Most people have heard about Noah and the flood. Without reading this chapter I could tell you what you probably already know: God decides to wash out the earth and start again because people had become so evil. Noah is walking with God, and so he is told to build and ark, put two of each animal in there and load up his family. The flood comes for forty days and forty nights. When the waters are gone, there is a rainbow, which is Gods promise to us that He will never destroy all living creatures again.
So now lets take a deeper look into this account and fish out the parts that seem to go unseen.
Chapter 6
Verse 3:
Then the Lord said, "My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years."
It wasn't as if the Lord washed everyone away on a whim. Here God is warning, far before the flood, "Hey, shape up down there!" He even gave them an extra 120 yrs to figure it out and change their sinful ways. Spoiler alert: they didn't.
Verse 4:
"The Nephilim were on the earth in those days-and also afterward- when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them."
Nephilim is actually a powerful race of giants! They are the mentioned also in Numbers 13:32-33.
"...All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there...We seem like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them."
The people were probably 9-10 ft tall. Unfortunately they used their physical advantage to oppress others.
The sons of God are referring to the decedents of Seth and the daughters of men are referring to the more evil decedents of Cain. These marriages are said to have increased moral depravity in the world.
Verse 7
"I will wipe mankind whom I have created from the face of the earth...-for I am grieved that I have made them"
This is not God saying, "Well looks like this was a bitter bunch after all, better luck next time." It is God expressing His sadness that his people were making choices that led to self destruction and pain, rather than choosing Him and being blessed.
Verse 9
"Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God."
Being blameless didn't mean Noah was without sin. He was far from perfect but he followed and obeyed God one step at a time, loving Him wholeheartedly. This is a perfect example for us to live by today.
Verse 15
"This is how you are to build it: the ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high."
This makes me feel slightly deceived by those cutsie little cartoons of Noah in a small wooden boat looking thing. This ark was one and a half football fields long! It is six times longer than it is wide. A commentary I read points out that this ratio of 6 to 1 is still used by modern shipbuilders.
Chapter 8
Verse 3-4
"The water receded steadily form the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the on the mountains of Ararat.
These mountains are located in Turkey.For some reason it blows me away that I can point to a map and tell you the actual place that the ark was!
Chapter 9
Verse 21
"When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent."
Noah, after the huge adventure of surviving the great flood, goes and gets drunk! It shows that Godly people are still capable of sinning, and when they do, it influences and affects their families in the short and long term.
Chapter 10
Here we find more genealogy. Why is this cool? Let me tell you!
Looking at this 'Table of Nations', we see Shem being the beginning of the Hebrews, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Persians and Syrians-the line of David, Abraham and Jesus! We also see Japheth starting off the Greeks, Thracians and Scythians, who settled around Europe and Asia Minor. We lastly see Ham, the brother who disrespects his father and is cursed, who is the head of the nations of Canaanites, Egyptians, Philistines, Hittites and Amorites.-settlers of Egypt, Canaan and Africa.
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