The Sea was Angry that Day, My Friends - Episode 193

Carey Griffel: Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot, where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and this week, my episode selection was a toss-up between continuing the theme of fish and continuing the idea of the waters prevailing, and I'm sorry to say for the fish that the waters prevailed. [00:00:33] So today we're gonna talk about the geography of the flood from a narrative perspective. While I will treat the topic of global and local flood, I'm really not gonna be talking about global flood geography. I'm gonna be talking about the geography of the flood from within the actual biblical text from a narrative perspective. [00:00:58] And this kind of brings up a point that I've seen come up quite often, is this concern that people have, which is a legitimate concern, when they realize that the Bible has a context, and they don't know what that context is. And they realize that they're a bit ignorant about that, and that the Bible ought to be read in context. And all of that has a bit of a tendency to put us in a bit of a position of anxiety. Because if we don't know the context of the Bible, then how are we going to read our Bibles faithfully when we realize that we kind of need a little bit of this background? How much do we need to know in order to read the Bible faithfully? Well, there's a couple of different points here that I just want to bring out. First of all, the broad strokes of context really are not difficult to grasp, and they're probably largely obvious to us as long as we're able to put our mindset in the fact that we do not have the native understanding that the biblical authors did. [00:02:07] So for instance, we know that there is a context of kingship, but if we can recognize that their ancient kingship is not quite the same as ours, then already that puts us on a good path. We know that the context of covenant is really embedded into Scripture, and so we need to understand that. And then we have all of these pieces of imagery in Scripture that are really obvious because they come up again and again. And so we need to understand those. And the reason why I'm not really concerned about this for people overly much is that reading the Bible in a narrative fashion is almost half the battle here. [00:02:51] Because if you're reading the Bible within this imagery that it actually gives us and within this ancient world, well, we have this thing that we do these days all the time. I mean, maybe not everybody, but we understand that fiction is a thing. And I'm not saying that the Bible is fiction, but I'm saying that there are ways that we read a fictional book that we should apply to Scripture. Again, not the fact of inaccuracy or that it's made up. But you don't read a fictional book presuming that you already understand every single facet of the world that the writer is writing about. Maybe you do if that world is just set in a normal society that we are in currently today. But a lot of fictional books are seated in the past, or they're seated in a science fiction or a fantasy world. [00:03:49] And so you do not come to a fictional book and think, "Wow, I have to understand every little bit of this author's world in order to read this book." And so I would say that that is going to help us in understanding Scripture in context as well, because we can relate to reading Shakespeare or Dostoevsky or a science fiction novel, where we do not need to know every single detail of the references for every phrase. We do need a general picture of the cultural and political atmosphere and some of the things that the author will present. But because they are presented in a narrative and not a textbook fashion, they tend to be really easy for us to pick up. [00:04:35] So I don't think we need to worry immediately that we don't know something in Scripture. The weird passages are important because they seem weird to us. But they wouldn't be so weird to the original audience, so that should trigger some potential for a context we don't understand. And there's plenty of material out here on the internet or in books where you can really grasp a lot of that quite quickly. You don't have to catch all of the references. We have to kind of let the text be what it is and try and enter that world in a way very similarly to how we would enter a fictional world. I hope that is a little bit helpful to some of you out there who are struggling with the fact that we need to understand Scripture in context. And that might give you a level of anxiety because once you realize that, you're like, "Well, how much do I need to know?" And that's why I think a narrative reading of Scripture is so very helpful. [00:05:38] Now, the second thing I want to prefront this episode with is the difficulty in systemizing things in Scripture. Because we live in a very analytical culture, where we tend to analyze things to death. And by doing that, we tend to remove them from that narrative context and place them in a position of analysis. And that means that we do run a slight risk of asking questions that don't fit to the narrative. [00:06:08] An example from today's topic is that God causes the waters to come, or does He? The narrative doesn't say that. The narrative says that God will cause the flood, and that He will cause everything to be blotted out. So yes, there is that agency of God that is behind the flood. But when you look at the text of Genesis seven in a narrative fashion, you will notice that it doesn't actually say that God opened the windows of heaven or the fountains of the deep. It never gives agency to God. It gives the waters that agency. And what we see in the narrative, within this framework of the end of Genesis 7 and the beginning of Genesis 8, God's actions are that he shut Noah in, and God remembered Noah, and God made the ruach blow. There's a result from that, that the waters are calmed when the ruach is blown, but the narrative does not say that God sent the flood, at least not in this section. [00:07:20] Now, what that doesn't mean is that the waters are divorced from God's action or God's agency. That is obviously not the case because the whole story is one of judgment from God's position. God will blot out and so on. But I do think it's important within the actual story to notice that the waters are doing things. There is no person attached to the opening of the fountains and to the windows. And the fact that the author chose to write it that way is probably important. [00:07:55] And so today we're gonna look at the fact that the flood is narrated as a period in which the waters gain and sustain mastery over the terrestrial realm. I kind of opened that door to that conversation last time where I talked about the word prevail at the end of Genesis 7 and how that does have sometimes a militaristic focus in other texts. But let's look a little bit more closely at this whole thing. So we're not talking today about flood as de-creation necessarily, although that does play a part in this. We're not talking generically about waters and chaos, although that also plays its part. I'm not gonna claim that the waters are literally sentient, that they're actually angry, that they are divine, demonic, that they are rebellious in any way, because the water certainly is not presented that way. Our main focus today is what exactly does Genesis 7 do with the waters when we pay attention to the story as narrated? [00:09:05] So we've talked before about flood as decreation and perhaps a collapse of the conditions that are necessary for terrestrial life. Now, I think that the flood very obviously has that context to it. It is as opposed to the days of creation. But I also want to point out this really interesting fact that in the days of creation, the things that happen, happen on account of God's speech. And in the section of the flood today that we're gonna look at, that is not the case. So this, quote-unquote, "decreation" is not a decreation in the sense that God is speaking and making it happen. Instead, what we do have is waters above and waters below that are crossing their usual appointed boundaries in order to cause the flood. Water is an environment that is appropriate for aquatic life, but it's deadly to terrestrial air breathers. Water is not inherently evil. The idea that they are chaos waters is not as opposed to what Yahweh is doing, because the flood waters are functioning as an opposing force relative to the terrestrial world, but they are not an opponent of the divine Yahweh. [00:10:27] And so in our conversation today, I want you to think about what kind of meaning can disappear in the text when we reduce the biblical narrative to a set of things that are quite true in theological propositions, but that don't allow us to really drill into the text as it is written. I mean that it is true to say that God sent the flood, but that is not identical to the story that Genesis chooses to tell in the way that it tells us. [00:11:02] Okay, so our boundary line here to start with is Genesis 7 verse 16. This is the passage where Yahweh shuts in Noah. The phrase here is an established Hebrew construction for closing or shutting behind or upon someone. So there's a boundary and somebody else is on the other side of the boundary. [00:11:25] We see the term show up in Judges 3 verse 23, where Ehud shuts the door behind or upon Eglon. We see it in 2 Kings 4. And so there is, especially in 2 Kings 4, a very theological intent that may be there, but it might also just be the phrase where a door is being shut. So it does not by itself bring in a context of protection. But within the other elements of the stories of Genesis and other places, we can provide the context of protection within the framing of this word or this phrase, I should say. Ancient translation and reception does really provide a very strong way to read this as protective language. The Septuagint makes the external closing very explicit, just like it is in Hebrew, but perhaps even more so in the Greek. The Greek says essentially that the Lord God closed the ark from outside him. Then we have a translation from Targum Onkelos, which is an Aramaic translation. [00:12:41] He puts an emphasis on protection. It says, "Adonai then protectively shut him in the ark. Adonai protected him." Then you go into the rabbinic context, and we have Rashi, the Jewish rabbinic commentator, who also puts a lot of emphasis on this idea of protection. [00:13:05] From a narrative fashion, what's really fascinating, and you can do this yourself if you want. You can do it just in English using various English translations. What's interesting in the flood narrative is to see who is the actor of each of the verbs. Some of the translations we have in English are better than others, so I would just compare a couple of different translations here if you're not getting into the Hebrew. Before verse 16 of Genesis 7, Noah enters, the family enters, the animals enter, God commands, and then we have this moment of Yahweh shutting him in. And after that, Noah performs no action until Genesis 8:6, when he is the one who opens the window. So really fascinating contrast that Yahweh shuts him in, and Noah does nothing else until he opens the window in Genesis 8. So we don't have any steering, navigating, taking care of the animals, maintaining the inside, none of that. It's just the ark is gonna move across the waters. The waters are gonna move it. And Noah really has no action during this time period. [00:14:24] From a thematic standpoint, it's quite striking because the world is going to lose its boundaries in this de-creation where the water collapses back into the land. But Noah is given a boundary. And that is a boundary that Yahweh puts in himself. So outside the ark, we have waters from below and above that collapse. And we have all of that overtaking the land, like I said, including the high land places. And that will be playing its part in this geographical narrative view. But there is a boundary from all of that happening to whatever is going on inside. [00:15:08] And speaking of that protective boundary, I do want to mention Isaiah twenty-six verse twenty again, where we have very similar wording. Isaiah twenty-six twenty says, quote, "Come, my people, enter your chambers and shut your doors behind you. Hide yourselves for a little while until the fury has passed by." End quote. So there is some matching up of some various Hebrew terms here. It's not just a thematic similarity, but an actual linguistic one. And definitely the context of protection against something bad outside. [00:15:47] Now, not to spend a whole lot of time here, but I do want to mention that in Atrahasis and in the Gilgamesh tradition of the flood, there is a pretty striking difference on who shuts the door. Because other flood heroes participate in sealing their own vessel, or it could be somebody from the outside world who does it. Again, not every one of these Mesopotamian accounts is the same, so there's a little bit of difference here. But there is almost overwhelmingly in other traditions a human who's doing the action, whereas Genesis is deliberately giving that final enclosure action to Yahweh himself. [00:16:27] All right, so we have God setting that boundary for Noah and his family and the animals in the ark. Now, before this and afterwards, we see what the waters of the flood are doing. In Genesis seven, verse eleven, we have the fountains of the great deep being split or burst open and the windows of heaven being opened. And these are in passive constructive forms, which means that there is no actor who is described as doing it. It doesn't say that God broke open the fountains or that God opened the doors. It just says that they were opened. In Genesis 7:12, rain is or continues upon the land for 40 days and 40 nights. Again, the text is foregrounding the phenomenon and not who is doing it or making it happen or causing it to happen. [00:17:25] So from Genesis seven, seventeen through twenty, we have some really interesting things to notice here. The waters multiply. The waters lift and bear the ark. The ark rises above the land. And so the waters are acting and the ark is responding to what they're doing. Again, we don't have Noah or God doing anything here. Then in verse eighteen, the waters become mighty or they prevail and they multiply greatly. So those two things I want you to notice. The ark goes or moves upon the face of the waters. The ark moves without Noah navigating it. We don't have the context of even the ruach or the wind or spirit. It's solidly within the context of the waters acting. Verse 19, the waters became mighty, very, very greatly over the land. So there's an emphasis there. The mountains are covered. And in verse 20, we have the waters prevailing and the mountains are covered again. [00:18:33] Then we have a shift in the narrative to emphasize what dies. In verse 21, all flesh becomes the subject of the verb: all flesh died. So we don't have the waters killed them. We certainly don't have that God killed them. But everything on dry land possessing life's breath in verse twenty-two, it dies. So the victims become the grammatical subjects of dying. And that doesn't lessen the divine responsibility for the judgment. But this does tell us how the author of Genesis chooses to narrate that divine judgment. And I'm emphasizing this because I think there is a distinctive meaning behind the way that a biblical author will present God and His actions. God is always sovereign. God is always over everything. But the way He is described as doing things, whether there is a mediator, whether He is directly credited for acting or doing something, and also the way that He is referred to, those things also matter in theological ways. They present meaning to the text. [00:19:49] And I say that because we do the same kind of thing in our own writing and our own communication. If you really want to get your child's attention as a parent, you're gonna use their name. If you really, really want to get their attention, you might use their name and their middle name. And so the way that you are addressing someone just in normal speech can demonstrate something about your intentionality and the way that you're approaching that interaction. Now, of course, we use a lot of pronouns because we don't want to overuse a name and say Dave did this, and then Dave did that, and then Dave did this other thing. Instead, in each of those repeated things, we will tend to use a pronoun because we don't want to keep using the name of the person. [00:20:39] And while I don't want to say that Hebrew never does anything like that, because I think all languages will tend to do that, I do think that there is a particular use of names in actions in the biblical narrative, especially because we pretty much know that the biblical authors are going to treat God's name in particular ways, right? A name communicates something. And the fact that God has many names, many titles, many ways that He's referenced in Scripture means that every time something is used, there is a meaning or an intentionality behind that. I've brought out the difference that I think exists in Genesis 1 versus Genesis 2, because Genesis 1 uses the term Elohim, which is kind of a more general term. But you move into Genesis 2, where we have people directly referenced, and now we suddenly have the term Yahweh Elohim. [00:21:40] Now, some people will think that these two things came from different sources, but I think a better explanation for the difference is that in Genesis 2, we have real people, like a real couple in mind. And so that is a relational thing. It's a covenantal kind of a thing, not like a formal covenant, so don't get me wrong. But it is relational. And so I think that is why we suddenly have Yahweh Elohim used instead of just Elohim. [00:22:12] And that matters to this section of Genesis 7, because when we get to verse 23, we see that he blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground. So we move from the waters doing things and then flesh doing things, which is really only dying. And then we have this, he blotted out. I think the only obvious reference we could have for the he, which isn't explicit in Hebrew, but is built into the verb. We know that there is an implied pronoun here because of the form of the verb. So even though there's no particular Hebrew word for he in the text, it is included in the actual Hebrew. So the only referent that could be would be God. [00:23:02] But notice that we don't have a divine name or a divine title, and I think that matters for the actual narrative and the way we should be reading this. I'm distinguishing between an analytical perspective and a narrative one. From an analytical or a theological perspective, of course, it is God who is behind these things. But it is not saying that God killed everything. It is not saying that God sent the waters. And so there is an agency applied to what's going on in the different characters in the story. In other words, God doesn't have to do all of these things to be sovereign over above all of it. [00:23:51] And kind of my point here is that narrative is not just theology in story form, even though sometimes we might tend to treat it like that. It's quite possible to systemize the flood in a way to say that God flooded the earth, he destroyed life, he protected Noah, and he later lowered the waters. I don't think there's anything theologically wrong with that. But Genesis says the fountains were split open, the windows were opened, the waters multiply, the waters lift, the waters become mighty, the mountains are covered, creatures die. And so systematic causation in a theological way and narrative agency are not identical. Again, we can come up with a correct theological proposition while still losing some of the story itself and what it's communicating. [00:24:50] Because the biblical narrative is distributing the agency. The biblical author is making decisions about who is named and how they're named, who acts, who undergoes things, what disappears, and what dominates the reader's attention as they are reading it. Again, God doesn't have to occupy all of the grammatical subject positions of all of the sentences in order to remain sovereign over the event. But we see real action happening. And so there's gonna be a focus on thinking about the story in a different way. If you tell the story in a theological way where God did this and God did that, then your mind is thinking, "Oh, God did these things." But if you tell the story in this narrative way that Genesis actually gives, then you are then picturing the waters. You're picturing what's happening in the world, right? [00:25:54] Linguistically and from a perspective of intertextuality, where the Bible is really connecting things together in different places using different words, then that also matters to which words are being used and where. Because the waters multiplying and not just multiplying, but multiplying greatly. Scholars such as Gordon Wenham, in his commentary on Genesis, notes that this is a dark echo of the creation command that living creatures should multiply. And so with the words chosen, we can see a wider sequence of events. Genesis 1, living creatures are multiplying. Genesis 6, verse 1, humanity begins to multiply. And then here in Genesis 7, the waters are multiplying. Then we move on into Genesis 8. The animals are again multiplying. Genesis 9, we have humanity multiplying again as well. So we have life multiplying, waters multiplying. And this is part of our creation, de-creation, recreation story, just seen at the level of vocabulary, not even just imagery. [00:27:15] But we don't just have waters multiplying. We also have waters becoming mighty. And where else do we see those two ideas connected? Particularly in the flood narrative. And this is something I mentioned last time as well with this word prevail. Gabar, it's the same root as gibbor, the mighty warrior of Genesis 6:4. We might see this as a response to the violence of the mighty warriors and the Nephilim. [00:27:51] From an intertextuality standpoint, if we're hyperlinking texts within the Bible, sometimes you can do that with a single word if that word is unique enough and in particular contexts. But the more words that you have together in a passage, the more likely the echoes and the connections are in a hyperlink kind of sense. So the fact that we have humanity multiplying, we have mighty ones in that same context at the beginning of Genesis six. We also have human evil being described as great, which is a little bit different, but also linguistically related. It's using an adjective, not a verb. But it belongs to the same lexical field. So we have multiple pieces of vocabulary associated with the corrupted human world, as well as the response to the flood. Now this could be for a couple of different reasons. It could be because we're supposed to see that the waters are mightier than the mighty warriors, and that God's response to them is going to put them to shame, in other words. [00:29:05] I've seen people do this, where, well, maybe the waters are also associated with spiritual beings because of this connection as well. And I don't want to say that they're not, simply because the ancient world in general had a general connection between the physical world and the spiritual realm. Like nothing happens on one side of that without affecting the other side. But I also don't want to leave out the possibility that Genesis really can sometimes demythologize things. And I think that there's something to be said for that. Like in the creation of the sun, moon, and stars, it is just describing those as sun, moon, and stars like the physical things that we see. [00:29:53] Might it have in mind or in the background of it the idea that the ancient world also associated those things with spiritual beings, and maybe this is a polemic against those things being anything except created under Yahweh? I mean, maybe. But we do need to kind of step back and say, well, we don't wanna just shove in spirit being mentions willy-nilly just because there's a context that might call for it. We need to have more information than that, in my opinion. Now, there is certainly possibilities, and we can keep some of these things loosely in mind, especially when we go into other texts that might provide a little bit of background for those things. But I think that we're doing the text and our reading of it a disservice if we never allow any demythologizing in Scripture. The biblical author taking a common idea and saying, "Yeah, you guys think those are spirit beings, but guess what? They're really just creations of Yahweh." [00:31:00] Now the water's becoming mighty. A really interesting thing to notice here in Genesis 7 is that there is a crescendo that happens. Like I said last time, this word gabar is used four times. The waters multiply greatly. They multiply very, very exceedingly. They cover the mountains, and they prevail over the land a hundred and fifty days. So there's a literary or a narrative progression here. The first three have some escalation, multiplication, strength, extreme strength, and then the high ground disappears. And then the fourth mention is connected to duration or sustained supremacy. The waters have achieved dominance, and that condition lasts over a span of time. You will see the same context in the Septuagint or the Greek translation, at least generally. There is a little bit of difference here where the water was raised or elevated in the Greek. You also get the same context in the Latin Vulgate. So just some interesting little pieces of note there. [00:32:15] Some people will read this as the waters kept increasing, like they kept growing over the land for 150 days. Like there was a rise in the water for 150 days and then a decrease in the water for 150 days. And people say that because the duration of 150 days is mentioned twice. There's another question as to whether the 40 days that are mentioned belong in front of or within the 150 days. [00:32:48] But here's some important things to notice. We actually have anchors of chronology here. The flood begins in Noah's six hundredth year, in the second month, in the seventeenth day. That's in Genesis seven, verse eleven. Then Genesis eight, verse four tells us that the ark rests on the seventh month, in the seventeenth day, exactly five months later. So if we use the narrative schematic thirty-day months, which is not physically possible, but the author of Genesis is presuming five months of thirty perfect days, and that equals a hundred and fifty days. And really, because of that, the 150 days in the two passages where it's mentioned are best understood as the same chronological span and not 150 plus 150. It also makes a little more sense that the 40 days fits inside the 150 rather than another block to be added. [00:33:50] Now, of course, we do have the linguistic chiasm where we have the 150 days of the waters prevailing, then God remembers Noah, and then it looks like we have 150 days of the waters waning. And you can kind of read the text that way just with the words. But that's more really literary symmetry rather than being the chronological thing we're supposed to add up simply because we are given a bounded time. In Genesis 8 verse 3, the Hebrew does describe the waters as returning or receding continually. And so we could read this as, by the end of the 150 days, the waters had diminished. Now, the prevailing language, this is what's going to be helpful to us in all of that. This word gabar doesn't just mean water moved upward, but it describes relative mastery or superiority. So that means that the waters can stop rising but still be prevailing. So this word prevailing tells us that the waters are still in control. It's not really telling us what direction the water line happens to be moving. [00:35:11] We're not actually given an exact date of maximum water level. For all we know, that could have happened quite early and not right in the middle. We don't have a date for the waters when they began falling. We don't have a date for when God remembered Noah. And so we shouldn't make the chronology more precise than the text tells us. We do not have to require 150 days of uninterrupted vertical increase in the water. So we could have the windows and the floodgates not adding any more water, but the flood hasn't stopped. The waters have control over the terrestrial realm, and they hold it for a period of time. Now, I'm gonna mention this here because I can't remember if I mentioned it last time. This word gabar with the waters prevailing has some really good flood echoes from the ancient Near East simply because in Atrahasis and in Gilgamesh, we do have this language of a combat associated with the flood in those texts. In Atrahasis, the flood bellows like a bull and catastrophe comes upon people like a battle. [00:36:25] In Gilgamesh, we have text that says, "Annihilation came upon the people like a battle array. And the gods feared the flood and they withdrew." So in the Mesopotamian flood accounts, we have some definite battle imagery. Now that doesn't mean we should impart all of that into the Genesis flood account. But the floodwater in Genesis is still acting like an overpowering actor. [00:36:53] All right, now what does all of that mean from a spatial perspective? If gabar is already doing more than simply reporting the water level, then we should be cautious about treating every other geographical sounding expression as if Genesis were giving modern cartography or modern measurements. So here, let's talk about the global versus local flood arguments. There are better ways to make both of those arguments, and there are worse ways. A really weak argument for a global flood is to say that all means all, and that's all that all can mean. Every geographical coordinate on the modern globe has to be covered because it says all the earth. That's really just not a good argument for a global flood. [00:37:46] But then there's a weak argument for a local flood as well. I've heard it said that the word eretz can mean land, therefore Genesis is just describing a small local flood with the term land. But that's really also a very bad argument. And the reason for that argument being bad is that I really think Genesis wants us to think that the flood is total. Like this is what we are supposed to picture in the narrative. We have all flesh, every living thing, all the land, all the high mountains under all the heaven, only Noah remains. All of that gives us a picture of totality. This language of universality points toward a geographical worldwide event from our perspective. But there are scholars out there like Walton and Tremper Longman who will agree that the literary portrayal is cosmic or universal, but they deny that this entails a modern global covering hydrological event. But the disagreement between those views is not really over whether Genesis sounds universal, because they will agree with that. [00:39:09] The question after that is what kind of claim the rhetoric of Genesis is actually making. Like, is it trying to give us global flood imagery when they don't even think in terms of the globe? They don't know that the globe exists. That is probably the most common argument for a local flood idea here. [00:39:33] Now let's look at some of the similar language here, especially the under the whole heaven idea. In Deuteronomy 2 verse 25, we have the same phrase, peoples under the whole heaven who hear your report. So there is an operative horizon that in this text in Deuteronomy kind of limits the whole heaven idea. But then we have Daniel chapter nine verse 12, where it says, "Nothing like what happened in Jerusalem had been done under the whole heaven." Now, are we to presume that this is a literal account that the author of Daniel, and of course, God is the ultimate author of Scripture, so he's communicating that nothing ever happened anywhere on Earth like this? I think that most of us would say that that's stretching what the point of Daniel nine is. We also have Genesis chapter 41 verse 57, where all the earth came to Egypt because the famine was severe in all the earth. Most people do not think that people in Peru had to travel to Egypt at this time. The phrase all the earth refers to the people that are currently in view in the story. [00:40:55] So we can have a totality in mind, but the context has to tell us what the set of that totality is. And that could very well just be the world that they currently understood existed, or the world that was connected in this way, or the world that happened to be under the flood. So we can have a total universal claim, but we have to set that claim within the actual context of the text. [00:41:29] Now, personally, I still don't really think this is a good argument for a local flood. While I agree that the text of Genesis, the text of the Hebrew Bible as a whole, simply didn't understand anything outside of what they didn't know, I still don't think that they were like, "Well, you know, If anything outside this realm exists, well, it didn't undergo the flood." I really think that from the context of the flood in Genesis, it is meant to be a, quote-unquote, "global reality." Like whether that means they're thinking of a globe or not, I'm just talking about the fact that it seems like this really is meant to be everyone and everything. [00:42:18] I don't think that gives us a good local flood argument because I actually think that the argument is treating the Bible like a science book in ways that even some of these authors that try to argue for that will say that it's not. Like Heiser did not argue for a local flood, but he presented this argument for the local flood and said it's a possibility. And I think, well, yes, kind of, it's a possibility, but I don't really think it treats the text in a way that the text is actually saying. I really think they said everything. [00:42:55] I'm just saying that I don't think we can make an argument for a global flood using the Bible. I also don't think we can make an argument for or against local or global floods at all, simply because my position is that the Bible is not presenting things in a scientific fashion one way or another. It's just not a question that the text is answering. I do think it is saying that it is a worldwide flood, but since the point of the text is not a worldwide history, it doesn't really matter to me that they are presenting it like that. There is a totality of judgment. That is what we are to read. And I think that's the point, that God is over it all, that God judges it all, that God preserves a remnant or a seed through that. And so God is not just destroying things and starting over. I think that's what we're supposed to read this as. Narratively, it is worldwide. But again, it's not a science book, so that doesn't mean it is a worldwide flood. [00:44:04] All right, you guys can do with that whatever you want. But another argument we could loop in here is what the text is referring to when it talks about mountains. Genesis 7 talks about all the high mountains. And I've heard people who are promoting a local flood say, "Well, that just means hills." But again, the narrative is intentionally describing the disappearance of high elevations. So to me, the better question is which high elevations belong within the geographical horizon described as under all heaven here? [00:44:41] Then we have the question of the 15 cubits. Is that above the height of the mountains or is it some other kind of measurement? You might think that's not really a question because it should be really obvious, but there is a little bit of ambiguity in the Hebrew. A wooden translation might say something like, "15 cubits upward the waters prevailed, and the mountains were covered." So does that just mean mountains that are 15 cubits high? It's not really all that high for a mountain. We really could say that the Hebrew doesn't explicitly say 15 cubits above the mountaintops because the mountains are mentioned in the following clause after the 15 cubits are mentioned. [00:45:30] There is another really interesting proposal that the 15 cubits is in relation to the ark, and its purpose there is to show that it's roughly the half-submerged draft of the ark. But Genesis never supplies the ark's draft. It's just one of those things where people really get very particular about numbers when they show up. Why does it mention 15 cubits? It seems really precise. You know, I do wonder if it has something to do with the height of the ark and the idea that the ark could float above the mountains, like it's not gonna bump into them or something. [00:46:12] But, you know, that's just a guess, and all of the ideas with the 15 cubits are really just guesses. We don't actually know why it's this precise. I don't think it's precise because it is describing a scientific reality here. But, you know, that's just me. I do think it is kind of hard to read it as anything other than 15 cubits above the mountains, and there might possibly be this context of, look, it's so high over the mountains that not even our tallest giants could, like, stand up on the mountains with their tippy toes and survive the flood because of that. I'm not really convinced it's that particular either, but, you know, that idea is out there. [00:47:00] Now, to be fair for the local flood proponents, Genesis really does kind of show us what world it has in mind. And that's where we can see Genesis 9 and 10 with the table of nations. Because Genesis 9 tells us that the whole earth is populated from Noah's sons. And then Genesis 10 gives us a whole bunch of details. And to varying degree, we can know kind of where these places and people are. So there's a traditional total of 70 nations. Now, whether that is actually 70 nations and they were counting exactly all of them, I do like the idea that this is more a symbolic approximate for the idea of completeness and totality. So Genesis is presenting a complete human world. It is geographically bounded by ancient Israelite knowledge, and local flood proponents will use that fact and say, "Well, the flood only has to be over this area where these nations are." [00:48:08] Personally, I don't see how that even works from a physical geographic position, because it's not like these 70 nations exist in some way where their land is lower than other places so that other places wouldn't also be flooded. Again, I just think that the global and local flood question is inherently making the Bible a science book. I think we should understand it as presenting a whole reality. But this is within the narrative world of the Bible that is centered on Israel, centered on the people of Israel. And that is the story that it's telling. Now, it is true the whole earth can be conceptualized within an ancient human geographical horizon. But I still don't think that makes a very good argument for a local flood if all of those places were underwater, because quite likely if they were all underwater, then a good portion of the rest of the world would be as well. [00:49:11] So in the end, we really have to return to the idea of the bleakness and hopelessness of the flood. Whatever geographical model or historical model that you're gonna adopt, Genesis portrays catastrophic judgment, the disappearance of the high ground, the collapse of the terrestrial environment under the water, the death of all relevant dry-land-breathing life. And no refuge outside the ark. The flood is total within that narrated world. And you know, I don't like using the word cope, but a lot of times we come to these things and say, "I want this idea or that idea to be present, so I'm going to manipulate or explain things in a way where I'm coping for that." But I don't think cope is even a needed thing if we just let the text be the text and read it in a narrative fashion. Because my understanding of history and my trust of the text doesn't have to be grounded in whether or not the flood was local or global or didn't happen at all. We construct the story in a way that may not be exactly how it happened, but it's kinda close enough because this is how our people understand themselves. [00:50:36] Anyway, enough of the global and local flood. It's kind of a thing I don't really care about because to me, the Bible is speaking within its world, and we need to understand it like that. It is revealed truth. And the exact historicity of every single element of it is not going to influence my trust in that. [00:51:00] But let's get back to what Genesis 7 is saying and the fact that we have, again, this remnant or survival vocabulary. This is another place where sometimes we can get a little bit in the weeds, perhaps a little bit overly technical in trying to say that the words that Genesis 7 uses are words that are very theologically laden. And don't get me wrong, I do think we have the context of the faithful remnant here. But I also think we can go a little bit too far with that. I think sometimes the context might be that there is a seed that will continue so that when there's judgment that falls, not everything is lost. So there is the context of preservation, keeping people and animals alive through catastrophe. The remnant also includes animals. And the animals are actually combined in the covenant with Noah, but they're still not agents of the covenant. [00:52:05] So the ark is kind of like a seed of life for the future. Not that everything inside the ark has the same theological value or intent or purpose, right? Because animals are not the same as people. What I'm saying is that just because we have salvation and deliverance at play here, we don't necessarily always populate that with the idea of Christian salvation. [00:52:32] And this is very difficult because we tend to read our Bibles with a very soteriological view, meaning that we are reading everything in Scripture as if it is talking about salvation in an eschatological, going to heaven when you die sense. But still, nonetheless, we tend to read everything from that kind of salvation perspective. And not everything is really about that. Not everybody who left Egypt entered into the promised land. Not everybody that God saves is necessarily on the same playing field as far as eternal security, eternal salvation, or any of that. But nonetheless, a lot of times what we see is God acting in salvific ways. And that is what God is doing. And whether or not we're going to play our part in that, it's kind of up to us. Are we choosing to be faithful? Are we choosing to be obedient? Are we choosing to live righteous lives? [00:53:38] All right. I don't wanna end the episode without talking a little bit more about Genesis 8 and the waters decreasing or abating or subsiding or being calmed or quieting. I think I did mention last week about this word here that we have in Genesis 8:1. The word in the ESV is subsided. And for us, that tends to give the image of the water's just going down, right? But we have parallels to this word in Esther chapter two, verse one, the king's anger subsides. Esther chapter seven, verse 10, the king's wrath subsides. Numbers chapter 17, God quiets Israel's grumbling. [00:54:24] And so we might think that, you know, this word is attached to emotional kinds of contexts, but I'm not saying the waters are actually angry here. But it is a really delightful resonance that the verb that is used when the water is finally calm can elsewhere be described as anger subsiding. Again, it's very dangerous for us to attach our emotional baggage onto words in the ancient text. But sometimes it's quite interesting to see these word choices and to see how they are used throughout Scripture. [00:55:01] All right, so what I'm going to suggest to you, if if this is the kind of study you wanna do, it's up to you. Go into the text of the flood. Take a small section at a time and make a list of the verbs, and make a list of the agent who is doing that verb. Sometimes there will be no subject because a verb is passive, like a window is opened versus God opened a window. Right? One of those is active and one of those is passive. This is a fun activity for any passage where it seems like there's a lot of switching between who's doing what and what the focus of the story actually is on. Who is doing the acting? What are they doing? And what is the result? And how are those things connected? [00:55:54] Because as we've seen today, Genesis narrates this story where Yahweh shuts Noah in, but then he's not the point of the acting. The waters are multiplying. The waters are lifting. The waters become mighty. And then we have some results of that where the mountains were covered. All flesh dies. Noah remains. Go back to the water. The waters prevail. And then we have God again as a subject. God remembers Noah. The theological proposition of the whole thing tells us that God is over all of that, and we can see that within the story as a whole. [00:56:36] But within the pieces of the actual narrative, we can see that agency is distributed. We can see what lens the author is actually putting on as to what feels powerful, what feels helpless, what is taking over the visual and narrative storyline. Where are the boundaries? What boundaries survive and what don't? And then how do particular words migrate through the story? And how does this agency within the grammar of the text tell us things that are probably quite theologically purposeful? I'm going to suggest to you that all of that tells us that the flood feels more like something that's not just the water level is changing. But it really describes how judgment and preservation are experienced within the story. [00:57:32] And this also helps us find turning points in the story and other narrative things that are going to be embedded in the design of the actual text. Now, I understand that not everybody enjoys that kind of really deep, nerdy study, but I also know a lot of you do. So here's my suggestion of another way you can approach your Bible study. None of that means that we don't need theological synthesis of the whole thing, where we can just tell the story in a very broad way. And it's fine to do the analytical analysis and things like that, but we shouldn't systemize a biblical narrative so quickly that we stop noticing the ways that Scripture's authors chose to tell it as a story. And once we do that, that might actually inform our theological synthesis, sometimes in ways that we might not particularly like. [00:58:29] What does it mean for God to allow other agents to act? That's a pretty big theological question that might be informed in the way that we approach this from a grammatical and a narrative standpoint. Maybe not, but it might. Because in my opinion, if we are doing analysis, if we're doing synthesis, we don't just get to ignore points that the author actually gives us. I think that's very important. We don't just get to hand wave away pieces of the text because they don't work within our system. The waters receive enormous narrative agency, and Noah receives almost none. And yet none of this escapes God's sovereignty. And Noah's inaction doesn't escape God's protection. [00:59:21] Now, does any of this really nitty-gritty look at the biblical text in Genesis 7, remove the broad strokes of the understanding you probably grew up with in the flood narrative where God sent the flood? I hope you can see that none of this that we talked about today destroys any of the idea that God was the one involved in sending the flood. So when we get into this deep analytical study, the broad strokes of things that we have always understood do not have to go away. It might tweak our understanding. It might help us understand very particular passages. It might help us to understand the way that God acts. [01:00:06] At least I certainly hope it helps us to understand God's character and the way that He relates to humanity and creation as a whole. But I hope that in general, for most of us, none of that has to dismantle a lot of the things that we have already rooted our faith in, right? And just because we don't understand the context fully, that doesn't mean that we can't. Because if you read a story for a story, it's pretty easy to get the big picture. It might be a little bit harder to get all of the little nuance. [01:00:42] And my personal opinion is that as disciples and students of the Word, we really ought to want to get into as much of that context and as much of that deep study as we can get into. Don't put yourself or others down if you don't have time or attention for all of the study that you want. But I do think it is there for the picking for when you have time, and I deeply hope that what you hear in this podcast is part of that for you. I appreciate everybody listening. I appreciate everybody sharing the episodes with other people who might also be interested in these things. That is one of the best ways for my podcast to grow, and I deeply appreciate all of you who do that. [01:01:28] As always, I hope you found this episode interesting. And I am very grateful to all of you who support me through financial means, whether that's through Patreon, PayPal, or my Biblical Theology community. But with all of that said, I wish you all a blessed week. And we will see you later.