Torah: Genesis 6:9-11:32, Haftarah: Isaiah 54:1-55:5, Brit Hadasha (Second Testament): Mathew 5:13-7:23
The Noach Torah Portion includes two of the most famous episodes in the Old Testament, known in detail by every Sunday school alumni and pretty much everyone else as well. God decided to wipe out all of creation except for Noah and his family plus two of every animal – all of whom survived by riding out 40 days of torrential rain in the ark. Then a few generations later Noah’s descendants decide to build a tower to reach heaven, possibly to fight God, and he gets mad about the plan and makes it impossible to complete the project by confusing their language.
The problem, almost none of that is accurate. Don’t get me wrong, I love introducing Bible concepts to children through stories in books written for their level. But as adults we should regularly spend time in the actual Word and digest the text new each time to see the layers that are there. By letting these accounts remain simple children’s stories, we miss some incredible details about God and what he expects from people. We also miss out on topics for some really interesting campfire conversations.
In Genesis 6:19-21 we learn:
“19You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. 20Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. 21You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.”
Here is the first place the number of animals are mentioned. It is easy to focus on this and miss the next verse. Noah was to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it as food for himself and the animals. How many times have you heard jokes about species becoming extinct because the lions got hungrier than expected? So was Noah butchering and preserving meat for the carnivores? Let’s come back to that in a few minutes.
At an even more basic level, how exactly did Noah catch all of these animals without injuring them and keep the dangerous ones from injuring him? It is easy to just decide it was a miracle, and maybe it was. But the text does not shy away from telling us the things God specifically did. If it was not simply a miracle with no other explanation, how else could it have happened?
Genesis 1:29Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.
Another easy to overlook line is 1:30, quoted above. People and the animals were all vegetarians at creation. When did that change? For people it changed when they left the ark:
Genesis 9:1Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. 2The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands. 3Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.
So it was not until leaving the ark that people were allowed to eat animals. Perhaps that is also when the carnivorous and omnivorous animals started eating meat. At the very least we know from 9:2 that this is when animals started to fear man. So catching a gazelle was not as hard for Noah as it would be for us.
But if people, or at least people who followed God’s instructions, were not eating animals before the flood, what was the significance of “clean” and “unclean” animals before the flood? Remember it wasn’t really just two of each animal Noah took on the ark.
Genesis 7:2-3 “2Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, 3and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.
The normal assumption is that Noah took the extra clean animals for food. And yes, God knew what he was going to do so maybe that was part of the reason he had Noah bring extra pairs of clean animals. But from Noah’s perspective he brought extras because they became sacrifices to God:
Genesis 8:20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. 21The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.
With all of this in mind, jump back to last week’s portion. Why was Able raising sheep if they did not eat meat? Could be for wool. But they also were most definitely for sacrifice. Able’s job was producing gifts for God. Cain’s job was producing food for himself. I have wondered for a long time why Able was raising sheep if they did not eat them. But it was not until this read through that I realized his life was completely devoted to serving God.
And since I mentioned it earlier, the flood was much longer than 40 days. If you do the math on it, it looks like God made the promise never to flood the entire earth again on Shavuot (also called Pentecost). Following the thread of the interesting Biblical events that happened on Shavuot is a fun conversation.
What about the “tower of Babel”? The entire account is only 9 verses. But the way it is mostly retold makes God sound imaginary or silly and completely misses the point of the account. Genesis 11:
1Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. 3They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” 5But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” 8So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9That is why it was called Babel —because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
They were building a city that happened to include a tall tower. Remember, while the translations all say that the tower was intended to reach into the “heavens”, the Hebrew word in verse 4 is בַשָּׁמַיִם or bashshamayim. This means heaven in the sense of “the reign of heaven”. But it also just means sky. The tower was not intended as a way to reach God. It was a way to circumvent God’s will. It was a monument and focal point of a city. With that city and its monument they would make a name for themselves and avoid being scattered all over the earth.
The instructions from God were that everyone leaving the ark, animals and people, were to “multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it.” Genesis 8:17. The population of a single city focused around a monument tower and the surrounding farm land would in no way fill the earth. God’s intent was exactly what happened after he confused the language, people scattered everywhere and established different nations. These various nations played out the various roles needed for the heroes, villains, great deeds, and outright miracles that the Bible documents from God selecting his people to the Messiah and the early works of his taught ones. Those events continue to unfold as we progress to the events in the apocalyptic visions of the Prophets. A “one world government” consisting of one city and the surrounding farms would have short circuited all of that.
Another interesting question that is often overlooked is, what exactly did Ham do when Noah was drunk? The curse seems harsh for literally just seeing him while he was naked, especially since Noah got drunk and naked on his own. Generally when the Bible refers to “uncovering nakedness” it is a euphemism for some sort of sexual act. This would suggest Ham took advantage of the drunkenness and violated Noah or his wife. Others have suggested he castrated Noah.
Interestingly, the curse Noah leveled was on Ham’s son Canaan. This seems odd at first. But any number of these could justify Noah cursing Ham’s son as a measure for measure consequence – impacting Ham’s son (and thus his status as a father) after Ham attacked his own status as a father. Arguably though, this would also be explainable by Ham telling his brothers what he saw, even if a euphemism was not involved. Every one of the possible actions all involve some degree of assault on the very idea of fatherhood and Noah’s status as father.
Paleo Hebrew can yield some interesting insight into words. The Hebrew word for father is “av” spelled aleph bet. The pictographic meaning of aleph is strength. Bet is house. Father is the strength of the house. Every possible action that Ham did here undermines Noah in that role and with so few people on the planet it undermines the very idea of fatherhood. It could not be left unanswered.
Finally, with all of the things to talk about directly in the text, I did not even address my favorite thing about Noah. He was the worlds first prepper. He built a bug out vehicle, which doubled as his retreat location. He stockpiled shelf stable food. He listened to warning of coming danger and he took action to protect his family and in doing so preserved the rest of humanity. But Noah isn’t the only prepper in the Bible. It is an interesting study to look at the frequent mention of famine, food storage, fighting over resources, bugging out ahead of danger, and similar prepper themes in the Bible. Even Yeshua bugged out with his family as a baby when Herod wanted to kill him. I won’t follow this thread here. But we do expect to explore prepping more on this site as we move forward. It directly applies to the remnant theme in the verse our name is drawn from
Now go read this Torah portion for yourself and see what you find.