The Theme of Flooding in the Bible: Noah's Flood

The tragedy of the widescale flooding in Queensland and other parts of Australia recently has prompted me to consider the theme of flooding in the Bible.

The most famous flood in the Bible is, of course, Noah’s flood. As a response to the growing wickedness of humanity (Gen 6:5–7), God “brought a flood of water upon the earth” with the intention of “destroying all flesh” with the exception of Noah and his family and a remnant of the land animals and birds (Gen 6:17–19). This was achieved by the unleashing of torrential rain over a period of forty days and forty nights (Gen 7:11–12). The floodwaters were so great that “all the high mountains that were under all of heaven” were covered by up to seven meters of water (Gen 7:20).

The effect of the flood was catastrophic:

“all flesh that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all of humanity, died. Everything in whose nostrils was the breath of life from all that was on the dry ground died. [God] exterminated every living thing that was on the face of the ground: human beings, and animals, and creeping things, and the birds of the sky. They were exterminated from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark” (Gen 7:21–23).

The floodwaters “prevailed upon the earth” for five months (Gen 7:24)! On the seventeenth day of the seventh month (around seven days after what would later on become the Day of Atonement, during the period of the Feast of Tabernacles) the ark came to rest on Mount Ararat, and the floodwaters began to abate (Gen 8:3–4). It was not until some two and a half months later that the tops of the mountains were seen (Gen 8:5), and another three months until the floodwaters had dried up completely! In the meantime, the olive leaf in the mouth of the dove was a sign to Noah that the waters had begun to abate, a sign that new life had emerged out of the destructive waters of the flood. The day that the floodwater had dried up completely was the first day of the first month (Gen 8:13), a new beginning for the human race. Even then, Noah had to wait another 57 days until the ground was dry (Gen 8:14). Altogether, the floodwaters ravaged the earth for around 315 days, while Noah was in the ark for around 378 days. This was an enormous flood.

Yet God’s purposes for the world would continue. The repetition of the creation mandate of Gen 1:28 to Noah in Gen 9:1–2, 7 signaled that the work of extending the kingdom of God on earth (a privileged task that God had assigned to the human race back in the beginning) was to continue.

The theme of flooding in the rest of the Old Testament will be explored in my next post; but it should be noted that, because Noah’s flood is the paradigmatic flood in the Bible, it provides the referential point for the metaphor of being encompassed by floodwater and the related metaphor of being rescued from floodwater, which occur at various points thoughout the Old Testament.

Relationship before Covenant or Covenant before Relationship?

In interacting with William Dumbrell’s suggestion that the covenant in Gen 9 is a renewal of God’s covenant with creation, Paul Williamson has argued that relationship is prior to covenant in the biblical order of things:

For most Reformed theologians, any relationship involving God must be covenantal in nature—whether it is his relationship with creation in general or his relation with human beings in particular. Covenant is seen as framing or establishing such a relationship. This, however, is not in fact what the biblical text suggests. Rather than establishing or framing such a divine-human relationship, a covenant seals or formalizes it. The biblical order is relationship, then covenant, rather than covenant, hence relationship (Paul Williamson, “Covenant: The Beginning of a Biblical Idea,” Reformed Theological Review 65 [2006]: 12–13).

Williamson cites approvingly Bruce Waltke’s understanding that a covenant “solemnizes and confirms a social relationship already in existence” (Bruce K. Waltke and Cathi J. Fredricks, Genesis: A Commentary [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001], 136).

I agree in part with Williamson and Waltke at this point. Obviously God has been in a relationship with the world and its creatures from the very instance of creation, and it is true that there is nothing approximating a formal covenant ceremony in Gen 1–3. God’s relationship with the world is described in terms of his creation of the world, and his commitment to ordering and filling it. Filling the world and exercising dominion over it constitutes God’s blessing for humanity. God’s blessing is, in fact, the creation mandate (Gen 1:28), which is both imperatival, jussive, and indicative: God commands, desires, and foreordains that the mandate be fulfilled. The relationship between God and creation has as its presupposition, therefore, the divine fiat of creation; but the primary structure in Gen 1 for the outworking of this relationship is the divine blessing of life and dominion.

In addition to the blessing of life and dominion, promise also plays a part in structuring God’s relationship with humanity. In Gen 1:1–2:3, the ontological analogy between humanity and God (due to the former’s creation in the image of God) strongly suggests that the goal of humanity’s work on earth is an eternal Sabbath rest. That is to say, there is an implied promise in Gen 1:1–2:3. In Gen 2, the idea of promise is more explicit. The command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil promised that death would result from eating the forbidden fruit (Gen 2:17). The flipside of this is the implication that obedience would result in life. Genesis 1–2 clearly teaches, therefore, that humanity’s relationship with God is regulated by God’s word. God word of promise is that, as his word of command is obeyed, his word of blessing will be realized. The focus in Gen 1–2 is on God’s word (his word of blessing, command, and promise) rather than on covenant per se.

I agree then that, strictly speaking, relationship is prior to covenant. But to say that covenants merely formalize an existing relationship is not accurate. The presence of a historical prologue in the standard covenant form acknowledges that some kind of prior relationship typically exists between the parties of a covenant, but covenants do not necessarily simply formalize the status quo. Covenants presuppose a certain history, but their orientation is towards the future. In particular, they specify the privileges, obligations, and sanctions of the relationship (from the time of the establishment of the covenant) into the future. The major divine-human covenants that we encounter in the Bible do not formalize the status quo, but establish and regulate in a formally binding way a new stage in the relationship. Marriage, for example, is a covenant. To say that the marriage ceremony formalizes a pre-existing one flesh relationship between husband and wife is not accurate. Rather, the marriage covenant defines a new relationship, or at least a new and distinctive stage in the relationship moving forward into the future.

And even if it is true to say that strictly speaking the concept of covenant does not occur in Gen 1–2, it also needs to be acknowledged that the basic structural elements of a covenant (i.e., parties, promise, condition, and penalty) all exist in the prelapsarian situation of Adam in the garden. Just as oaths function to strengthen promises, covenants formalize, solemnize, and strengthen relationships by defining the privileges and obligations of the parties in the relationship, as well as the sanctions that exist for any who would break the covenant. These privileges, obligations, and sanctions are at heart … promises. Covenants define binding relationships based on promise. The relational dynamics of promise inside the garden is not fundamentally different, therefore, from the relational dynamics of covenant outside the garden.

The definition of a relationship that a covenant provides may simply be to renew or confirm an existing covenant or relationship, or it may be to establish a new stage in the relationship that is consistent with previous commitments. The covenant with Noah confirms God’s intention that land animals should exist on the earth (as per Gen 1:24), and that the birds and humanity should be blessed (as per Gen 1:20, 22, 26–28). But, at the same time, it also contains new content: God promises in particular that all flesh will not be destroyed again by a universal flood. This is something that had not been promised in the garden. This particularity means, therefore, that the covenant with Noah cannot simply be a confirmation of God’s covenant with creation. Instead of looking back, the Noahic covenant looks to the future, and promises that animate life will be preserved on earth until God’s purpose of the blessing of life and dominion is achieved for humanity.

The Meaning of God Establishing His Covenant with Noah in Genesis 9

The language of establishing a covenant occurs twice in Gen 9. In Gen 9:9–10, God says to Noah and his sons: “And I, behold, I am establishing (מקים) my covenant with you and with your seed after you, and with every living creature that is with you.” מקים is a Hifil participle of קום. The question here is whether מקים means that God is establishing a new covenant with Noah, or confirming a previously existing one. Linguistically, both options are possible, so context must be our guide in deciding which option is more probable. Given the absence of any explicit covenant language in the text preceding the Noah narrative, it is difficult to take מקים as talking about the confirmation of a previously existing covenant. The most natural reading is that God is establishing a new covenant with Noah and his seed, together with the living creatures (saved by Noah) and their seed (see Gen 9:12, 15). The content of the covenant is specifically the divine promise not to destroy “all flesh” by way of further instances of universal flooding (Gen 9:11, 15). This promise constitutes new content arising out of the new situation, namely, the existential crisis of life in the postdiluvian world. Appropriately this new covenant also has a new sign: the sign of the rainbow (Gen 9:13–14, 16–17). The translation of מקים in the LXX as ἀνίστημι confirms this. ἀνίστημι as a transitive verb means to cause to stand up, to raise up, to erect, to build; compared to ἵστημι, which means to cause to stand, and which can also have the meaning of to confirm. Thus, the translators of the LXX, by their use of ἀνίστημι rather than ἵστημι in Gen 9:9, seem to have understood מקים as indicating the establishment of a new (covenantal) formality within the relationship between God, humanity, and the earth.

The second instance of establishing a covenant in Gen 9 is found in v. 11, where God continues and says to Noah: “I will establish (והקמתי) my covenant with you, and all flesh will not be cut off again by the waters of the flood, and there will not be a flood again to destroy the earth.” It is significant that והקמתי is a Hifil modal perfect form, the modal flavor of which must be determined in the light of the context. The ESV seems to interpret והקמתי as carrying something of the flavor of the participle מקים from v. 9, as it translates both מקים and והקמתי as I establish. However it is best to interpret the flavor of the modal perfect verb in question in line with the two negative imperfect clauses that follow it in v. 11, which are basically epexegetic of the first clause in v. 11. In other words, והקמתי has a standard future-imperfective force. According to this interpretation, the idea of establishing God’s covenant in Gen 9:11 is to be understood in terms of God’s fulfillment of his covenant obligations in the future. God’s “establishment” of his covenant in v. 11 will be realized as he refrains from sending another flood to destroy all flesh in the future. This future-imperfective interpretation of והקמתי is confirmed in the LXX, which translates והקמתי using the verb στήσω, the future tense of ἵστημι.

All up, therefore, I would argue that the language of establishing a covenant in Gen 9:9 best reads as indicating the establishment of a new covenant that helps to guarantee the eventual fulfillment of the blessing of the realization of the original creation mandate, renewed in Gen 9:1–7. However, in Gen 9:11 the confirmation and fulfillment of this covenant in the future is being asserted. The Noahic covenant is a new covenant that functions to preserve animate life in the world by restricting the operation of the forces of chaos and decreation until a permanent solution to human sinfulness might be achieved. In Gen 9 the Noahic covenant is a newly erected frame, but at the same time its erection confirms the original framework of blessing and promise for which humanity as a whole was created.

The Everlasting Covenant with Noah in Genesis Chapter 9

The first reference to ברית עולם or everlasting covenant in the Bible occurs in Gen 9:16. God says to Noah: “When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant [ברית עולם] between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”

The question is: what does the phrase eternal covenant refer to here? The answer is found in the immediately preceding context, but in investigating this context it is helpful to consider the parties to the covenant as well as the content of the covenant.

According to Gen 9:16, the parties of this particular covenant are God and all living creatures. But Gen 9:15 shows that the expression every living creature of all flesh in v. 16 includes Noah and his offspring—the word you in the expression between me and you in v. 15 is a plural pronoun. Genesis 9:13 speaks of the covenant as being made between God and the earth, but what is in view is particularly the living creatures who dwell on the earth. This is very clear in the wording of Gen 9:10-11 when God says to Noah: “Behold, I am establishing my covenant with you and your seed after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark, for every animal of the earth.” That Noah’s seed is included in the covenant suggests that this is a covenant that involves more parties than simply the human beings and animals alive at the time. Indeed, in Gen 9:12 it is spelled out that this covenant is being made for eternal [עולם] generations. In other words, this covenant was made with Noah, the land animals, and the winged creatures alive at the time together with their seed from that point in time ad infinitum. The parties of this covenant, therefore, are God as the first party and every living creature descended from Noah and the animals which had been housed in his ark as the second party.

Turning to consider the content of this covenant, it is helpful to note that the rainbow is the sign of this covenant (Gen 9:12, 16). The sign of the covenant encapsulates the core content of the covenant, which is in particular the promise not to destroy all flesh: “I will establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth” (Gen 9:11); “the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh” (Gen 9:15).

Given the identification of the parties of this covenant as being Noah and his seed, as well as the animals and their subsequent generations in perpetuity, and given that the content of the covenant centers on the idea that there will not be another deluge akin to the flood of Noah, then it seems that the Noahic covenant is a ברית עולם due to the fact that the promise at the core of this covenant is eternal (i.e., from that point in time ever onwards) in its scope.

But what about William Dumbrell’s idea that the covenant ceremony in Gen 9 was confirming a covenant that had been made previously between God and creation? Is the Noahic covenant a ברית עולם in the sense that it continues on forever from the time of Noah, or rather because it is simply a confirmation of God’s eternal covenant with creation? I will endeavor to answer this question in my next post.