After the flood

Noah and his sons are told to be fruitful and multiply. And they now have a new relationship with other living things. Before, humankind had “dominion” over all other living things, and they (animals and birds at least) were even considered as companions for Adam. Now God tells Noah:

The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the air, on everything that creeps on the ground, and on all the fish of the sea; into your hand are they delivered.

To modern sensibilities this sounds a bit harsh. It does to mine anyway. I suppose it “explains” wild animals’ fear and reluctance to be near humans. It is easy to see how this relationship, set in place by God, can be used as justification for exploitation.

Also, humans need no longer be vegetarians:

Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.

There is one prohibition regarding the eating of meat though – they are not allowed to consume the blood of living things: “you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood”. This practice is followed to this day by Jewish communities; animals are exsanguinated before they’re slaughtered.

Another prohibition concerns murder:

Whoever sheds the blood of a human,
by a human shall that person’s blood
be shed;
for in his own image
God made humankind.

Humans always remain special having been made in God’s image – do humans therefore always partake of something of the divine? At any rate, the penalty for murder is death.

In the previous chapter (8) God told himself “in his heart” that he would never again destroy everything in a flood. He now formally informs Noah of the covenant he is making with him, his descendants and, in fact, the whole earth.

Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.

As a sign of the covenant between him and the earth, and as a reminder to himself of this intention, God creates a rainbow, a “bow in the clouds”.

Unfortunately God’s second attempt at a world populated by well-behaved human beings gets off to a bad start. Noah plants a vineyard and originates viticulture – and drunkenness. He partakes of too much wine, falls asleep drunk and naked, and is discovered by Ham. Ham informs his brothers of their father’s condition. Shem and Japheth display rather more filial compassion and integrity than their brother, and cover their father’s nakedness with a garment. To avoid seeing him in his embarrassing state they hold the garment between them and walk backwards to cover him.

Once Noah awakes he is furious with Ham. The Notes indicate that “the text also hints that sexual transgression (homosexual incest?) may have been involved, since when he woke Noah ‘knew what his youngest son had done to him’”. That is a pretty serious charge, and goes further towards explaining Noah’s subsequent curse of Ham than what Ham is specifically said to have done (telling his brothers instead of handling the situation with discretion). (And somehow Noah’s own indiscretion – getting drunk – is quickly forgotten.)

Not only will Ham be a slave, and the lowest kind of slave, to his brothers, so will the whole of Canaan (descendants of Ham) to the descendants of the others. In contrast Shem will be blessed by the Lord, and Japheth will be allowed to “live in the tents of Shem”. (Japheth’s blessing seems a bit lukewarm compared to Shem’s.)

Genesis 10 contains the first postdiluvian genealogy, leading up to the Bible’s next hero, Abram (Abraham). The genealogy is intended to show the origins of different nations one comes across in story of the history of the Israelites, all of whom descend from Shem, Ham and Japheth. I will mention ones that caught my eye.

One of Japheth’s descendants is the nation of Magog, whose infamous king Gog turns up as an enemy in Ezekiel.

Ham’s descendants include Egypt, Canaan and Cush. Egypt became father to Caphtorim, from whom hail the Philistines, the traditional enemies of the Israelites. Canaan’s territory was said to spread in the direction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Cush is the father of Nimrod, apparently the first man on earth to become a “mighty warrior”. The “beginning of [Nimrod's] kingdom” was Babel, as well as Accad. From there Nimrod went into Assyria and built Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire.

Shem’s most famous descendant is Abram, husband to Sarai, and later father to Isaac. Also in Shem’s lineage is Eber, who gave his name to the Hebrews.

Note that there are contradictions in the genealogy as to who became father of which nation. The genealogy comes from the P and J sources. According to the P source Seba (Sheba in J) and Havilah are descendants of Ham. According to J Sheba (Seba in P) and Havilah originate with Shem.

Notes:

• Apart from the infamous Sodom and Gomorrah, Ham’s line is actually pretty illustrious for a cursed man’s. But there has to be some explanation in the OT for the traditional enmity between Abraham’s people and Egypt, Canaan, Assyria, the Philistines, and so forth.
• According to the Notes Nimrod’s name may be a distortion of “Ninurta”, “a Mesopotamian god of kingship and the hunt”, and “patrod god of the Assyrian kings”.
• Sheba (Seba in the P source) is the land from whom came the famous queen who visited Solomon.

Image: Noah’s Drunkenness by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475 – 1564)

~ by tamfuwing on May 13, 2008.