned and God became unhappy, but he still provided for his people. God wanted man to repent. He still wanted things to be good once again. Noah was of the “few” good people on earth. Noah was obedient and honored God. God wanted to rid the earth of evil and start anew with righteous men and women. God wanted to give people a second chance and that was through Noah. God’s decision to save Noah and his family was, because He still longed for man’s obedience and faithfulness.
...nt in both style and content. Where Genesis I portrays a creation in which an omnipotent God forms order from chaos and places mankind at the center of this new world, Genesis II delves deeper into the roles and origins of man and woman and their reason for existence. This juxtaposition of simple story and deeper meaning further illustrate the Hebrew culture's societal evolution and its conscious shift to a patriarchal system - a parallel transition from chaos to order.
On our planet, phenomena’s occur occasionally in nature. Tornadoes, earthquakes, and flashfloods are all types of phenomena’s that could occur. Most of these mysterious events are small and go unnoticed; however, on a rare occasion these sorts of event can be horrendous. One such occasion occurred back around 4,000 BC (Werner Keller, 48). As the story goes, God’s population was growing rapidly on earth. At this point, he had been growing bored with the same people on earth so he made sure no man would live past the age of 120. Given this time, the people of earth started to take advantage of the human race; these acts of selfishness disgusted God. He decided to destroy everything on earth. A man by the name of Noah had lived his life by God’s nature, which eventually led to a close relationship between the two. God had told Noah to build a boat with exact measurements. God had instructed Noah to put two of every kind of animal into the boat; one had to be male and the other female. Then God told Noah to get into the boat with his family, their families, and the animals. Then for forty days and forty nights the clouds seemed to have poured endless amounts of water onto the earth (Genesis 6:1-9). Floods rushed through the landscape, destroying everything in its path. The waters were higher than the tallest mountains, standing above the highest peaks. All living things on earth had died. The water covered the earth at this level for five months (Paul S. Taylor, 1). In time the water began to dry up. Eventually Noah was able to leave the ship and release all he had brought with him. From this point, evolution occurs.
In the first book of the Bible, Genesis, God can be seen as having a sort of bi-polar attitude. In the beginning chapters God is shown as a caring person when he is creating the earth and when he talks about how he wants Adam and Eve to succeed and do well and how he gives Adam a companion, Eve because he feels Adam will be lonely. As the book unfolds God becomes very angry with how his world is turning out. Sin has been introduced and humans seem to be falling away from the righteous. This upsets God and he creates an idea that he will flood the world so that only Noah and the people and animals inside the ark will live. His intentions seem horrible, trying to kill humans because they have sinned, but in reality he is trying to free the world of sin so that the remaining humans will live wonderful lives free of pain and despair. The flood can be seen as both a positive and negative thing. To non-believers they may find fault in the idea that God felt that he had to punish the world as a result of how sinful the people of earth had become. To help promote their ideas they could use statements from the Bible such as this one when God's feelings are stated about how he seems to be dissatisfied with the people of earth, "The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain" (Genesis 6:6). It can also be revealed when God states, "I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth" (Genesis 6:13).
The flood story that is told in The Epic of Gilgamesh has the same principle as the story of Noah told in the book of Genesis in the Bible, but there are some major differences. In the epic, Utnapishtim is immortal and, although Noah was extremely old when he died, he wasn’t immortal. Utnapishtim was a human, but because he saved mankind, Enlil said, “Hitherto Utnapishtim has been a human, now Utnapishtim and his wife shall become like us gods.” (Gilgamesh 11.206-207) In the Biblical story, God told Noah that he was going to send a flood and asked him specifically to make the ark in order to save mankind. In Genesis 6:13-22, God tells Noah why he’s flooding the earth and exact instructions to build the ark. “13 So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. 14 So make yourself an ark of cypress[a] wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. 15 This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high.[b] 16 Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit[c] high all arou...
1. Flood is sent by God to destroy his creation, which has become corrupt and evil The humans are so wicked and evil that "it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart" (Gen. 6:6). He says,"I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth. . . " (Gen. 6:7)
In Genesis there is a much more acceptable reason for God to eliminate mankind. The humans are so wicked and evil that "It repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart" (Gen. 6:6). He says: "I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth. . . " (Gen.
However, Adam is also significant to the redemptive history because he and Eve were responsible for the barrier created between God and man due to man’s sin.
The book of Genesis 1-11 gives us a teaching and lays a foundation for the truth that is expressed later in the bible as it makes an assumption that God is the creator of the universe and all it holds. The scriptures in this books gives an expression of God as being just, love, wrath, holy and grace. This scripture enables us to understand how we should view the world and God’s part in the creation and the recreation of the whole universe.
When you read chapter one of Genesis you have the feeling that God is perfect. God holds all power and control. God turns chaos into order. "God said 'Let there be light.' And there was light, And God saw the light, that it was good" (Gen 1. 3). God's word is action, God's word is law in the universe. When God creates something, he ends it with God seeing that's its good. This is in effect giving support to the perfect nature that is God and the creations God has made. "God does not play dice" (Armstrong 9), God has order and a purpose for what he makes. An important aspect to God is seen while he is creating the world. He separates water from land. Light from Darkens, Day and Night, Male and Female. This shows that boundaries are important to God. We see examples where God put boundaries on mankind with their language by mixing the language up so confuse man and killing off the evil from the good.
After the events on the boat regarding the twin children, Noah acts as if he has failed God for being unable to murder the two and carry out his plan, implying that God had actually wished for and expected Noah to murder his grandchildren. This played into portraying both God and Noah as vicious and cruel. In the story written in the Bible, God had chosen Noah to build the ark because he was the only one without wickedness present in his heart. However, he is featured in the film as one who was cold-hearted and would be willing to do anything to ensure that there would not be a future for
Noah was righteous man amongst the unrighteous. When God saw the evil in the world he told Noah to build an ark and save himself, his family, two of every animal, and anyone who believed, but no one did. Though it took many years to build the people just saw Noah as an insane man and could not be saved for they did not believe. They were warned, but only mocked and so they perished in the flood. It rained for 40 days and 40 nights. When it was over God put a rainbow in the sky as a sign that God would never flood the Earth again.
Before going any further, the story of Noah and the Flood will be summarized according to the book of Genesis in order to be able to make the comparison later in this paper. The story begins in Genesis chapter 6 describing the then current state of “wickedness.” The descendants of Adam and Eve grew in number and many of them intermarried with anyone of their choosing. God saw in them great “wickedness” and most people only had evil in the...
In the Holy Bible, the book of Genesis starts by saying “In the beginning…God created the heavens and the earth…” (The New American Bible, Gen. 1.1). These powerful words layout the base to the entire Bible which tells readers to accept God as the powerful creator, our heavenly father, and remind us the fact that we exist because of God. In fact, the book of Genesis is the most important book in the Bible because it simply tells the story of God’s creation of the universe and how God created man and woman. Moreover, God teaches life lessons throughout in the book of Genesis by explaining different concepts of obeying, punishing, and forgiving others as well as the consequences that can come about if one goes against God’s will. As I read the