FollowFinding Jesus in Genesis: Lesson 4
After the Flood
© C. O. Bishop 2012 revised 2018
Introduction: The Aftermath of the Flood
In Genesis 6:5-7 we see that God watched the world become increasingly filled with wickedness and violence. He made an all-inclusive statement in verse 5: “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” What a stunning statement, coming from the God of the Universe! This is the Creator: all-knowing, all-wise, and all gracious, utterly condemning the human race, as only evil, and utterly wicked. We may think that this only referred to the human race prior to the flood, but there are other passages, statements made after the flood, that are similar in the wholesale condemnation of the human race. What are we going to do with those statements? And, on a personal level, are we going to admit that we ourselves are part of that condemned and fallen race, and that we, too, are in need of a savior?
We look around us at the ruinous state of some areas of the world, and, in sober moments, we realize that our own culture is only marginally separated from such things…that we could easily fall into that sort of corruption and evil. That perhaps the only thing that has preserved western culture against utter degradation, is the presence of the Person of Christ, central in our beliefs. And, as we watch, He is being excised from every facet of our western lives as if He were the source of the evil, instead of our only guard against it.
Let’s look, then and see what we can learn from the time of the flood, before and after:
Before the Flood
Remember, we saw that the land mass was one giant, fairly flat continent, with no divisions in terms of mountain ranges, or water barriers…no seaways to cross. All the land was accessible to every human and every animal. And, as we read through the genealogies between Adam and Noah, paying close attention to when each patriarch was born and when he died, we can see that the last patriarch to have been born during the lifespan of Adam was Lamech, who was 57 or so when Adam died. Noah was born 125 years after the death of Adam. All of them up until (and including) Lamech, could have known Adam personally, if they chose to do so. Methuselah’s life overlapped that of Adam by 240 years. Even if they never met until Methuselah was 100 years old, he would have had 140 years in which to absorb whatever Adam had to relate about the Fall, and of the few days after the creation before he and Eve were expelled from the Garden.
Every bit of Lamech’s life overlapped that of Methuselah…and the first 600 years of Noah’s life overlapped that of Methuselah. This is not what one would call “hearsay” evidence, nor is it just a “word-of-mouth” type thing. Adam was an eye-witness, and both Methuselah and Lamech knew him (or could have known him), personally, and Noah was well acquainted with both of them. This is a very short line of “tradition,” and very tightly connected. The final point is, as we read in the New Testament, that both Jesus and his apostles treated the account of the flood as fact, not allegory, or mythology. With that background, then, consider what God said about Man: that “every imagination of the thoughts of His heart is only evil continually! This is really what God said about the Human Race. And it is why he destroyed the whole race, to start fresh.
After the Flood
After five months, the ark was sitting on the top of a mountain, in a place now called Ararat. Evidently the earth’s crust was already beginning to fold, as that area is quite high, today (over 12,000’), whereas, before the flood, there were no real mountains; but, by the end of the flood there were at least some that are now recognized as real mountains. The obvious answer is that the crust was moving and folding during and after the flood. After ten months, mountains were protruding from the waters.
Noah could not see out onto the landscape, and it was almost a year before he even opened the one upward-pointing window and released a raven. The raven stayed out, flying around until the waters were dried up. He also sent out a dove, to see whether the land was dry. But the dove could not find a clean place to perch, and eventually came back to the ark, so Noah reached out and brought her back inside. (Just an interesting note: Ravens are scavengers, and the raven was probably quite content to be out in the ravaged world. Perhaps it was finding carcasses, still floating, and putrid: Prime raven food! Mud and filth were not a bad thing to the raven.)
A week later, Noah sent the dove out again. This time she brought back a leaf of an olive tree, showing Noah that things were drying up. He waited another week and sent her out, and she didn’t come back. It was a total of one year and seventeen days that Noah, and his family and the rest of the animals had been in the Ark. Then God told them they could come out, they and the animals. They were to breed abundantly, and fill the earth.
Noah built an altar to God, and sacrificed that “seventh individual” of every clean animal (those acceptable for sacrifice, and, later, for food, under the Law, still far in the future.)
God promised that he would never again destroy the world with a flood. He promised that when rain came it would always cease, and that the rainbow would be the emblem of His promise. The people started fresh with some new directives: They were free to eat meat, but not with the blood. And human life was sacred: whoever (or whatever animal) killed a human, was to be killed in turn, because humans were created in the image of God. Human Government was established.
So God was “starting over, fresh.” But he was not starting with people who were not sinners: God said (after the flood) “…the imagination of Man’s heart is evil from his youth;” This was when there were only eight people alive! And later, even when all the survivors knew him, they soon forgot who He was, and abandoned any attempt to walk with Him. They immediately leaned toward self-reliance, and ignored his directives.
Shortened Lifespan
We have several paragraphs of genealogies leading to Abram. The only thing I would like to point out about this genealogy is the diminishing lifespan with each new generation. Noah was six hundred years old when he boarded the ark. He died at 950 years of age. His son, Shem, was only 98 when he got off the ark, and two years later had a son. Shem lived 600 years and died. His son, Arphaxad, lived a mere 438 years. Shem’s grandson, Salah, only lived 433 years…and so it went. Peleg, a couple generations down, only made it to 239. His grandson Serug only lived 230 years. His son Nahor only lived to 148. But Nahor’s son Terah made it to 205. (That was Abraham’s Dad, by the way.) Abraham, the Friend of God, eight generations, or so, removed from the flood, only lived 175 years. His son Isaac lived 180 years, but the numbers, in general, were dropping rapidly. Later we find that 70 became the recognized norm, and that 80 was possible if you were in good shape, but that those last years might be hard years. Why the change?
Remember when we read that it didn’t rain, before the flood, but a mist came up and watered the earth? And later, we saw that the “windows of heaven were opened”, at the flood? It is conjectured that there was a water envelope, or canopy, that protected the inhabitants of the earth from harmful radiation. This is supported in Genesis 1:6-8, where God created an expanse (“firmament,” in KJV) between the waters—separating the water above the expanse from the waters below…and he called that expanse “sky”—(heaven in KJV.) What is above the sky? That is to say, what is above our atmosphere? Today there is the apparently limitless expanse of space. Evidently at that time, there was water out there, too. It’s something to think about.
That water canopy was removed in the process of the flood, and people’s aging process became much more rapid. We can’t prove that this is true, but it seems to make sense…especially since, during the Millennial Kingdom, people will once again live for around 1000 years. There is no terribly important doctrine, here, perhaps, but it is certainly interesting.
Bear in mind, as we read of these various judgments, that the “Judge of all the Earth” is unquestionably Christ himself. We sometimes get the idea that the Judge is this “terrible Old Testament” figure, and that Jesus came as a Savior, to save us from His wrath. In John 5:22, Jesus stated that “…The Father judgeth no man, but has committed all judgment unto the Son….” Jesus is the Judge, and the amazing truth is that the Judge, himself, stepped down to die in our place, as the full payment for our sins. Confusing? Yep. But true, and it is supported by the whole of scripture. But in the middle of the genealogy, a brief comment was made; that the earth became divided. And the word for “earth”, here, always means the land, not the people.
The Beginning of Continental Drift
So we see, not only a world destroyed by flood, but the foundations laid for a divided land mass and the eventual continental drift. That must have been quite a sight—but the only record we have is the simple statement that it happened. God had more important things to address: things that affected human history even more than the division of the land.
I do find it relevant to note that the land mass began to break up in Genesis 10:25, and that the motive for building the tower of Babel, in Genesis 11:4, was specifically so that the human race would not be scattered. Peleg was born 101 years after the flood (see Genesis 11:10-16), and God says he was named Peleg (“division”) because in his days the earth was divided. So, either the earth was beginning to break up about the time he was born, or this was prophetic as to what was about to happen, during his lifetime (he lived to be 239 years old.) Either way, apparently the people could see that the continent was fragmenting, and, that, unless they did something to keep people together, they might soon be unable to reach one another, as the land mass was drifting apart in several directions. The blessing of God had included what seemed to be an assignment to multiply on the whole earth, so this passion to keep them all together may have been a problem all by itself. But the means by which they chose to try it was really a bad thing.
Division of Languages
The next thing God relates was the descent of man into false religion; and the subsequent division of the nations and families of the earth, as a judgment from God. We see in Genesis 11 that people gathered in a plain of a land called Shinar. There they built a city (now called Babylon, by the way) with a tower whose top was to be “in the heavens”—in the sky. They were building the first skyscraper, it seems. (So what is wrong with that? We have lots of them today.)
The particular type of tower they were building is called a “ziggurat”. It was specifically used as an observatory for astrology, and whatever other religious purposes, possibly including sacrifices. (The ones in South America, square-topped, stepped pyramids, are similar to the ones in Babylon, and they were used for human sacrifice.) But, regardless of their use, the stated intent was that they should not be “scattered abroad on the face of the earth”. God had told Noah that the people were to “replenish the earth” (Genesis 9:1)…probably that did not include “grouping up in one population center.” At any rate, God said that, collectively, if they were not scattered, there was no limit to what they might do. He apparently did not mean it in a good way. The mischief they might work is evidently what he was concerned about, and what he proposed to do about it just reveals his unimaginable power and wisdom.
It is interesting, too, that he stated his intent in the plural: “Let US go down, and confound their language that they might not understand one another’s speech”. He really did a great job of it! I have no idea how many people were there the day he chose to do his work, but today we have in excess of 6,500 known languages—closer to 7,000. What mass confusion must have ruled, the next morning, when, perhaps by families, the entire great city was filled with frightened people who could no longer communicate with one another! At any rate, God says they “abandoned the project.” (I love God’s use of understatement!) So they named the place Babel: “Confusion.”
And where did they go, to escape the madness all around them? They fled from the “bedlam in Babel”, and scattered across the rapidly fragmenting continent, and, in some cases, apparently found themselves completely isolated. Scientists have concluded, through computer modelling of continental drift, that there was originally just one continent. But they assumed, for their model, that the drift had always been at a rate comparable to that which is observable today. Why would that be likely? Every other motion, except falling, tends to lose momentum, and slow down. So, very possibly, the initial movement was rapid enough to be alarming to everyone, and make them want to move to safer places.
The plain of Shinar had seemed safe, but God chased them out of there, and they were literally scattered across the land…and they rode those drifting land masses away, in some cases. Researchers have discovered recently, for instance, that what is now the United Kingdom was once a peninsula, and that there are ruins of towns, beneath the North Sea, where it was once dry land. Divers and other researchers, today, are trying to learn more about these civilizations.
We can only speculate how it all may have happened: Some, such as the Phoenicians, became seafarers, and they may have made travel between those drifting plates a regular thing.
But eventually, the plates were too far apart, and such voyages weren’t practical or common. Perhaps this is where legends such as “Atlantis” had their origin. Perhaps the “lost continent” did not actually sink, but simply moved too far away. Modern attempts to recreate such voyages have proven that the ancient sailors were pretty adept, and that they very likely crossed both major oceans regularly, as far back as 1000 years ago, and more, though it was a hard trip. Some of these ideas are, by necessity, the product of some speculation. But the evidence is limited for any conclusion, and, if I begin with the assumption that God is telling the truth about the flood (and everything else), then the evidence seems to point this way. That might explain the pyramids in South America, as well. We will likely never know for sure.
Conclusion:
What can we do with this information? All we know for sure is that the world is a great deal younger than the people of the world would have us believe: and that humans witnessed the break-up of the super-continent! Today we find earthquakes, avalanches, landslides and sinkholes both terrifying and fascinating: How much more, to watch the whole continent fracture, and the ocean sweep into the breach, roaring, foaming, and carrying away rubble and sand and trees? Possibly hot magma came welling up through the fractures as well, and steam and smoke boiled up to fill the sky, as the hot rock was submerged in seawater. People watched this happen!
The God with whom we are attempting to become better acquainted caused all this change, the division of the land, and the scrambling of the languages. He caused the physical and linguistic fractures, to avoid the spiritual depravity that was otherwise imminent. It was Grace, once again, and Wisdom and Compassion. Separation was, quite literally, for our own good!
We don’t always like the things God does (or allows) in our lives. We need to accept, by faith, the sovereignty of God, and, knowing both His goodness and His Wisdom, to trust that the things that happen are also for good. Remember that Jesus is both Judge and Savior!
Lord Jesus, inspire in us a trust of your character, your sovereign authority and your compassionate Wisdom. Help us to turn to you in faith, every day, for our sustenance and safety, with guidance for service. Make us an honor to your Name.