The nations (Genesis 10)

What’s the point of listing the nations in Genesis 10? It’s a big deal in the big story.

Chapter 10 is a new family story. We heard the tô·lē·ḏôṯ of Noah (6:9). Now it’s the tôlēḏôṯ of Noah’s sons (10:1, 32).

It’s about the nations descended from Noah’s sons. The nations go their own way, so God will call Abraham to establish a nation — a nation to restore the blessing that the nations are missing (Genesis 12:1-3).

Naturally, the list of nations only covers the nations Israel knew. There’s nothing about the cultures of ancient China or south America, nothing on the first nations of Australia. But don’t let that dimmish your appreciation for what Israel was doing by recognizing the other nations:

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The drunken leader (Genesis 9:18-29)

What should we make of Noah’s indiscretion?

How does Noah handle the additional responsibility God gave humans after the flood? Remember God gave us authority over the lives of others for the first time (9:6), while enshrining his own responsibility over us with a covenant (9:8).

Noah doesn’t handle it well:

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God’s covenant with earth (Genesis 9:8-17)

What’s the significance of the Noah covenant?

God’s world has been ruined (Genesis 7), rescued (Genesis 8), and reconfigured (Genesis 9). After the flood, God addressed the matter of violence by giving humans authority over each other’s lives for the first time. If God handed over authority like that, has he abdicated?

Absolutely not! The heavenly sovereign clarifies that point by making a covenant with his earthly realm. God commits to keep reigning over us forever, regardless of how difficult we are to manage. That’s the point of the first covenant in Scripture.

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God reconfigures the world (Genesis 9:1-7)

Genesis 9 is effectively a new creation. As Noah emerges from his little preservation box after a year, he offers gifts in recognition of the Lord’s authority, and God affirms the order of creation (8:22).

So, what’s the same in this new creation, and what’s different? That’s what Genesis 9 is all about.

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Ruined (Genesis 7)

God’s partnership with humans broke down. Cain went out from God’s presence (4:16) to build a city that trusted violence for justice (4:23). The rest of Adam’s family (Genesis 5) exchanged God’s values for what seemed “good” to them (6:2), lauding the strong fighters, the heroes of old, the men of renown (6:4). They only thought about doing evil to each other (6:5). God grieved he had made humans (6:7), for the earth God entrusted to us was now corrupt, filled with violence (6:11).

For God’s partnership with us to work requires at least one person. In Noah, God finds a way to rescue the earth. God saves Noah by teaching him to build a preservation box (ark), and Noah saves the creatures entrusted to human care (6:19) because Noah did everything just as God commanded him (6:22).

Genesis 7 then recounts the destruction of the world that God’s partners had already destroyed, and Genesis 8 describes the rescue of the earth.

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Judging and saving a corrupted creation (Genesis 6:9-22)

Here’s the start of a new family story:

Genesis 6:9-10 (NIV)
9 This is the account [tôlēḏôṯ] of Noah and his family. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God. 10 Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.

Christian readers have problems here. How can Noah be a righteous man? We know the verses that say no one is righteous (Psalm 143:2), and all our righteousness is as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). How can Noah be a righteous man? Was Noah blameless (without fault)?

More problematically, what kind of God kills all those people? If we think this is a children’s story, we haven’t understood the horror. This should be R-rated.

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Losing our identity (Genesis 6:1-8)

Why was there a flood in Noah’s day? Genesis introduces the story like this:

Genesis 6:1-2 (NIV)
1 When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.

Who does sons of God refer to? It is the human descendants in the image of God, as in the previous chapter? Or is it angels?

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What about the ages in Genesis 5?

Is Genesis 5 saying that some individuals lived have for almost 1000 years? That doesn’t match anything in our world today or in ancient history. Is what it sounds like to us what it meant to them? Or did it mean something to them that isn’t obvious to us? Honestly, I don’t know. At this point, I’m uncertain what to make of it.

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The family that trusts God (Genesis 5)

Genesis 5 is a new family story, in contrast to the community of Chapter 4 who went out from God’s presence and built a city dedicated to human honour and ingenuity, relying on violent superheroes to bring justice. We’re now turning to the family that relies on God to give life and calls on his name for their survival (4:26).

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Cain’s sin divides the world (Genesis 4:17-24)

Tragically, Cain’s sin divides the world. The Lord still reigns over the whole earth, but Cain’s mob are separated from those who live in the Lord’s presence.

They construct another culture, based on human achievement:

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How God deals with evil (Genesis 4:8-16)

Genesis 4:8 (NIV)
Now Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out to the field.” While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.

Death is the ultimate destruction of our life. Death entered the world by disconnecting us from our Life-source. Cain sees it as a way to be rid of his rival. When we reject God’s perspective of good and evil to do what’s right in our own eyes, we don’t care what’s good for the other.

So who will make Cain pay for the murder? In these early chapters of Genesis, there’s no human government deciding whether people have done evil. God delegates that authority only after the flood (Genesis 9:4-6). God reigns directly, so God investigates Cain’s crime, just as God investigated the three rebels in the garden (3:9-19).

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