"Genesis: A Deeper Look"

“Genesis: A Deeper Look:” by Romans

Last week we reviewed the entirety of the Old Testament, summarizing one book at a time. I found it to be a most inspiring and edifying review as I prepared my Discussion Notes. For all of you who were hear for that, I hope the hour we spent together was also profitable to you.

Tonight, I'd like to take a closer look at the Book of Genesis, and examine the Account of the Flood:

First, there are many reservations  about Scripture, and rejection of the Bible as the Word of God from
many circles. During the the Nineteenth Century, the Bible came a under close scrutiny from scholars, especially from Germany. This is generally referred to as the “Higher Criticism” that went from interpreting Scripture from the perspective achieving a deeper understanding of it, to questioning it, or more accurately distrusting it from every angle. It was not only the inspiration of Scripture came into question, it was the authorship, and the time of authorship. What had been accepted as prophecy suddenly was basically being called a hoax, claiming that it was written AFTER the events happened.

In addition, other ancient writings came to light that included events that were similar to those found in Scripture. Has anyone ever heard of The Epic of Gilgamesh? It includes, among other things, an account of Flood that wiped out almost all of mankind. As I understand it, when the Epic of Gilgamesh was originally found, critics started accusing the Bible of plagiarism. The charge was that whoever wrote Flood story in the Bible, stole it from the Epic of Gilgamesh, and just changed a few of the details to make it look like the original. The account was changed from gods flooding the earth to one God. This was the beginning of monotheism, or the worship of one God. But there were a few other “details” that differentiated Genesis from the Gilgamesh Account of the Flood, as well.

From an article I found at the website http://www.voices.yahoo.com, about this subject, we read thus about the varying Flood accounts found in each: “Both tales include one man chosen by the gods (or God) to survive the flood, and this man builds an ark, which he fills with his family and pairs of all living creatures. The rest of mankind is eliminated because God (or the gods) was displeased with them. In Gilgamesh, the gods found the people to be too noisy, interrupting their rest, so, on a whim; they decided to bring forth the flood to rid them of their nuisance. In Genesis, God was displeased with mankind because he found them to be wicked, and decided to eliminate them by means of a flood.”

There is a significant difference between the motives for the Flood found in Genesis as compared to the Gilgamesh account. In Gilgamesh, humans were “noisy,” and interrupted the gods' sleep. The Flood which destroyed almost every human being on earth, was sent on a whim. In stark contrast, the motivation in Scripture for the Flood was not over something petty like noisiness, or even over mere wickedness. It was a all-encompassing wickedness that almost defies the imagination. We read beginning in Genesis 6:5: “And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth...”  

“Noisiness,” on the one hand, and “ every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually,” on the other. That is quite a contrast.

Y'all know that sooner or later I am going to bring Matthew Henry into this mix, so it may as well be sooner.
Here is what he wrote regarding God's motivation for the Flood, and the description of the state to which  mankind had sunk:

“The most remarkable thing concerning the old world, is the destroying of it by the deluge, or flood. We are told of the abounding iniquity of that wicked world: God's just wrath, and his holy resolution to punish it. In all ages there has been a peculiar curse of God upon marriages between professors of true religion and its avowed enemies. The evil example of the ungodly party corrupts or greatly hurts the other. Family religion is put an end to, and the children are trained up according to the worldly maxims of that parent who is without the fear of God. If we profess to be the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty, we must not marry without his consent. He will never give his blessing, if we prefer beauty, wit, wealth, or worldly honours, to faith and holiness. The Spirit of God strove with men, by sending Enoch, Noah, and perhaps others, to preach to them; by waiting to be gracious, notwithstanding their rebellions; and by exciting alarm and convictions in their consciences...”

Continuing, “But the Lord declared that his Spirit should not thus strive with men always; he would leave them to be hardened in sin, and ripened for destruction. This he determined on, because man was flesh: not only frail and feeble, but carnal and depraved; having misused the noble powers of his soul to gratify his corrupt inclinations. God sees all the wickedness that is among the children of men; it cannot be hid from him now; and if it be not repented of, it shall be made known by him shortly. The wickedness of a people is great indeed, when noted sinners are men renowned among them. Very much sin was committed in all places, by all sorts of people. Any one might see that the wickedness of man was great: but God saw that every imagination, or purpose, of the thoughts of man's heart, was only evil continually. This was the bitter root, the corrupt spring. The heart was deceitful and desperately wicked; the principles were corrupt; the habits and dispositions evil. Their designs and devices were wicked. They did evil deliberately, contriving how to do mischief. There was no good among them...”

Continuing: “God saw man's wickedness as one injured and wronged by it. He saw it as a tender father sees the folly and stubbornness of a rebellious and disobedient child, which grieves him, and makes him wish he had been childless. The words here used are remarkable; they are used after the manner of men, and do not mean that God can change, or be unhappy. Does God thus hate our sin? And shall not we be grieved to the heart for it? Oh that we may look on Him whom we have grieved, and mourn! God repented that he had made man; but we never find him repent that he redeemed man. God resolves to destroy man: the original word is very striking, 'I will wipe off man from the earth,' as dirt or filth is wiped off from a place which should be clean, and is thrown to the dunghill, the proper place for it. God speaks of man as his own creature, when he resolves upon his punishment. Those forfeit their lives who do not answer the end of their living. God speaks of resolution concerning men, after his Spirit had been long striving with them in vain. None are punished by the justice of God, but those who hate to be reformed by the grace of God.”

The story of the Flood is not just a story invented by pagans. The Epic of Gilgamesh was written after the Flood, by descents of Flood survivors, namely the children and great grandchildren of Shem, Ham and Japheth, Noah's children who were on the Ark, itself. The similarities between the two stories were because they Flood actually happened. The major difference is the trivialization of the motive for the Flood from the Genesis Account to the Gilgamesh account. In Genesis, it was described as wickedness on an unprecedented scale. In Gilgamesh it was making too much noise, and interrupting sleep. Genesis is not an embellished version of what happened. Gilgamesh is a trivialized down-playing of the grievous nature of sin, at a time of rampant and ceaseless evil so out of control that God had to intervene and put an end to it. The charge from critics of the Bible, that the fabricated Gilgamesh account was the original,  implies that there was no Flood, nor anyone named Noah whom God called upon to build an Ark to save mankind and land animals.

But in the New Testament, Jesus Christ, Himself, spoke of both the Flood as an historical event, and the Ark as an actual ship was built to preserve life. Notice Jesus' words in Matthew 24, as He responds to a question about the signs that would accompany His return to earth: We'll begin in Matthew 24:37: “But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”


I know a man who is an agnostic. He does not accept the notion that the Bible is inspired. One day he told me something that I found fascinating for several reasons which I will explain in a minute. He said that anthropologists, or scientists who study the cultures and social environments of people all over the world have said that they have never encountered a culture, no matter how remote, that did not have a knowledge of the Flood as a part of their history of folklore. We're not talking about some local flood that happened in their own lifetimes, I mean THE Flood... the Flood that wiped out all of mankind.
So my agnostic acquaintance asked the following question in light of that statement about the Flood. He asked, “IF there really was a Flood that wiped everybody out... then how can it possibly be true that remote cultures  all over the earth are aware of it, thousands of years later? I thought the Bible said that everyone was wiped out.”

Before I answer his question, I would like to throw it out to all of you. How can the Flood be universally known in the remotest cultures all over the world?

Yes. Here is the answer. My friend hopes that when he asks a question like that, that he is talking to someone who just believes the Word of God because someone told him to. He thinks I was led to the water, and so I just started drinking without asking questions. Well, I DO believe the Bible. But I also ask plenty of questions, not from the point of you of disproving it, but putting it through its paces, and allowing it to speak to me. I have found the Bible to be a inexhaustible mine of precious jewels. When you start digging into Scripture, you find more and more and more wealth of every description.

Let's get back to my agnostic friend's question. If you look at world history as it is presented in the pages of Genesis, you see the Flood in Chapter Six. The Flood did not wipe out everyone. Noah, and his wife, his three sons, and their three wives, along with all land animals, were all saved by boarding the ark. And the ark touched down on the peaks of Mt. Ararat, and all the people and all the animals got off the ark.

But something else happened that you don't read about until five Chapters later in Genesis 11. Verse one tells us, “Genesis 11:1 “And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.”
This, as you may already know, is the account of the Tower of Babel. We read in Genesis 11:4: And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”

As I said earlier, these were people who would have been aware of the Flood, but not because they read about it in a book; they had living parents, grandparents or other close relatives (uncles and aunts) who had survived the Flood. The people build that Tower  were told first-hand accounts about how every person and land animal died in the waters of the Flood. But their relatives were spared death by drowning by being a passenger on the Ark which was able to just float away when the waters rose. We read a pre-Flood description of what human society had degenerated to, in Genesis 6:11: “The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.”

There is another description that almost defies the imagination in its scope of depravity and rebellion against God that was rampant on the earth at that time: We read in Genesis 6:5: “And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Everyone on earth who chose to go their own way of rebellion against God's rule over man, was drowned.

Let's focus in on the descendents of the survivors building of the Tower, first. What purpose do you suppose the Tower was supposed to serve?

Bible commentaries have suggested a variety of purposes. The first one that came to my mind was this: When a Flood threatens, where is the place that people are always advised to seek? Higher ground, or at least a place above the water level. A tower could serve that purpose. Not everyone could be saved, but certainly more than were saved when the first Flood wiped out everyone but eight people. Other commentaries suggested that the Tower may have been a religious idol dedicated to the sun in the heavens, (the Tower was supposed to reach the heaven) for drying up the waters of the Flood.

Consider: Flood waters abated, and dry land appeared. When the eight survivors of the Flood left the Ark, God blessed them with the very same words with which He blessed Adam and Eve, the only humans on the earth. We read beginning in Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.”

Notice, now, in Genesis 9:1, God's words to the only human beings on earth: “And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.” From the Online Merriam-Webster dictionary, we read the following definition for the word, “replenish.”

Replenish: transitive verb: a. to fill with persons or animals; b. archaic: to supply fully

In blessing the survivors of the Flood, it is apparent that He wanted them not only to have children, but to spread out over the face of the earth and fully populate the waste places of the entire planet. That is what it is to replenish. God blessed the survivors to both multiply, and fully supply the earth with people.  

Let's take a deeper look, and see what Matthew Henry had to say about the activity by mankind at the time of the building of the Tower: “How soon men forget the most tremendous judgments, and go back to their former crimes! Though the desolation of the deluge were before their eyes, though they sprang from the stock of righteous Noah, yet even during his life-time, wickedness increases exceedingly. Nothing but the sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit can remove the sinful lusts of the human will, and the depravity of the human heart. God's purpose was, that mankind should form many nations, and people all lands. In contempt of the Divine will, and against the counsel of Noah, the bulk of mankind united to build a city and a tower to prevent their separating. Idolatry was begun, and Babel became one of its chief seats. They made one another more daring and resolute. Let us learn to provoke one another to love and to good works, as sinners stir up and encourage one another to wicked works.”

Keep in mind that, at this time, a city as well as a tower, was under construction. Some other commentaries suggested that the Tower would provide a point of reference that people could see from far distances, and, in so doing, keep them from wandering off, and becoming separate from the population. The reference that “they were of one voice,” implies more than mere similarity of language.  The leadership of the day wanted everyone marching in locked step to established and approved customs. Separation and migration could lead to conflicting beliefs, and the rise of distant local leaders who could then challenge the new world order. We read of one such leader in the Chapter previous to the account of the Tower being built.  Nimrod was the grandson of Noah, and the son of Ham. Of Nimrod we read in Genesis 10:9: “He was a mighty hunter before the LORD: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD.” The term “before” in the phrase “before the Lord,”  has a variety of meanings. In Hebrew, the word is  “paniym”  -- pronounced: paw-neem.' Besides meaning “before,” translations into English from the Hebrew “paniym” have included the words  “against,” “anger,” and “battle.” This puts a whole new face on understanding how Nimrod is being spoken of. The people may well have given their allegiance to Nimrod “before the Lord,” or “in defiance of the Lord,”  as it also might have been transliterated. If you think this might be a stretch of the Hebrew on my part, consider Young's Literal Translation of the Bible, and how he described Nimrod, and his position in established society: We read in Genesis 10: 9: “he (Nimrod) hath begun to be a hero in the land; he hath been a hero in hunting before Jehovah;”

Let's continue in the account of their building the Tower of Babel. We discover further, beginning in Verse 5: “And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.”

The confounding of their language brought about what God had wanted the survivors to do all along, namely, replenish or fully supply the vacated earth with people. But it was only their language that was confounded. As they spread out upon the face of the earth, their memories of the first-person accounts of the Flood, spoken to them by their relatives who had survived it, went with them. And that is how it can be true that thousands of miles and thousands of years removed from the time and location of the Flood, every Culture on Earth has an awareness of a great Flood.

Apparently, my agnostic friend never applied the confusion of languages at the Tower of Babel which took place soon after the Flood, and the resulting dispersion of people, to explain how every Culture on Earth knew about the Flood. No Western missionaries had been to visit them. They had not been given copies of Gideon Bibles. Billy  Graham never held a revival meeting in their village. They never saw a Bible. They never read Genesis. But they all know about the Flood. And that is true all over the earth.

It is our responsibility, as individuals, and collectively as the Body of Christ to know the Word of God. It is available to us in such a wide variety of formats: It is everywhere in paper book form, it is online, we can download it into our smartphones, we can get it in pocket-sized MP3 Players, we can get it on CD's and DVD's.

The entire Bible is available right here at the4gospels in a dramatized format for you to listen to daily. Go to

         http://the4gospels.net/current/audiobible/ipadplan2.php

Click on that day's assigned portion, and you can finish listening to the Bible in a year. Then, simply start over. You may have heard it once, but there is MUCH more to learn! The Bible will always be a Source of NEW revelation and understanding when you review what you thought you already knew and understood! I have been studying it for over 40 years, and the lights are STILL coming on for the first time, illuminating things I never saw before, or fully understood before!

The Word of God is everywhere, AND more than affordable! They make it so you cannot afford NOT to have it! There are websites like http://www.biblos.com, that provide it for FREE!! They offer multiple translations so you can use that one that is clearest to you. And there are automatic cross-references so you can see what other verses apply to what you're reading. This website also offers a variety of Bible Commentaries. And it is all FREE!

You have no excuse to not know what God wanted you to know in His Word!

The Bible is an inexhaustible gold mine! The more you dig, the richer you WILL get!
Get into the Word of God, and get the Word of God into you.

This concludes this evening's Discussion, “Genesis: A Deeper Look”
This was originally aired by Romans “live” on November 21st, 2013