Genesis Reading Notes
Adam H. Kissel

Back to Cain | forward to Babel and Abram

Noah is a contemporary of every Biblical character up to and including Abraham, except the first two generations. See chronology.

Noah is TAM and SADDIQ (tam = simple, undivided, perfect, wholehearted; saddiq = righteous) in his age: he is relatively good though not divinely perfect (though he may be as righteous as can be). Noah walks with God (i.e., not with other men). Noah is likely to be simple and honest, though perhaps very wise; at least, he is not shocked about death; unlike the Nephilim, he is righteous in spite of death. Note, however, that Noah waits until the other generations up to Enoch are all dead before he has children himself [Jacobs].

Others in the Ark: Why are Noah's sons also to be saved--do they walk with God too? The righteousness is seen to be in Noah's line. Kass finds that the lawlessness is among the animals too, though I cannot agree. (it hinges on kol-basar; see 6:12) In any case, why do the animals die too? It is an incidental consequence, to me; the land animals die and the fish survive and that's neither here nor there, compared to what happens to man. But then is there some comment about good animals and bad animals in 8:7-8 in the actions of the raven and the dove? (The raven is still flying around looking for carrion, but the earth is in a sense a new creation and the skeletons are all gone(?)) God does separate the clean animals from the unclean in Ch. 7, though this seems unrelated; rather, cleanness seems to have to do with EATING them and SACRIFICING them (see esp. 8:20), further showing the important differences between men and beasts.

Think about the times God speaks to no one in particular. Who is he speaking to? I think that God is registering important paradoxes when he speaks to himself, e.g. 6:5-7. In 6:13, God then speaks to Noah.

Think about some numbers: 40 days of rain; God asking for groups of seven animals in some cases (7:1) though Noah takes groups of two (7:8). After the flood, we return to the command to "increase and multiply" in 8:17. Going into the ark are males and females; coming out of the ark are families. What is the transformative power of the ark?

• Communication with God: fear, reverence, thanksgiving
• Shows man as distinctly above the animals
• Noah kills animals all over the place: every kind of clean animal and bird is sacrificed. The odor is pleasing to God (or to Noah?), who seems to like Noah's intent, but God may be registering another paradox: this mega-sacrifice seems over the top, even for Noah and a response to something like the flood (though God has been quite a model of killing things off here)--or did God expect this, for which reason he requested the groups of seven animals? We may read the paradox even more strongly: even Noah is naturally bad, or, even, all mankind is naturally bad. I'd rather say, mankind is naturally able to sin and imperfect and therefore is likely to always sin.

The paradox of 8:21-22: man will always sin, deserving judgment, but God does want to keep us around, so mercy is also called for. What to do? God establishes law and makes a covenant with Noah/man. God will never start over from scratch.

10/28: for Thurs:
Ch. 9, Noah and sons--fathers and sons; perpetuation of law and covenant and the family line
Ch. 11, Babel
See: Kass, "Man, Animals, and the New World Order" (between God and creation; between man and God/man/animals)

Law: a response to the ambiguous moral character of man.

Noah is a kind of new Adam. Noah's sacrifices seem to be part of this new relationship between man and God. Noah is to multiply (cf. ch. 1), and he is given special permission to eat animals, though not their blood, as a type for human blood, itself a type for God, 9:6; cf. 1:28; or, as a symbol of mercy in the face of justice. In any case, preparation of food is called for--this is a civilizing element. Man is inherently above the animals; he is separated from his animality. Man exerts a new kind of dominion [Jacobs]; now there is fear also among the animals (but cf. man's fear of God, which is different), esp. b/c we eat and sacrifice them.

Protecting animal blood parallels protecting human blood; the antediluvian lawlessness of the Nephilim Age is replaced by a postdiluvian law of justice. God's poem: "Whoever sheds the blood of man, | By men shall his blood be shed; | For in His image | Did God make man" (9:6). This is a start of both divine law and, especially, natural/human law. There is to be a new sociality among men, an ordered self-restraint, a divinely given responsibility for others.

Killing creates an instant imbalance which can never fully be made right (cf. Cain's expectations), especially by mere human justice (though further laws may improve upon this general one). There's a sense in which justice is bloody but necessary. Nevertheless, this is an impartial justice, act-oriented rather than intent-oriented, which teaches the equality and universal dignity of men. While man is given a qualified license to eat the animals, he is given an absolute responsibility for human justice. Justice is to be by community.

What is the imago Dei exactly? Here, it seems that God is a God of justice [and mercy] as man is a being of justice [and mercy]. Note that God reminds Noah (if he didn't already know) that man is made as such, which shows man that he is also morally above the animals. God's statement also serves to increase man's reverence for God (if nothing else, out of a sense of love of one's own). Man's dignity comes out of the imago Dei. We see a respect for man as corporeal as well as for man as spiritual.

Man becomes God's agent of justice, a kind of partner of God. This increases our ability to be responsible, and is related to our ability to be in covenant.

Covenant ('to bind'): starts with 6:18

This is God's unilateral pledge to have mercy in the face of justice. Covenant, in general, is a special promise or agreement in addition to, or in contrast to, what might otherwise happen. It is a voluntary movement to limit one's own range of choices or use of powers. It is a convention rather than a preexisting natural relationship.

The law is backed by the covenant: 8:22 and 9:11 refer to the perpetuity of the earth and of life on it. Law and covenant imply a future. If there is always the impending doom of mere justice, one cannot plan for the future: God grants a chance for hope (for, e.g., fertility and continued flourishing, however defined) by showing a consistent mercy. (cf. the human attempt at hope and security one could draw out of Cain's city; cf. Prometheus). God marks the covenant with Noah (cf. the mark of protection on Cain, for protection from man--with Noah it is a mark regarding protection from God). This law and covenant regard restraint, on man (law) and on God (covenant).

10/30: for Mon., prepare thru 11, esp. Babel, 11:1-9--meaning of Babel; what's wrong with it?
See: Kass, "Seeing the Nakedness of His Father."

Sons of Noah: Themes:

• Fathers and sons; family (the sons become fathers, esp. Ham as bad example, 9:18)
• First of two accounts of the dispersion of the peoples (9:19)--the branching out of the whole world, which continues into ch. 10--via wildness; next is ch. 11, via reason, Babel. Differentiation of the people, esp. by laws.
• Primordial founding of Noah's situation (law and covenant) calls next for perpetuation via Noah [but Noah gets drunk and messes it up and we have to wait for Abraham].

Ham begets Canaan and thus the Canaanites, which produces Sodom.

Cf. Aristotle on the three kinds of lives?

Shem = 'name'; Ham = 'hot,' 'irritable'; Japheth = 'enlarge the beautiful'

Vineyard goes with a tiller of the soil. The planter is tied to the soil (he's no longer the wanderer or the ark traveler or the death-knower, though he still uses a tent; can you walk with God if you are tied to the soil, [or to a city (Babel)]?). If the soil has been cursed before the Flood, is it still cursed? Anyhow it takes work and time to get from a vineyard to wine. The vineyard goes beyond necessary subsistence; Noah is intemperate and gets drunk (drunkenness/forgetfullness/floodlike--the arational).

9:20: the loss of self-control parallels his loss of parental authority when Ham sees him exposed. How can such a man now teach self-control to his children (even the ones who did not look, and tried to cover him, but knew all the same when Ham told them)? There is a sense in which Noah has let the hierarchy be overturned; the sons must account for the father's action; this encourages contempt on the part of the sons for their father. Some people go unnecessarily far to see contempt as a symbol of patricide or even violation as a symbol of incest, but this seems to be from prurience rather than a desire to get something worthwhile from the text.

Think about privacy and violation in this context, inside and outside the tent, seeing the problem and telling about it and being told of it. Compare the different rxns of the brothers in 9:23: Ham seems neither ashamed nor reverent about his father in telling his brothers. In telling them, he shows a kind of pride, even a tendency toward independence or becoming 'his own origin' or, in the inversion of the hierarchy, to take the place of his father. Shem and Japheth, on the other hand, try to recover the dignity of their father [cf. the idea that one aim of the philsopher is to overcome shame] and restore the hierarchy. Indeed there is a certain need for it--these two assume a willful blindness--perhaps even "virtue as atonement for the transgression of another" [Hanley]. But in tacit acceptance of the nakedness in the first place (which is necessarily true if they believe Ham, but not necessarily true if they merely act so as to account for Ham's words no matter what), they have a kind of partial participation in the transgression [Litvin]. But they also aim to restore the dignity of their father for his own sake.

The curse, 9:25: Noah recognizes that Ham was very wrong. He curses Ham's son rather than Ham himself, passing the curse on to the next generation, but blesses the other two ("blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem [and, by implication, Japheth]," 9:26). When such convention and authority have been adulterated, law seems to get suspended and society returns to a domination of the strong over the weak (here, Canaan becomes a slave to his older brothers). It is difficult to fix this injustice within the family, once it happens. Filial piety is related here to spiritual piety (rel'p between man and God; cf. imago Dei)--i.e., the father-son relationship has a spiritual dimension.