From Creation to Babel Part 15
One year and twenty days from when Noah entered the ark, Noah exited the ark and worshiped God for having saved him from the flood. The flood waters took a little over a year to recede from the land, and for the land to recover enough for Noah and his family to be able to live away from the ark. You have to bear in mind that even though the mountain tops would have been uncovered first, those peaks would not have been able to sustain vegetation of any kind. From the devastation of the planet there must have been a long time for even grass to regain it’s foothold, much less trees, vines, and other plant life. According to the Bible, and according to modern archeology, mankind did not begin it’s second civilization on top of a mountain. Rather, it found it’s way down into the river valley below.
To this day there is evidence of this event near Mt. Ararat in Turkey of the reverence that people have paid to the Ark. There are stones of great antiquity, carved with glyphs describing the events and people of the flood. Some have even claimed to have found pieces of wood and even to have photographed the Ark itself. One day it may be possible for an expedition to travel to the mountain and verify archeologically the ruins there. However, we don’t need these relics to know that there was an ark, or a flood. Every culture on the planet tells us that there was a great flood. Most specifically, it is the earliest civilization of man, the very civilization that began in the river valley that flows from the Ararat mountains who tell us that there was a great flood.1
One might imagine how exited Noah and his family were to finally release the animals from the Ark, and to exit the craft for the first time in a full year. The first thing Noah did was build an altar and give thanks to God for his safe passage.
Genesis 8:20-22
And Noah built an altar to Jehovah, and took of every clean animal, and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And Jehovah smelled the soothing fragrance, and Jehovah said in His heart, I will never again curse the ground for the sake of man, because the imagination of the heart of man is evil from his youth. Yea, I will not again smite every living thing as I have done; While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
We see a sacrifice by man, to God and we see a soothing of God’s wrath towards man. At this point God has declared peace with creation by making a promise with creation. His promise is that while the earth remains the seasons and the normal ebb and flow of life will remain and that he will never again curse the ground because of the evil of men. The next statements made by God are the declarations of a new order in the relationship between creation and man.
Genesis 9:2-7
And your fear and your dread shall be on all the animals of the earth, and on every bird of the heavens, on all that moves on the earth, and on all the fish of the sea. They are given into your hands. Every creeping thing which is alive shall be food for you. I have given you all things, even as the green plant. But you shall not eat flesh in its life, its blood. And surely the blood of your lives I will demand. At the hand of every animal I will demand it, and at the hand of man. I will demand the life of man at the hand of every man’s brother. Whoever sheds man’s blood, his blood shall be shed by man. For He made man in the image of God. And you, be fruitful and multiply. Swarm over the earth and multiply in it.
God establishes the omnivorous nature of mankind, the carnivorous nature of certain beasts and the fear that all animals share for humans. This also establishes the rules of meat eating in a very clear and defined manner. Humans may eat of every thing living, except for other humans. If a human takes another human’s life, then God demands the life of the murderer. This principle reestablishes the basic tenet of God that life is in the blood, and that the price of sin is death; in other words, the shedding of blood. It is clear though, that this rule of life and blood belongs only to the human. Because man was made in God’s image, and because man was given the responsibility of stewardship over all other creatures, it becomes man’s responsibility to maintain God’s values over this creation we had been given control over. To kill another human without warrant or justification is asserting one’s own life above another, and thus you assert your own will and purpose above that of God. The penalty for this sin is the same as all other sins; death.
God also states that man will not eat living flesh, or “flesh in it’s blood.” It is clear that we are to kill the animal before we eat it, and that eating live prey is strictly prohibited.
It is also here that God states quite emphatically that never again will the earth suffer a great deluge, and that as a sign of this covenant between God and creation, he set the rainbow in the heavens.
In addition to bringing a happy ending to an otherwise dreadful epoch in human history, this seemingly simple conclusion has amazing gravity over the evidences already uncovered in this study. By God’s declaration that man can now have every living creature for food, the earlier verses are substantiated in stating that man was, heretofore, vegetarian in nature. By declaring that the rainbow is a symbol of the rains is a clear indication that mankind had never seen a rainbow before that day. If this is indeed the case, then mankind had never seen rain before the flood, because as any scientist will explain, a rainbow is caused by the prismatic refraction of light by tiny water droplets which are normally called rain.
We know that man is already accustomed to animal sacrifice to worship one God and that there are formalized practices established to accomplish this form of worship that pre-date Moses by more than two thousand years. We know that in order to receive a blessing from God, all one must do is believe, and obey.
Unfortunately we now must tackle the unsavory end-note to this tale of redemption and grace. As witness to the eternally evil nature of mankind, one final act of pure humanity is related to us at the end of the story of Noah and the flood. It would seem that there was one bad apple in the barrel.
Genesis 9:18-27
And the sons of Noah that went out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And Ham is the father of Canaan. These are the three sons of Noah, and the whole earth was overspread from them. And Noah, a man of the ground, began and planted a vineyard. And he drank from the wine, and was drunk. And he uncovered himself inside his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father. And he told his two brothers outside. And Shem and Japheth took a garment and put it on both their shoulders. And they went backward and covered the nakedness of their father, their faces backward. And they did not see the nakedness of their father.
And Noah awoke from his wine. And he came to know what his younger son had done to him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan. He shall be a slave of slaves to his brothers. And he said, Blessed be Jehovah, the God of Shem; and may Canaan be his slave. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall live in the tents of Shem, and Canaan shall be their slave.
In the events described by this passage we must assume that a good deal of time has passed since the flood. There must have been enough time for the certain plants to return, most notably the berries and natural fruits. There must have been enough time to make, or set up tents. We also know that there was enough time to ferment a good deal of the juice of these berries into wine. Most likely the time period mentioned here is several years after the flood, but because a specific time period is not annotated, we can only guess based on the facts given.
First, we have the clear declaration that Ham is the father of Canaan. If one is familiar with the Bible at all, the name Canaanite should be fairly familiar. It was the descendants of Canaan that were destroyed in the cities of Sodom and Gomorra. It was the Canaanites who were destroyed by the Israelites in their conquest of the promised land. The Bible quite clearly states that the Canaanites are some of the most wicked people on the earth.
Next, we have the declaration that the earth was already being repopulated by the progeny of the sons of Noah. Then, some time later, Noah planted the vineyard and made wine. Some time after the flood, Noah got smashed. So drunk as a matter of fact, that he passed out naked in his tent. Here is the key, Noah was inside his own tent, “sleeping it off.” What happens next is a little bit of a mystery, but we can interpret a few details.
The first is that the tent flap was closed. How do we know this? Because Ham had to tell his brothers that Noah was naked inside the tent, they didn’t see it for themselves, even though they were right outside the door. Two, Ham didn’t seem to have a problem looking at his father naked, passed out drunk and inviting his two other brothers to come in and have a look and possibly a laugh as well. We also know that it was not acceptable for Ham to be in that situation. Instead of having a giggle at Noah’s expense, the other two brothers grabbed a garment, put it on their backs, walked into the tent backwards and covered Noah up so that no one else would possibly see him laying there naked.
Now let’s examine the response of Noah. When Noah woke up and learned about the events, he cursed Canaan. That’s right, he cursed Canaan, not Ham. Why? Because Noah realized that if Ham had the propensity to look at his own father naked, and even somehow take pleasure from the experience – through laughter, sarcasm, or even sexual perversion – then Canaan was doomed to learn from the sins of the father, and this teaching, unless left unchecked, would continue to grow worse and worse throughout the generations to come. In this passage we are witnessing the beginning of the second downfall of men, and we are also taught the means of that downfall; bad parenting.
It is through the parents that each child is formed, for good or for ill. Though there are times when certain people are born “broken” because of some physical anomaly, the greater bulk of bad behavior, destructive behavior and “alternative lifestyles” can be directly attributed to the failure of parents to maintain God’s principles throughout life. It only takes one generation to break a thousand years of tradition. It only takes one more generation to bring utter ruin to a civilization because of it.
By the way, the occupants of the Mesopotamian valley during the kingdom of Sumer, Akkad and Chaldea were a combination of Semites (sons of Shem) and Hammites (sons of Ham). It is no longer a mystery as to how the Sumerians came up with such twisted, sexually oriented tales of the creation of earth, and the account of the flood. They learned it from their fathers.
- Sumerian account of Ziusudra
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