Genesis 6

In which Noah builds an Ark.



Commentary
Skeptic's Annotated Bible

6:1  And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
6:2  That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
6:3  And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.

Here God is setting the human lifespan to 120  years.  Thank goodness; those lifespans in the previous chapter were just unbelievable.

6:4  There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

Giants!

Also, a little more pornography here for you: the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men.  Bom-chicka-bow-wow.

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.

Evil, wicked man.  Whoever created you that way should be punished!

6:6  And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

At least God feels bad about it.  He must know he's messed up and, using his infinite capacity for forgiveness and his omnipotence, just set things right.

6:7  And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

What?  God is going to kill everything because God created man to be wicked?  (And what was this wickedness, by the way; the Bible doesn't say.  All it said before this was that men and women were getting married and having children.)

And why do all of the animals have to die too?  What possible crime of man could justify the killing of all those animals?  What a bloodthirsty character this God is turning out to be.  

6:8  But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.
6:9  These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.

When Enoch walked with God in Gen 5:24 it meant he was dead.  I'm just sayin'.

6:10  And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
6:11  The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
6:12  And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.

Oh, here's the crime: the earth is filled with violence and it is corrupt. Yup, we have to fix that.  Let's see, maybe if I kill (almost) every living thing on the planet in a massive flood, that will put an end to violence.

6:13  And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
6:14  Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.

Gopher wood?  What the heck is that?  Apparently this term is only used once in the Bible, right here.  And there's no way of knowing what kind of wood this is.

6:15  And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.

What's a cubit?  It's an early form of measurement; even the ancient Egyptians used it.  It was generally related to the length of a forearm, sub-divided into palms and fingers (I'm not kidding).  It ranged from 1.5 feet to 2.25 feet.

So this ark, then, is anywhere from 450 feet to 675 feet long; 75-125 feet wide; and 45-75 feet tall.  Yup, that should hold two of every animal on the planet.

6:16  A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it.

Three stories tall, one window and one door.

6:17  And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.
6:18  But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee.
6:19  And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.

This is the story that I always heard reference to as a kid: 2 of every animal, one male and one female.  So that when the destruction of the flood was done, the animals could repopulate.  Because God couldn't create them over again from dirt like he did earlier.

6:20  Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.
6:21  And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them.
6:22  Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.

A couple of thoughts at this point.  First, we're learning that God is a pretty violent and bloodthirsty character.  Destroy all life on the planet except for one small family and two of every animal?  Yikes!

There are flood stories in many mythologies, folklores and literary stories.  The earliest comes from Gilgamesh:

1. Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh a secret story that begins in the old city of Shuruppak on the banks of the Euphrates River.
2. The "great gods" Anu, Enlil, Ninurta, Ennugi, and Ea were sworn to secrecy about their plan to cause the flood.
3. But the god Ea (= Sumerian god Enki) repeated the plan to Utnapishtim through a reed wall in a reed house.
4. Ea commanded Utnapishtim to demolish his house and build a boat, regardless of the cost, to keep living beings alive.
5. The boat must have equal dimensions with corresponding width and length and be covered over like Apsu boats.
6. Utnapishtim promised to do what Ea commanded.

...and it goes on for several tablets with the building of the boat, the storm, the subsiding of the waters, a sacrafice, and so on.  Utnapishtim was the first Noah.  There's also the epic of Atra-Hasis, from an 18th century BCE set of Babylonian tablets that also contain a similar deluge story.  In Greek mythology, Deucalion puts himself and his wife in a chest to save themselves from a deluge unleashed by Zeus to cleanse the coastal plain (sounds a little like riding of Niagara Falls in a barrel).  It is also part of the Sumerian creation myth, as discovered on a tablet called Eridu Genesis, dating from 2150 BCE.  In the Hindu text Satapatha Brahmana, Vishnu saves the pious first man Manu from a flood.  And so on.

The persistence of this motif suggests that there is some historical basis.  Probably there was some tsunami that unexpectedly wiped out large areas; have you seen footage of modern tsunamis?  It's horrific.  This would certainly need an explanation, and superstitious, credulous people would certainly be susceptible to religious explanations.  Or, especially in coastal areas, floods were these horrible, unexplained things that happened from time-to-time, and religions co-opted people's fear of these very real events and magnified the stories into visions of global massacre based on God's wrath.  Convenient.

This page gives some credible possible sources for the flood stories.  For some interesting background information on tsunamis, check out NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, no relation to Noah)'s PMEL (Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory)'s YouTube page.

There are tons of videos on YouTube showing the effects of tsunamis.  Here's one that shows a tsunami in Japan from the air; at around the 1:30 mark the wave sweeps away everything along the shore, taking down buildings like they were made of cardboard.  What would you have made of that if you didn't know what we know about earthquakes, waves and geology?

Returning to Genesis, apart from the flood part of the story, there's an interesting pattern developing in the behavior of God.  Punishment is given, not to an individual who commits a crime, but to that individuals descendents.  All of mankind is punished because Adam disobeyed God.  This is a convenient application of justice for God, because if the one committing the crime were actually punished, then God himself would have to be punished for causing all of this suffering and and grief.  Again, if this being is truly omniscient and omnipotent, then he both (a) had to know he was creating creatures that would behave this way; and (b) had to be able to either prevent them from doing it (or creating them so they wouldn't in the first place), or find more gentle ways of guiding and correcting them when they transgress.  Instead, let's bring a violent flood and kill almost every living thing on the planet.  Only a violent psychopath overreacts in such murderous ways.

I also find it grotesque how this story is sold to children as an interesting Bible story.  I remember as a kid seeing children's books with cartoon drawings of the ark and Noah leading two of each animal onto it, like it's some kind of cute, humorous or inspirational story.  It's not.  It's vile and should demonstrate both the ahistoricity and amorality of this vile book.