A Lenten Bible Study: Genesis to Jesus Lesson Five: A New Beginning

Here is the fifth lesson in the Saint Paul Center for Catholic Biblical Theology's Lenten Scripture study, Genesis to Jesus. Follow along, and by the end of Lent, you'll understand the importance of Easter in light of God's plan for our salvation. Sign up to receive new video lessons [here] and buy related study materials.
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The second covenant God enters into with man is God’s covenant with Noah. The story of Noah and his ark is one of the most famous of all time. It’s inspired a multitude of books, movies, and countless homilies. But there’s a whole lot more than just the story of how humanity was saved from a terrible flood safe within an immense wooden boat filled with all kinds of animals.

This is a story of how God renews his covenant with creation, a rebirth of sorts, which foreshadows the sacrament of baptism. There are also parallels between Noah and Adam, as well as the flood and creation. But let’s begin this lesson with a bit of the backstory of why the flood even took place.

In our last lesson, you’ll recall that even though Adam and Eve sinned, sending humanity into a downward spiral of wickedness, God still continued to offer them his mercy. He also promised them a redeemer. The Fourth Eucharistic Prayer in the Mass, tells us this when it says, “And when through disobedience [man] had lost your friendship, you did not abandon him to the domain of death… Time and again you offered them covenants… “

The fulfillment of that promise of a redeemer, and the fulfillment of God’s plan, the great and everlasting covenant, happened with coming of Jesus Christ [Galatians 4:4]. Remember that God promised the world a redeemer in Genesis 3:15. He also told Adam and Eve that because of their sin, human history going forward would be marked by an ongoing conflict between the two seeds. The two seeds are the offspring of the woman, and the offspring of the serpent, which represent two groups of people that appear in the rest of the Bible as the righteous and the wicked.

We see that conflict between the two seeds almost as soon as man is expelled from Eden in the lives of Adam and Eve’s first two sons, Cain and Abel. Genesis 4 tells us that one day, Cain and Abel offer sacrifices to the Lord. The fact that they do that demonstrates that man has been worshipping God by sacrifice since the dawn of human history. It also shows us that Cain and Abel knew what was expected of them, what kind of sacrifice they were supposed to make.

But in Genesis 4, when these two brothers make their sacrifices, God accepts Abel’s, but rejects Cain’s. Why? Hebrews 11: 4 sheds light when it says that: “By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain.” 1 John 3:12 says that Cain’s “deeds were evil.” After God refuses his sacrifice, Cain becomes angry. God warns him to guard his heart and not allow himself to be mastered by sin. In effect, he tells him, “You’ve messed up. Accept responsibility for what you’ve done. Repent, and do better next time.” But Cain doesn’t do any of that. Instead, he defies God and kills his brother out of envy.

Like God did with Adam and Eve, God questions Cain, giving him the opportunity to confess and repent. “Where is Abel your brother?” God asks in Genesis 4, “What have you done?” Like his parents before him, Cain has nothing but excuses for God. He refuses to confess his crime and accuses God.

Just as God disciplined Adam and Eve with curses for being the first to sin against his covenant, so God lays similar burdens on Cain for being the world’s first murderer. What were Cain’s curses? First, the ground will not yield fruit for him because he defiled it by the murder of his brother. Second, he’ll have to spend his life as a fugitive in the land of Nod, which means “wandering.”

God doesn’t render this punishment on Cain out of vengeance. He renders it out of love. Cain has to learn that there are consequences for sin and disobedience. He has to feel some of the pain he has caused so that he doesn’t continue causing it. To continue hurting others, to continue sinning, is to distance ourselves from God. And that is like denying ourselves oxygen. We can’t live without him. Think of covenant curses, such as the one God brings down upon Cain, as an extreme form of fatherly discipline. They are designed to lead hardened sinners to repentance and love.

After Abel’s murder and Cain’s banishment, Adam and Eve have another son, Seth. What becomes of these two sons, Seth and Cain? We learn from Genesis 4:17 that Cain builds a city and names it after his son, Enoch. This is significant. The Hebrew word for “name” is shem, which is also an expression for glory or fame. By naming the city after his son, Cain is seeking to bring undue glory to his family name. From there things only get worse.

Seven generations later we see the full flowering of wicked self-glorification in Cain’s descendant Lamech. Lamech stands out in the text because he takes two lives. This violated God’s plan for the marriage covenant in creation. And this isn’t his only issue. Besides being a bigamist, he’s violent, vengeful, and murderous. But while Cain’s line is becoming confirmed in its wickedness, the opposite is happening with Seth’s line. Rather than seeking to glorify their own names, Genesis 4:26 tells us that Seth’s descendants are advancing God’s glory as they “…call upon the name [shem] of the Lord.”

The full flowering of the righteousness of Seth’s line is also evident by the seventh generation. Genesis 5:24 tells us that Seth’s descendant Enoch. “walked with God… for God took him.” In other words, as the Book of Hebrews confirms, he didn’t see death. Seth and his descendants show us what divine sonship is supposed to look like – calling on God’s name, as Seth did, and walking closely with him, as Enoch did. Though they still suffered from the effects of original sin, there is a sense in which God’s likeness was faithfully preserved in Seth’s line. They were living in relationship with God. This line of righteous men, however, eventually gets itself into trouble by marrying Cainite women, women descended from the line of Cain. As Genesis 6:2 tells us, “They took to wife such of them as they chose.”

The sons born of these marriages are men of great pride and extreme violence, who fall away from the covenant and embrace evil. Genesis 6:4 refers to them as, “the men of renown” – literally “the men of the name [or shem]”. In this context, “shem” implies a selfish pursuit of glory and fame. These men are pursuing their own glory, seeking to glorify their name, not God’s.

The situation on earth eventually grows so bad, that the author of Genesis writes [Genesis 6:5], “…every imagination of the thoughts of [man’s] heart was only evil continually.” He further notes that [Genesis 6:12-13], “All flesh had corrupted their way,” and “…the earth [was] filled with violence.”

God is obviously not happy with the state of things on earth. He decides it is time to start over. There is one man, however, who has not gone the way of his culture: Noah. Noah, Genesis 6:9 tells us, was a righteous man who “walked with God.” In a world filled with depravity, he remained faithful. Even more remarkable, he raised a godly family. God chooses Noah and his family to be the remnant through whom he will bring about a new beginning. Noah will be the mediator of a new covenant between God and creation.

To bring this about, God instructs Noah to build a giant ark to save his family as well as representatives of every bird and beast on earth. Genesis 6:12 tells us that by faith, “Noah did all that God commanded him” [also see Hebrews 11:7]. We can imagine the impact all this activity had on Noah’s neighbors. Building a giant boat was essentially announcing to a wicked generation that God’s judgment, the flood, was coming. But the construction of the ark also bore witness to God’s covenant mercy. Genesis 6:18 says, “But I will establish my covenant with you; and you shall enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife, and your sons’ wives with you.”

Interestingly, this is the first time in Scripture we hear the word “covenant” – berith in Hebrew. Perhaps even more interesting, the word used here for “establish” – heqim – implies renewal. In other words, the covenant with Noah is not an entirely new covenant; it’s connected to the first covenant, God’s covenant with creation.

Not surprisingly then, there are all kinds of parallels between the flood narrative in Genesis 6-8 and the creation account in Genesis 1-2. First, we see a new world emerge from the watery depths in both Genesis 1:2 and 7:11. The number seven also figures prominently in both accounts. The flood begins after seven days, evoking the seven days of creation. The Lord rests on the seventh day and the ark rests on dry land in the seventh month. Noah sends out a bird every seven days to see if the dry land has emerged. He also took seven pairs of every clean animal – animals acceptable for sacrifice – on the ark with him. Where the seventh day, the Sabbath, was the sign of God’s first covenant with creation, the rainbow, with its seven colors, becomes the sign of God’s renewed covenant with creation.

God’s covenant with Noah, however, not only points back to the creation covenant, but it also points forward to future covenants – covenants that will be made through acts of worship and sacrifice. What does Noah do once his family sets foot again on dry ground? Genesis 8:20-22 tells us the answer:

20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. 21The Lord smelled the soothing aroma; and the Lord said to Himself, “I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done. 22“While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”

With Noah, we move one step further along the timeline of salvation history. In the last couple of lessons, we saw how God establishes a covenant with Adam as a husband. This time, we see how God expands his covenant family beyond just a husband and wife by making his covenant with Noah, who is a husband, but also the head of a household. And because Noah was called to father God’s covenant family like a new Adam, it’s not surprising that there are parallels between Noah and Adam, just as there where between creation and the flood.

Like Adam, in Genesis 9:1 Noah is told to be “fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.” Like Adam, Noah is given dominion over the creatures of the earth. After planting a vineyard, Noah lived in a kind of garden like Adam. And both Adam and Noah consumed fruit that exposed nakedness. Unfortunately, also like Adam, Noah’s family divides into two camps; one remembered for righteousness, and the other associated with wickedness. Let’s take a look at that family.

In Genesis 10 we have Noah’s genealogy, which identifies his seventy descendants who founded the nations of the ancient world. This chapter of Scripture is unique. No other ancient document portrays the entire human race as one worldwide family. Besides revealing Noah’s descendants, Genesis 10 also reveals God’s fatherly perspective on the world. It shows us what he sees; the original unity of the human family both in Adam and in Noah, as well as the pattern of human sin and divine judgment. This Table of Nations serves one more purpose. It helps the people of God – those descended through the righteous line of Noah’s son Shem – understand their place in the world. It shows them that they are the bearers of God’s blessing to the human race. How does it show that they are the bearers of God’s blessing to all of humanity?

As previously mentioned, both a righteous line and wicked line descended from Noah. That righteous line comes from Noah’s firstborn son, Shem. It is through Shem’s descendants that God continues to build his covenant family. The people of Israel trace their national origin back to Noah through Shem. His descendants are called Shemites or Semites. That’s why when we say someone is anti-Jewish, we call him an anti-Semite. Shem became the great-grandfather of Eber, from whose name we get the word “Hebrew.” It’s the children of Eber, the Hebrews, who are the ancestors of the Israelites and of Jesus of Nazareth.

Just as there is the righteous line of Noah’s descendants, there is also the wicked line, the descendants of Ham. He was the son of Noah who betrayed his father after the flood receded. Not surprisingly, many of ancient Israel’s enemies come from Ham’s line. The Egyptians, the Canaanites, the Philistines, and the Babylonians. In the famous story of the tower of Babel, many of Noah’s descendants bring judgment on themselves, much as Adam and Eve’s descendants did generations before.

At Babel, Ham’s descendants begin constructing a huge tower, one they think will establish their name, their shem, and bring them great fame and glory. The tower they built was intended to house a pagan shrine at its peak. In other words, they were worshipping idols, such as themselves and their own capabilities and intelligence, and not worshipping God. The Catechism [CCC 57] tells us that through this “perversion of paganism,” an ungodly world was “united only in its perverse ambition to forge its own unity as at Babel.” It also tells us that those people were committing the sins of “polytheism and the idolatry of the nation and of its rulers.”

In order to stop men from worshipping idols and bringing them back into his plan for them in salvation history, God renders judgment. How? He confuses the builders’ language, so that they can’t understand each other anymore. Hence the Tower of Babel’s name represents linguistic confusion. Then God scatters his wayward children all across the earth.

For the third time in salvation history – just eleven chapters into the Bible – men have strayed from God’s plan. And for a third time God had to take drastic measures to get humanity back on track – back into covenant relationship with him. Getting people back on track is always our Father’s goal. God’s covenant with Noah was far-reaching. It didn’t just affect one man and his family. It also affected their descendants, including us. That is why, even after Noah’s descendant’s fell back into sin and are scattered to the four corners of the earth, God still continues to extend his providential care to the nations. As the Catechism tells us [CCC 58], “The covenant with Noah remains in force during the times of the Gentiles, until the universal proclamation of the Gospel.”

God’s covenant with Noah did more than just remain in force until the coming of Christ. Like God’s first covenant with creation, it also foreshadowed the everlasting covenant of Jesus Christ. First and foremost, the covenant with Noah points us to the sacrament of baptism. 1 Peter 3:19-20 says:

19 in which Christ went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, 20 who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water. 21 Corresponding to that, baptism now saves you—not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience—through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,

St. Peter tells us that the flood is a type, or prefigurement of baptism. Like the flood, which cleansed the world of wickedness, baptism cleanses us and destroys sin. And just as a kind of “new creation” was born out of flood waters, the waters of baptism make each one of us a “new creation” in Jesus Christ. But it is also important to note that the passage in 1 Peter comes with a warning. Noah’s son Ham was saved on the ark, but he latter squandered that gift of salvation. He betrayed his father through sin and ended his days cursed rather than blessed. Likewise, our baptismal graces alone don’t assure us eternal life and eternal blessing. We still have free will. We still have to continue to cooperate with God’s plan if we want our days to end with a blessing and not a curse.

The last thing we will cover in this lesson was mentioned at the outset – the literary framework of Genesis 1-11. This is important because the structure of these first eleven chapters shows us the relationship between Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, and the rest of salvation history. The literary framework reveals that: Salvation history is shaped by spiritual conflict between the godly and the ungodly; that righteousness or wickedness is often preserved and perpetuated in family lines; and that God vindicates his family and judges those who corrupt his children.

How exactly does Genesis 1-11 show us all that? From Adam to Noah, Genesis counts ten generations. The wicked of the world appear in the line of Cain. At the end of ten generations, God sends judgment on the world in the form of the flood. Once the flood recedes, four men remain; Noah and his three sons – Shem, Japheth, and Ham. Of these three, Shem receives the blessing of his father. Just as there were ten generations from Adam to Noah, so Genesis counts ten generations from Noah to Terah. (the father of Abraham). Many of the wicked of the world appear in the line of Ham, through his son Canaan. At the end of the ten generations, God sends judgment on the builders of the tower of Babel. At the time of the judgment on Babel, Noah’s descendant Terah has three sons; Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Abram is blessed by God with a special calling.

To understand this structure, you have to make your way carefully through the various genealogies that fill the early pages of Genesis, genealogies that at first can seem like unimportant information. But there is a point to these genealogies, and a closer look at them reveals the artistry of the author of Genesis. What we see is that the various stories of Genesis are connected through the use of the word for generations, which in Hebrew is toledoth. Genesis 2:24 introduces the history of the world by saying, “These are the generations [toledoth] of the heavens and the earth… “

The same term advances the story through the lines of Noah and the Patriarchs: Genesis 5:1 tells us, “This is the book of the generations of Adam… “And again, in Genesis 6:9, “These are the generations of Noah… “The term generations or toledoth, is actually used ten times in the book of Genesis to introduce key figures in salvation history. It is a device that gives order and structure to the history of God’s family. It creates a literary framework that shows us history from God’s perspective. The focus of this history isn’t wars or economics or politics – it is family.

The literary structure of Genesis 1-11 tells us about God’s family – how that family is made, how it strays, how it is corrected, and how it slowly grows in understanding of its relationship with God and his ways.

Over the past few lessons, we’ve looked at the beginnings of conflict in the human family. We’ve seen that conflict between the two seeds of the serpent and of the woman in Genesis 3:15. We’ve seen it between the two sons of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel. And we’ve seen it between the lines of the righteous and the unrighteous.

Needless to say, these conflicts continue. The great Church father, St. Augustine, described them as the conflict between the City of God and City of Man. The City of God, he says, is based upon the love of God even to the point of contempt for self. While the City of Man is based on the love of self even to the point of contempt for God.

When Genesis is read in that light, it becomes clear that the first book of the Bible is not only telling us about the origins of the human family; it is giving us a blueprint for humanity’s future. Seeing this blueprint helps us see ourselves and our struggles in light of the great struggle of human history. In a sense, it places today’s culture wars in context. Because really, the more things change, the more they stay the same.