The God of the Flood: Genesis 6.5-8.19, Part 2

Last time, we looked at how the flood story in Genesis connects with the broader cultural traditions of the Ancient Near East (ANE). We saw that once again, Genesis creatively reshapes older stories for its unique theological purpose. The result is that it portrays God as all-powerful and intentional in the decision to ‘undo’ creation and reboot life on Earth. That’s all fine and well, but we can’t skip over the fact that that decision caused untold numbers of human deaths, to say nothing of the loss of animals and vegetation. If we think about it, this is one of the most horrific stories in the Bible. So we have to ask, What does this story tell us about God, really?

I’ll frame this in the context of a ‘Challenge’ portion of my Integral Hermeneutic method.

Challenge

There’s an easy reading of the Genesis flood story that sees God as vindictive and violent: YHWH doesn’t like what he sees so he pushes the gameboard off the table, so to speak, and starts over. But is this a fair assessment of the God of the flood? Let’s look at the text more closely to see what it might have to say.

The rationale behind the flood story is found in 6.5-8 and again in 6.9b, 11-13:

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 favour in the sight of the Lord.

and

Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God.… Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw that the earth was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth. And God said to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I am going to destroy them along with the earth.

As far as the grand narrative of Genesis goes, these assessments come as a bit of a surprise. Certainly, Genesis 3-4 showed the growth of human sinfulness alongside the growing complexities of civilization. But the genealogy in chapter 5 is pretty hopeful, with three figures standing out for their particular holiness. Chapter 6 begins with something God perceives as a threat to the created order, but God deals with that and there’s no sense of a lingering problem that needs to be solved. So the assessment of humanity here is not justified within Genesis; it’s a case of telling, not showing. We are left in a position of simply having to take the text at its word.

And that word is that “every inclination of the thoughts of [human] hearts was only evil continually” (6.5). One could not find a more negative assessment than that! We’re left to guess at what exactly this entails. The previous negative stories — Eve eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that made her ‘like God’, Cain killing Abel and thereby taking over God’s role as the arbiter of life and death, Lamech’s boasting that commandeers God’s role as the saviour and avenger, and the sons of God marrying human women to create a race of superhumans that can rival God in power and immortality — all of these stories show that “creation has refused to be God’s creation, refused to honor God as God” (Brueggemann).*

So great is the problem that God regrets creating humanity — a fact that grieves God greatly. But recognizing the mistake, God decides to start over: to “blot out from the earth the human beings” and start over with the one man who God found to be “righteous” and “blameless,” Noah.

This scene is one of the more famous of those biblical passages where God is shown to feel emotions such as grief, regret, and to change God’s mind. As Brueggemann notes, this pain is highlighted by the text using the same word here for how it described the toil of women in childbirth and men in working the fields. A pain that sin introduced into the human experience is now felt by God. This contradicts other passages, such as Numbers 23.19 and 1 Samuel 15.29, where God is said to be incapable of such things (Sarna (1989) 47). This is a very complex theological issue well beyond the scope of this post, but it’s important to at least point out the tension in the Scriptures’ presentation of God’s ability to feel, respond, and change course to events playing out within creation (Carr, Sarna (1989) 47). Suffice it to say that in this story, God is shown to feel pain at both the fact that humans have gone so far off course and at how God plans to deal with it. And, while I recognize the philosophical problems this causes for our conceptions of God, ultimately, I agree with Brueggemann’s overall assessment of the God of the Bible:

Israel’s God is fully a person who hurts and celebrates, responds and acts in remarkable freedom. God is not captive of old resolves. God is as fresh and new in relation to creation as he calls us to be with him. He can change his mind, so that he can abandon what he has made; and he can rescue that which he has condemned. (Brueggemann)

As philosophically problematic as God’s grief and regret has been, it does at least show God not to be an angry tyrant. The flood is not a divine temper tantrum, but the act of a parent facing an impossible decision over the fate of his children (Brueggemann). And this decision is not to let things continue as they are towards disaster, nor to give up entirely, but to provide a fresh start.

And this is the focus of the story: There is punishment, but there is grace, and the two operate together (Sarna (1989) 48). It doesn’t make the story any less horrifying — God was also horrified by the decision, and as we’ll see next time, ultimately decides not to go down this path again — and it doesn’t let God off the moral hook, as it were. At best it’s a troubling story of divine realpolitik, or a heavenly Trolley Problem, with God having to take action that will destroy some people in order to allow more people the opportunity to live and thrive.

Expand

So then, how does this contribute to our reading of the story and to Genesis as a whole?

While there is no way of reading the flood story that can render it not a terrible story about a God who does a terrible thing, a close reading shows that God at least does not undertake this act out of anger, spite, or vindictiveness. Rather, the text shows God as a regretful, despondent ruler having to make a hard decision, one he knows will cost lives. And the ultimate goal is not the destruction of humanity, but its renewal through Noah and his family. There is punishment here, but also grace.

This simultaneous presence of punishment and grace has been a consistent — at this point, I would say the consistent — common thread throughout these early chapters of Genesis. Adam and Eve are kicked out of the garden, but given clothing and remain in relationship with God. Cain is exiled from family and land, but given a mark of divine protection to keep him safe in the world. Cain’s line trends towards evil, but Seth’s line offers a happier alternative for humanity. A race of superhumans appears that blurs the lines between the heavenly and earthly realms, but God resolves this problem by setting an upper limit on their lifespan. And now, yes, God’s decision to reboot humanity involves untold human and animal deaths, but is ultimately about renewal, life, and thriving. This intention is demonstrated even more in the next part of the text, to which we’ll turn next time.

 

* See the series bibliography for details.