The Book of Genesis, Chapter 6

Genesis 6:1-22

Summary

God begins to question the wisdom of creating a bunch of people with the capacity of evil. Their corruption and violence frustrates and disappoints God, so he decides to wipe the slate clean. He does, however, find virtue in Noah and his extended family (right up to his grand kids!), and tells Noah to build an ark, taking two of each creature and all the food they would need.

Commentary

One of the first things struck me about this chapter, especially early on, was how much God seems to like to repeat things. I think this probably comes as a direct result of the author's penchant for repeating things. The corrupt state of humanity is mentioned about 6 times in a chapter of only 22 verses. The author tells us that God is going to destroy all life, and then God himself tells Noah of that fact twice. I don't think the repetition is particularly significant, but it jumped out at me.

We find at the beginning of the chapter that God has capped the human life-span at one hundred and twenty years. I'm assuming this is sort of a maximum value, because it's very rare for humans to live that long. According for wikipedia, the longest unambiguously documented lifespan was just over one hundred and twenty-two years. I can't decide if this woman should be congratulated for living so long, or denounced for disobeying God's command. (Yes, that's a joke folks)

We also have the first mention of the Nephilim. They're just mentioned by name here, so I had to do a little digging to learn about them, as I can't read this with the knowledge that someone of the day might have had.

According to wikipedia (I'm not going to do scholarly research for these posts, I'm sorry), the Hebrew word for "Nephilim" may have one of a few different meanings. Some posit that the word means "those who cause others to fall", because people's hearts would fall when they saw them. This ties into the implication that the Nephilim were warlike, given in Genesis,

"The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterwards—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown." (Gen 6:4)

It's possible, in my opinion, that this is a nod to the heroes of Greek myth, but regardless the Nephilim are described as being warriors of renown. Another interpretation of the Hebrew word translates it as meaning "wonderous", which fits the perception of them being great heroic figures.

There's an interesting overreaction, as I see it, in God's reaction to the evilness of humans. Granted, God sees that humans at this point are naught but evil, as shown in the following passage:

"The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually." (Gen 6:5)

The passage, by the way, wins the "most awkward sentence ever" award, at least thus far in the bible. The overreaction, though, comes about from God's disappointment in creating all living things, and he decides to "blot out from the earth the human beings I have created—people together with creeping things and birds of the air, for [he] was sorry that [he had] made them." (Gen 6:7)

It strikes me as the kind of reaction a melodramatic teenager might have to creating something he didn't like. Chalk another piece of evidence up for Old Testament God as a melodramatic teen.

God's teen angst sobers, however, when he appoints Noah to not only survive this blotting out, but to save every living thing that would need it as well. Then this fascinating narrative is interrupted by a plan for an ark.

Using the Google unit converter, I will now convert the measurements given for the ark into metres (with feet in brackets for the metrically challenged), as has been done before, so we can marvel at how ridiculously unlikely this scenario is.

Length: 300 cubits, 137.16m (450 feet)
Width: 50 cubits, 22.86m (75 feet)
Height: 30 cubits, 13.72m (45 feet)

For reference, the average height of a giraffe is 16-20 feet, or 5-6m. If we equally space the three floors, the giraffes probably had to be open to the elements. Poor giraffes. Regardless, I find it unlikely that two of every creature in existence, plus all of the food they needed and the same for Noah and his family would fit within approximately 44,144 m³ (1,518,750 ft³). It would be an undeniably giant boat, though.

I mean, huge.

Edit: I'd like point out that my intent here was to make the idea of a literal flooding of the entire world and a literal ark holding every creature to survive said flood is ridiculous.

There are possible interpretations which align with a very massive flood in the Middle East at around this time, and one of my friends pointed out that the very large animals are unlikely to be in the part of the world wherein they would need saving.