Out of Context God

Genesis 9:29

Genesis 9:29

Altogether, Noah lived 950 years, and then he died.

I know...I'm backtracking.

But I just remembered one of the things that made me want to do this whole thing in the first place.

The story of  Noah and the Ark.

And I just realized that I had moved on past Noah without mentioning the flood.

And so here we go...

As Christians, especially Christians who buy storybooks for our children, we love (most of) the story of Noah. We love Noah hearing God and Noah building the ark and the animals lining up two by two and the rain coming down and the dove and the rainbow and the happy ending.

The problem, at least for me right now, is that we miss the middle part of the story. As in the gigantic flood that covered the earth and all the stuff that happened as a result of the flood.

As in everyone on earth except Noah and his posse and his zoo dying.

And not just dying, but dying a horrible death. Because as the rains came down (and the floods came up) I imagine that people began to move up the hills and mountains to get away from the water. And people and animals got swept away and as the water rose and rose and rose and rose the ark gently rocked while multitudes (now THAT is a Bible word) were dying.

I imagine it as like the scene in Titanic, except with out the iceberg and Leonardo DiCaprio looking like Mr. Freeze. Bloated bodies everywhere, people screaming out for help, and inside the USS Noah they were eating S'mores and keeping the tigers away from the gazelles.

But none of the dying and tragedy and heartache (of man and God) is evident in the Noah and the Ark stories we read. I am not implying that these things would be appropriate for children because they are not.  I just think that the storybook version of Noah and the Ark is a fitting metaphor for how we (I) tend to see God and faith.

Shine up all the pretty parts, leave behind all the messy parts, and add some pretty pictures to make us smile.

My point is that we, read ME, tend to take away parts of the Bible that make me nervous, or uncertain, or anxious, or questioning, or anything other than white picket fence faith, and so I thought it was time to try and look at it all together. Give it some context as it were.

And now back to our regularly scheduled chapter 10.

Genesis 10:26-29

Genesis 10:26-29

Joktan was the father of Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah, Hadoram, Uzal,
Diklah, Obal, Abimael, Sheba, Ophir, Havilah and Jobab. All these were sons of Joktan.

We have three daughters. There names all start with the letter "M." The oldest is "Madison." She was named Madison mostly because we couldn't agree on any other names and I was born in Madison, Wisconsin. Daughter #2 is named "McKenzie" because we like the name and also because it began with the letter "M." (We are simple people.) Our third born daughter also has an "M" name - Macie. I think for #3 we had two criteria for a name: first, it had to start with "M" because we already had so many baby things that had an "M" and 2) it couldn't be a cuss word.

That was pretty much it.

Now Mr. and Mrs. Joktan evidently did not have any name criteria at all....

I think their criteria was: when a son is born put all the Scrabble letters in a cup, shake them around, toss the cup on the dirt floor and see which letters stuck together. There....the name of a son.

I can just imagine Mrs. Joktan calling the boys in for dinner…

"Almodad, Sheleph, Hazaramaveth, Jerah, Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, Obal, Abimael, Sheba, Ophir, Havilah, and Joab…time for dinner…did you hear me… Almodad, Sheleph, Hazaramaveth, Jerah, Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, Obal, Abimael, Sheba, Ophir, Havilah, and Joab…I said it was time for dinner…"

 

"Boys… Almodad, Sheleph, Hazaramaveth, Jerah, Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, Obal, Abimael, Sheba, Ophir, Havilah, and Joab…it’s time for di….never mind…it took me so long to say all those crazy names it’s time for dessert now."

And so that is why we stuck with all "M's," because we like to eat dinner.

Genesis 10:8

Genesis 10:8

Cush was the father of Nimrod, who grew to be a mighty warrior on the earth.

Here is another "Stuff in the Bible I Didn't Know was in the Bible." (SITBIDKWITB)

Nimrod.

Snicker, snicker...

The word "Nimrod" came from the Bible.

Hee-hee....

As in "You're such a nimrod."

Whatever that means....

But it still makes me snicker when I say it.

Genesis 10:2

Genesis 10:2

The sons of Japheth: Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech and Tiras.

(channeling my inner Jim Nabors....) "Well Golly....Gomer is from the Bible..."

Another SITBIDKWITB.

Genesis 9:20, 21

Genesis 9:20-21

 Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine,
he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent.

Ahhhh....Noah, Noah, Noah... so you build a boat, preserve humanity, and then shortly after things get settled, you show up drunk and nekkid. Not just naked, but nekkid, passed out in a tent with the kids around nekkid.

This is one of those verses that gives me more comfort that the stories, and people, of the Bible are real. Because this is one of those stories where if some guys thousands of years were going to say, "let's just make this a bit more PC and take out some of the unsavory parts of the Bible' I think this would have to be way up on the list.

Because you have the guy who did so many amazing things for God and then for whatever reason, just trainwrecks it for a day.

Kind of gives hope to a guy like me.

(just as a note, this is, I think, the first mention of wine in the Bible. There are those that would say  "see, wine leads to passing out nekkid in as tent. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. I am not one of those. I think in this case Noah drank too much wine and got crazy. There are a ton of places in the Bible where people drink wine and do not end up nekkid.)

Genesis 9:14

Genesis 9:14

Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life

Two thoughts jump in my head as I read this verse:

    -   

here we have the first mention of a rainbow, but no record of whether there was a leprechaun or pot-of-gold at this rainbow   

     -    why does God need a rainbow colored sticky note to remember not to destroy the world again.

Genesis 8:14

Genesis 8:14

By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry

So if I do the math correctly, they were on the boat that Noah built, with all the animals and their kids for just about a year.

 

You know what the really amazing thing to me in this story is? Not that Noah built the boat, not that the animals all came on two-by-two, or even that it rained for 40 days and 40 nights.

(and as a sidebar, I really can’t figure out how they got all the animals and food on the ark. But that is for another day…)

 

No the amazing thing to me is that Noah and Mrs. Noah got on the ark with their three sons and their three daughters-in-law and there are no recorded fist fights. I know friends that can’t go to dinner with their mothers-in-law without needing to call in a mediator. Here we have three daughters-in-law on this boat, with a zillion stinky animals for almost a year, and they all survived. That to me is the most miraculous part.

Genesis 6:14-16

Genesis 6:14-16

So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. Make a roof for it and finish the ark to within 18 inches of the top. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks.

If I’m Noah on this one, I am thinking “uhm…God you want to give me a few more details on this…huh.”

 

But that’s it.

:Noah...imagine a boat one an dhalf times as long as a football field, four stories tall, and about 10 parking spaces wide. Put a roof on top, cutout a door, and add a couple of decks on the inside and you'll be good to go."

That’s it.

 

So Noah is going to take two of every animals and his family, shut them up on the inside for the better part of year in a giant boat for which you have 77 words of instructions on how to build it. I can’t even put together a TV stand with eight pages of directions, in English and Spanish, without it being wobbly.

It is weird to me that God gives this little direction on how to build the boat that will carry humanity and the animal kingdom to the do-over of life on this planet. From previous reading and peeking ahead I know that there are all kinds of things in Numbers and Leviticus where the detail about things is suffocating, and here we get three sentences.

Just curious...

 

Genesis 6:13

Genesis 6:13

So God said to Noah, "I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.

Excuse me…but this whole “God SAID" stuff is getting a bit irritating.

As in to "God said" to Noah. "God said" to Adam, "God said" to Eve, "God said" to Noah, God said to practically everyone.  And frankly I think it would be a lot easier to really understand who God is and what He wants if there was some “And God said to Jeff…”

 

I think that if I was hanging out somewhere and all of sudden I hear this giant PA system, kind of like the overhead speakers back in school. “Uhmmm Jeff…over here…no over here…no I’m in the…never mind where I am. This is God, the Lord of Heaven and Earth and I need to make sure you know a couple of things. You’ve made a couple of choices recently that are not exactly what I would have liked you to done. And frankly, the sophomore and junior years of college were not much to write home about. And since I have your attention…”

 

That is the way I would like to hear from God. I think that would a lot easier. I am not good at hearing things. I am much better at talking than listening. On almost every report card I got through elementary school it was marked, “talks too much. Not a good listener.”

 

I would have thought that God knew that. But anyway, I think there is a pretty good chance that things would really work out better in my life if God would talk to me like he talked to all those guys in Bible Times.

 

Cause I see how well it worked out for Adam, and Eve, and well, most everybody that heard straight from God...

 

 

Genesis 6:6

Genesis 6:6

The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.
7 So the LORD said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—
men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—
for I am grieved that I have made them."

There are parts of the Bible that are really hard for me to understand. And maybe this is why before I would start reading in one place and then at some point jump to another part.

It was just too hard to understand.

Maybe it was that it would be like here in Genesis. Here I am reading all along about people living for centuries and having great lives (except for the trainwreck of mankind...) and having like 23 children and then WHAMMO! Out of nowhere, the whole place is going to, literally in this case, hell in a hand basket.

 

The back-story to this verse is that God is looking around all that he has made, just five chapters before, and is thinking, “This is horrible. Everybody is bad.” And then just when he thought things could not get worse, the girls start shacking up with the Nephillim

(again…my Bible translation…”crazy whacked out giant guys”) guys. And we all know how bad that can be.

 

And now God is looking around shaking his head, thinking to himself that he “…was sorry that he had made man on the earth…”

 

Here is my confusion. He is God. He made everything. He knows everything. He is the keeper of time and space. He is the beginning and the end. How is it that, if he were God, he would make something that would be so bad? That would make him so upset.

 

Couldn’t he fast-forward a bit from the “in the beginning” days and see what would happen.

 

Sure seems like he could have. Well…of course he could have…but did he? And if he did, why did he make us like we are?

 

That is the kind of stuff that I find hard about the Bible.