Today’s Reading: Genesis 4, 5, 6 & 7

In these 4 short chapters (especially short if you removed the genealogies) two very tragic events occur – events that would forever alter the course of humanity. First comes the very first instance of murder – and the murder of a brother at that – and then the ultimate destruction of nearly everything and everyone on the face of the earth.

It strikes me that this series of events is the inevitable result of sin. In my last post, I discussed the choice made by Adam & Eve and how the loss of innocence would ultimately lead to other choices and the stress of doing what was right. That choice would be visited on Adam & Eve in the worst imaginable way – one of their sons would take the life of another son.

That legacy would continue for 8 more generations and would escalate to the point that the world was full of wickedness.

The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. (Genesis 6:5)

God had to make the painful decision to start over and yet, this was not God’s fault. We brought this on ourselves and continue to bring it on ourselves. The inevitable result of consistently choosing the wrong path is complete and total destruction. The great flood, then, was the destination on a course that was charted by Adam & Eve several thousand years earlier. It was a course that could have been corrected by any number of people through the generations, but it wasn’t. And so, without any course correction, the human experiment careened off the cliff and God would be forced to go back to the basics.

And consider this about the flood: we understand that God wiped out every living thing from the earth except for Noah and his wife, his sons and their wives and the animals on the ark. But have you ever stopped to consider what that really meant for those who remained.

We are told that Noah’s father, Lamech, had Noah when he was 182 years old and that he lived to the ripe old age of 777 “and had other sons and daughters”. It stands to reason, then, that 600 years later, when Noah and his family boarded the ark, he had brothers and sisters watching him from the outside – brothers and sisters that would ultimately be killed by the flood waters. (Lamech, we’re told, died 595 years after Noah was born, so he witnessed the building of the ark, but was not killed by the flood.)

Then I started thinking: Not only did Noah have brothers and sisters who were being left behind. He likely had nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles, cousins, in-laws and friends. His wife had family and friends, his sons had family and friends and his sons’ wives had family and friends. What must it have been like when the flood waters actually came and, undoubtedly, some portion of those family and friends came to the ark begging to be brought on-board? What must it have been like when the waters receded and these 8 people were left with the stark realization that everyone they had ever known was gone?

The inevitable result of the choices made over the course of those first 10,000 years or so landed hard and heavy on the shoulders of Noah and his family – heavier, even, than it did on those who perished in the water. These chosen 8, after all, would be charged with the re-launch of the experiment and with the charge to get it right this time around.