Genesis Class Week 9

Genesis 9:18-11:9 Descending to Babel

Genesis 9:18-29 - Noah and sons

Noah was a farmer, so he planted a vineyard, and low and behold he gets drunk. His son Ham walks in and sees him naked and tells his brothers. Ham did not act noble with his father and shamed him. The other two honored there father by covering him.

When Noah wakes and finds out what happened, he curses Canaan. Note that he curses Hams son, Canaan, and not Ham. In verse 1 God had blessed Noah and his sons, so the curse falls on Hams son. This is the son that would become the Canaanite people; which were enslaved and killed my Israel when they took the promise land. In the curse he also blesses Shem’s and Japheth’s descendants.

The Chapter ends with wrapping up Noah’s years at 950 years.

Genesis 10 - The Table of Nations

We have a listing of the descendents of Noah’s sons. Much of the lists are not an individual but a nation. Such as the list of Canaan’s descendents, they are the peoples that the Israelites were to destroy and remove from Canaan during the time of Joshua. This would be relevant to the Israelites as they prepared for the entering of Canaan at that time.

One man of note is Nimrod. He was a great leader and a mighty hunter. He is credited here for the building of Babylon and Nineveh and the surrounding cities. This too would be relevant to the Israelites in there future. It is likely that Nimrod was the instigator of the Tower of Babel and after the confusion of the languages he may have continued the work.

Ham’s descendents settled mostly in northern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Japheth’s moved north to the Black and Caspian Sea’s, and into Greece. Shem’s descendents settled between the two of them, mostly along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

Genesis 11:1-9 - The Tower

Everyone spoke one language, and they came together in the plains of Shinar. They decided to build a city with a tower to the heavens. They did this for there own glory and fame and to unify themselves. God came down and saw what they were doing and decided that, if they could do this as one people united that nothing was outside there power. Once again man reached out and tried to be like God, building up power and fame. God confused there language and they were scattered.

So Glad This Week Is Over

Genesis Class Week 8

Genesis 8 – 9:17 From Flood to Covenant

Genesis 8:1-14 - the water recedes

God remembers Noah and his family, and all the animals that were with him. God provides a wind to dry the earth and the waters recede. The ark settles in the mountain range of Ararat, not the mountain of Ararat as it is often thought. Almost 3 months later the mountain tops become visible. Forty days later he sends out the raven, who few back and forth until there was somewhere to land. He then sends out the dove several times until it brings back an olive leaf. Then he waits seven day and the dove does not return. After being on the Ark for about a year he opens the covering and the land is dry. About two months later the earth is completely dry.

Genesis 8:15–22 - coming out of the ark

God then calls Noah and his family out of the Ark, along with all the animals. They all come out and Noah builds an alter to God, and makes a sacrifice from some of all the clean animals. God is pleased, and make a promise to himself never to curse the ground because of man again, and not to ever destroy all living things.

Genesis 9:1-17 - God's covenant with Noah

God blesses them, and re-commissions them to be fruitful and multiply. He also sanctions the eating of meat, also that the fear of man would fall on all animals. God gives one restriction regarding blood in the meat. God also addresses murder here, connecting that humans are created in Gods image and that image is sacred; followed up with again the command to multiply.

God then makes his covenant with Noah and his sons, also with all the animals, that He will not destroy the whole earth by water ever again. He then gives them a sign of the covenant, the rainbow. We do not know if this was the first rainbow ever. Science would have applied before the flood as it does after. Rainbows are caused by light shinning through moisture in the air. This would have been the state of things prier to the flood as well, even if it had never rained there was mist. It is likely that the use of the rainbow was to be the renewal of an old symbol with a new meaning.

There are some interesting chiasmi (palistrophe) in the Ark story. A chiasmus is a literary device in which one half of a story or poem is a mirror-image of the other, giving a form A1BA2 etc.

A1. Noah and animals enter the Ark
B1. Flood increases on the Earth
C1. Mountains covered, all living things die
D1.Waters cover the Earth
E. God "remembers" Noah, God's wind blows over the waters
D2. Waters begin to recede
C2: Mountain-tops become visible, Ark rests on the mountains
B2: Flood recedes from the Earth
A2: Noah and animals leave the Ark

The other is in the timeline of the flood.

7 days of waiting for the flood (7:4)
7 days of waiting for the flood (7:10)
40 days of rain and flooding (7:17a)
150 days of water triumphing (7:24)
150 days of water waning (8:3)
40 days’ wait (8:6)
7 days’ wait (8:10)
7 days’ wait (8:12)

Football Is Over

my son had his last game last night. i did not go because i was sleeping so i could go to work tonight. they were playing in a tournament. they had lost the first game that was on saturday. so last nights game was for second and third place. however it turns out that the team they played on saturday was all high school kids so they were disqualified, since it was a league of middle school age kids. so last nights game is now for first and second place, the bummer deal is that the high schoolers took the trophy for first place. well i guess you are wondering who won last night. as it turns out my sons team won the game. my son got to play center for the game since the teams regular center was injured 2 weeks back.

now all that is left is to return the equipment and have a banquet on tuesday, and football is behind us for this year.

Country???

i am not much of a country fan but this is one of my favorite songs when singing Karaoke.

What It Is...

it is life and you have to take it as it comes.

i have been having a busy go of things as of late. football is over after this weekend, and the kids are doing good. my daughter is having some trouble with 2 of her classes, two classes that i have never studied. those being chemistry and calculus. the kids mom has been in drug rehab and we have all been dealing with that. she is out now, and life has been far from easy. work is as it always is, work, nothing really to report there.

the holidays are upon us and it does not feel like it should be that time of year already. i am feeling very ill-prepared.

i have found that i lack the motivation to see things happen. it rather sucks to have the desire to see things through but not have the motivation to go after it. so i guess i really have nothing interesting to share. life is dull but active.

Walking And Talking

Genesis Class Week 7

Genesis 6:9-7 – Noah and the flood

Traditions of a catastrophic flood are found in many ancient cultures:

• Egyptian tradition: The gods at one time purified the earth by a great flood, from which only a few shepherds escaped.
• Greek tradition: Deucalion warned that the gods were going to bring a flood upon the earth because of its great wickedness; he built an ark which cam to rest on Mount Parnassus. A dove was sent out twice.
• Hindu tradition: Manu, warned, built a ship in which he alone escaped from the deluge that destroyed all creatures
• Chinese tradition: Fa-He, founder of the Chinese civilization, is represented as having escaped from a flood – with his wife, three sons and three daughters.
• English tradition: The Druids had a legend that the world had been re-peopled by a righteous patriarch who had been saved in a strong ship from a flood send to destroy man from his wickedness
• Polynesian tradition: Stories of a flood from which eight escaped
• Mexican tradition: One man and his wife and children were saved in a ship from a flood which overwhelmed the earth.
• Peruvian tradition: One man and one woman were saved in a box that floated on the flood waters.
• Native American tradition: Various legends, in which one, three, or eight persons were saved in a boat above the waters on a high mountain.
• Greenland tradition: The earth once tilted over, and all men were drowned, except one man and one woman, who re-peopled the earth

Genesis 6:9-22

The account of Noah and the flood starts in 6:9; some may argue that it starts with verse 1 with the corruption of the earth. However, versus 1-8 give us an introduction into what led up to the flood. Noah we know is of the line of Seth, he was credited as being righteous and blameless. Noah had a true love for God, thus he had a right relationship with God. He was blameless, but that does not mean that he was perfect. God knew his heart in comparison to the contemporaries, and chose him to be the path to salvation for the human race and animal kind.
God speaks to Noah and tells him that he is going to destroy the earth and everything in it. He is only going to spare Noah and his family. Noah is to build a boat and fill it with animals. The Ark is to be made of cypress wood (Gopher wood in some other translations. The word in the Hebrew is not a known wood) and coated with pitch. It was to be 450 ft long, 75 ft wide and 45 ft high. It was to have three decks and a door in the side. From the shape and dimensions of the ark it was not meant to be a high sea vessel but a floating barge.

The English word for the ship is ark; however the Hebrew word (tevah/ship) that is used for the Ark is not the same as the Ark of the Covenant. The word for the ark is the same word used for the basket that Moses was placed in and floated down the river. According to the dimensions of the ark, it was the largest ship on record until 1858 when the Great Eastern was built to 669 ft.

Genesis 6: 22 Noah did everything just as God commanded him.

Genesis 7:1-5

Noah built the boat and fills it with animals, one pair of ever every kind of animal, male and female, and seven pair of every clean animal. This is to repopulate the earth with all the animals. The point of the seven pairs of clean animals is for sacrifice after the flood. If Noah did not have extra of the clean animals that he would need in sacrifice, then it would be a long while before Noah and his descendants could make sacrifices to God, also to have new cloths. Noah was also to store all kinds of food and vegetation. We will find out that the earth was covered with water for about a year. In that time plant life would have also been destroyed. He was going to need food and seed to replant.

A common question is “how Noah got all those different types of animals on the ark?” Well, today we have hundreds of types of dogs. However most of them have only been around in the last few centuries. It is likely that Noah only took one set of dog, cat, horse, etc. and that they were breed into the species that we know today.

After loading the ark with every kind of animal and the food that was needed, he entered the ark and seven days later God brought the rain.

Genesis 7:5 And Noah did all that the LORD commanded him.

Genesis 7:6-24

In Chapter 5 we find that Noah was 500 when he became a father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And one hundred years later the earth is destroyed. We have an exact time that the flood was. From here on out the record keeping of the Old Testament helps so we can know when the flood was.

We see that the animals came to Noah and obeyed him on getting on the ark. A return of Gods original plan for man to be over the animals, this was disrupted by the first couple when they obeyed the serpent.

Genesis 7:11-12 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.

From the above verses we know that the water burst forth from the ground and fell from the sky lifting the ark off the earth. It rained 40 days and 4o nights, talk about depressing. God shut up the ark, Noah could not do it himself, and all that was with Noah was saved.

Genesis 8:1 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded