Reading Notes: Noah and the Ark, Part A

Readings:

The Ark

The Flood

After the Flood

Noah: Noah’s Sons

The Tower of Babel

The Birth of Noah

The Punishment of the Fallen Angels

The Generation of the Deluge

Noah's Ark

God was not satisfied with what He was seeing on his Earth, since “the wickedness of man was great”, and He decided that he wanted to wipe out the population and start over. Noah is the lucky man whom the Lord gave mercy and grace to, allowing him and his sons and all of their wives a special opportunity to survive the flood; all they had to do is obey the Lord, trust in him and do as he commanded. It started with building an ark.

Once the ark was finished, the Lord commanded Noah to find a male and female of all animals and bring them onto the ark. When Noah was 600 years old, the flood began. The earth was wiped out, but Noah, his sons, the wives, the animals and the animals’ mates survived. The waters flooded the earth for forty days and forty nights.

At the end of the forty days, a single dove with an olive leaf in her beak was the sign that they were safe and the vapid waters were coming to an end. Very importantly, 

“the LORD said in his heart, ‘I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.’”

Noah and Family

Noah’s family (and all of the saved animals) now had a large job in front of them, they now had to replenish the Earth’s population. The Lord gave Noah the abilities to grow and plant, and with that Noah planted a vineyard. He became drunk and laid in it, his sons covered him up, so “they saw not their father’s nakedness”. This is an allusion to the story of Adam and Eve and a reminder that though Noah was chosen by God for this task, he is still sinful.

The generations of Noah’s family grew larger and larger even after his death. At this point, everyone spoke the same language. The Lord decided to make it so they did not understand one another, and developed language variations. All in all, destruction needed to be ceased so that the world could continue.

Bib: The King James Bible, Genesis 5-6