Beginnings II

by Elanor

Genesis 8:18-9:17

The royalty of man established in Genesis 1 was before the fall. Chapter 3 tells of Adam and Eve’s innocent mistake that culminates over the next few chapters in their oldest son killing his younger brother. You can imagine the first man and woman burying Abel and thinking back to the choice that brought them to this unthinkable position.

Genesis 6:5 says, “Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.” This time, God looks on His creation and sees that it is not good.

When you make a mistake in cooking, like I did the other day trying to make egg noodles, and you realize that what you have in the pot is inedible, you throw it away and start over. This is what God did. He washed away all the iniquity on the planet. The surface of the earth was covered by water for 180 days, and when it subsided, it was clean.

Then God was free to repopulate the planet anew with beings who would follow Him, who were not so evil that happiness was impossible.

Except, either God is like me in that He is too stubborn to admit that He has made a mistake, or He knows something we don’t. He rebooted His creation, but saved some of the corrupted file on a memory stick and reinstalled it after his system was clean. Not only that, He promises He will never restart again.

Genesis 8:21 (after Noah comes out of the ark): “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.” Even though man is evil, God will never again destroy Him.

Following this admission of man’s helplessly sinful state, God does something even more surprising: He renews man’s authority over the new earth.

“And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. The fear of you and the terror of you will be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky; with everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish of the sea, into your hand they are given. Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant’ ” (Gen. 9:1-3).

God is, if anything, giving man more power over the earth than He did in the first place. Now the animals are ours, not only to rule, but to eat as well.

God continues, “ ‘Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man’ ” (Gen. 9:6). This phrase refers back to Genesis Chapter 1, when man was the crowning glory of creation. God remembers the first magnificence even now, after it has been marred seemingly beyond all repair, and He is willing to honor the people who have become evil.

This new covenant, the first between God and fallen man, is more incredible than the first gesture of giving Adam paradise to rule. The prince has turned out to be spoiled, eager to exploit his kingdom in every way so that his wants can be fulfilled. But the King does not disown him; He acknowledges kinship even with this shameful child, and renews His promise to make the prince a king over his own kingdom.

“God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant which I am making between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all successive generations; I set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth. It shall come about, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow will be seen in the cloud, and I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and never again shall the water become a flood to destroy all flesh’ ” (Gen. 9:12-15). The heavenly hunter hangs up his bow as a sign of good will, so that he can no longer shoot arrows down on those who have disobeyed him.

This is the first of the Bible's long series of incidences where man's evil is countered by God's mercy.