Genesis 6-7 and Early Church Writings [Clement of Rome] 36-40

Genesis 6 – “Then the people began to multiply on the earth, and daughters were born to them. The sons of God saw the beautiful women and took any they wanted as their wives” (6:1-2).  This story of the “sons of god” are mythological deities mating with the daughters of man and presumably bringing forth the Nephilim, from whom the heroes of men arose. The Greek myths we are familiar with are full of these stories of gods and goddesses seeking out mortal partners and bringing forth heroic people.

Despite whatever luster these heroes might have had, the Lord becomes more and more pained at the extent of evil on the earth.  Man’s heart seemed to “fashion nothing but wickedness all day long” (6:5). Finally God regrets having made him at all. So he decides to destroy every living thing (6:7). 

“God saw that the earth had become corrupt and was filled with violence” (NLT 6:12). There is only one good man - Noah whose name means “may this one comfort our sorrow.” God tells Noah to build an ark of gopherwood (NAB--NRSV says cypress) according to the dimensions he gives. The dimension are given in cubits; a cubit is equal to the length of a man’s forearm.  In feet the dimensions are 50’ wide by 300’ long and 30’ high according to some translations. The NLT translation was it should be 450’ long, 75’ wide and 45’ high. 

God says, “I am about to cover the earth with a flood that will destroy every living thing that breathes. Everything on earth will die. But I will confirm my covenant with you. So enter the boat—you and your wife and your sons and their wives. Bring a pair of every kind of animal—a male and a female—into the boat with you to keep them alive during the flood” (6:17-19).

So Noah and his family build the ark and bring onto it, two (later for priestly reasons, seven) of the clean animals (two of all others).  Noah, unlike Adam but like Abraham, carries out “all the commands that God gave him” (6:22).

Really Important Themes:

Simultaneously Punishing/Saving God: God will later give similarly specific instructions when he tells the Jews how to build the Ark of the Covenant and later the temple. In a sense this is already the second time God has intervened to “save” man from the consequences of his own evil. The first is when he helps to equip man (by providing clothes) for life in the fall and alienation from God; now again God works not only to punish but to save the human race.

Throughout scripture, we see this same paradox – God punishing man and simultaneously offering the hand of salvation. 

Collective vs. individual responsibility: What is also interesting is that not only does God want to destroy mankind for the evil they do but all living things – innocent birds and animals.  There is a sense in which the one given dominion – man in this case (later the king or the priests) – stands for everyone over whom they wield authority. So here, when man is evil, all the innocent creation must endure the punishment of those in position of responsibility; later when there is a monarchy, or later a priestly leadership class, the innocent, poor and dependent people they are responsible for also bear the chastisement brought on by the “shepherds” who fail. 

There is a tension in the story between this kind of “collective” vision and an equally strong vision of individual responsibility and existence before God.  Later we will be told in no uncertain terms that children will not be held responsible for the sins of their fathers, that each person will be judged on his or her own “merits” whether those merits be earned or won through faith in Christ.  But the “collective” dimension has continuing reality as well. Christ’s own incarnation and death speak of it for he comes to share our human nature, to bear our burdens and die for our shortcomings in a way only God can do.

Genesis 7 – “When everything was ready, the Lord said to Noah, ‘Go into the boat with all your family, for among all the people of the earth, I can see that you alone are righteous. Take with you seven pairs—male and female—of each animal I have approved for eating and for sacrifice, and take one pair of each of the others. Also take seven pairs of every kind of bird. There must be a male and a female in each pair to ensure that all life will survive on the earth after the flood (7:1-3). You can see here the addition of numbers to the story because it is a somewhat different version of the story inserted by the priests when the story was redacted.

The flood comes when Noah is 600 years old. For forty days and forty nights, the rains came down and covered the face of the earth. The magical number 40—forty days and nights of rain; forty years in the desert; forty night and days in the desert—the number of the salvation journey.

“As the waters rose higher and higher above the ground, the boat floated safely on the surface. Finally, the water covered even the highest mountains on the earth, rising more than twenty-two feet above the highest peaks” (7:18-19). The waters cover the earth for 150 days.

First Epistle of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians

Section 36 – It is through Christ, our High Priest, that we can see “as in a glass, the peerless perfection of the face of God. Through Him the eyes of our hearts are opened, and our dim and clouded understanding unfolds like a flower to the light; for through Him the Lord permits us to taste the wisdom of eternity” (37).

Section 37 – Clement turns to the imagery of warfare – Lamb’s warfare I presume. We must consider ourselves to be under His command in a large force with many different levels of authority. “Every organism is composed of various different elements; and this ensures it own good. Take the body as an instance; the head is nothing without the feet, nor are the feet anything without the head. Even the smallest of our physical members are necessary and valuable to the whole body; yet all of them work together and observe a common subordination, so that the body itself is maintained intact” (38).

Section 38 – “In Christ Jesus, then, let this corporate body of our be likewise maintained intact, with each of us giving way to his neighbor in proportion to our spiritual gifts” (38).

“[J]ust consider, my brothers, the original material from which we took our being. What were we, pray, and who were we, at the moment of our first coming into the world? Our Maker and Creator brought us out of darkness into His universe as it were out of a tomb; even before our birth He was ready with His favors for us. To Him we own everything, and therefore on every count we are under the obligation to return thanks to Him. Glory be to Him for ever and ever, amen” (38)

Section 39 – Men who have no understanding of these things may mock us, but merely mortal men can effect nothing. Those who are fools will never amount to anything. Long quotes from Scripture on the uselessness of those who are not the Lord’s.

Section 40 – “All these things are plain to us who have scanned the depths of sacred lore” (39). God created an order through which men should approach him. “[I]t was His command that the offering of gifts and the conduct of public services should not be haphazard or irregular, but should take place at fixed times and hours. Moreover, in the exercise of His supreme will He has Himself declared in what place and by what persons He desires this to be done, if it is all to be devoutly performed in accordance with His wishes and acceptably to His will” (39).

The priesthood has its place and the ministries of the Levites, and lay people “are bound by regulations affecting the laity” (39). Here certainly we finally come to the specifics of the concerns, which has caused Clement to write this letter. The problem is that his reference to it is so lacking in detail, it is really not possible to understand much about it. Clearly it has to do with “disorder” over ministries and particularly conflicts between lay persons and presbyters, which has led to the removal of some of these presbyters. There is an interesting article online “Clement’s Answer to the Corinthian Conflict in AD 96” by Davorin Peterlin in a journal called The Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (1996).

Section 35 – “How blessed, how marvelous are the gifts of God, my friends! Some of them, indeed, already lie within our comprehension – the life that knows no death, the shining splendor of righteousness, the truth that is frank and full, the faith that is perfect assurance, the holiness of chastity – but what of the things prepared for those who wait?” (37) We cannot really know these things.

So we must fix our minds on God and do His will: “Wickedness and wrongdoing of every kind must be utterly renounced; all greed, quarrelling, malice and fraud, scandal-mongering and back-biting, enmity towards God, glorification of self, presumption, conceit, and want of hospitality” (36). These all must be laid aside.

Genesis 4 through 9 - Cain & Abel and the Great Flood

Genesis 4 – Cain and Abel
The consequences of "the fall" are inescapable when we look at the history of "civilized" man. The story of Cain and Abel reveals to us the broader consequences of man's fall as they extend beyond the lives of the perpetrators into the lives of their children (all of us). Cain and Abel represent two ancient modes of life - the shepherd's and the farmer's. Both are already in the practice of relating to God through the giving of gifts, offerings or sacrifices. Why this mode of relating to the creator is adopted is not explained. It is simply assumed.

The two first children of "the woman" are Cain and Abel, a tiller of the ground (now cursed) and a tender of sheep (4:2). We see them here offering the work of their hands to the Lord. Cain gives offerings from his labors - fruit of the soil, and Abel from his labors, "the first-born of his flock" (4:4). We are not told, nor is Cain why his offerings are found less pleasing (4:6). Perhaps God favors offerings that are "living" over those from the soil and the wits of men. Perhaps it is because the soil is weighed down with the curse He placed on it in Gen. 3:17. God will favor shepherds throughout His story and also will favor the "younger" sibling over the older. But we may also perhaps assume that there is something awry in the heart of Cain, something only God can discern but which makes all the difference between them. God's displeasure with Cain enrages Cain and the jealousy he feels leads directly to his act of violence against his brother. The soil--cursed along with Adam--is Cain's medium. He will further debase it by pouring his brother's blood out on it. We see in his violence and violation of family love the furthest consequences of the alienation which Adam and Eve initiated.
God's words to Cain - ". . . is not sin at the door like a crouching beast?" - are, I think true of all men in the fall. But God tells Cain he must "master" it (4:8), and so must we. We can do this. The warning comes before Cain's act. There are some fascinating details in this story when God confronts Cain with what he has done: God tells him his brother's blood calls out to Him (4:10). God does not kill Cain (no capital punishment here - yet) but bans Cain from the soil, which is what he takes his living from, and forces him to be a wanderer, thus deepening the alienation and exile imposed by the first fall. Whereas the soil for Adam was cursed, for Cain it will yield nothing. He is exiled from it completely and must live from his "technologies" alone. He will be a fugitive and a wanderer, belonging to no real community, yet still alive. This is the completion of that spiritual death begun by his parents. Cain will be the founder of a "city". This adds a sociological dimension to the fall narrative. Then the text traces the descent from Cain and goes on to tell of the birth of Seth to Adam and Eve, a boy that will take the place of Abel in the family.

The sin of Cain ramps up the tension in the narrative, a tension that was introduced by the fall. For George Fox, the key wisdom to be taken from the narrative was to see the "state" of Cain as a "state" we too must struggle with (Journal 30). But other details of the story intrigue me as well.

Genesis 5-11
The next seven chapters of Genesis set forth the early history of "fallen" man as they saw it. The descendants of Adam and Eve are told of and some early legends and myths set in the narrative build a sense of God's frustration with how his creation has turned out. Man's heart "fashioned nothing but wickedness all day long" (5). So God decides to basically start over again, to wipe everything out, saving only Noah and his family to start the "human being project" over again. Noah's name means "may this one comfort our sorrow" and I do think it is God who is sorrowing. It's kind of interesting but God's work too - like man's - is burdened with a sense of frustration and futility.

God tells Noah to build an ark and give him very specific instructions for constructing it. He will be equally specific later when He instructs His people to build an ark for the covenant and even later to build a Temple under Solomon. Whenever God punishes us in the narrative - in Eden - and now here, He also helps. Throughout the story we see the same paradox - God punishing man and simultaneously offering the hand of salvation.

What is also interesting is that the story shows us a God who punishes the innocent along with the guilty. The innocent animals God created to be with man in the creation. There is a sense in these early stories that the one given dominion by God - here generic "man" but later the kings and priests set over "man" - stands for everyone over whom they wield authority. So here, when man does evil, all the innocent creation must endure the punishment imposed on those in position of responsibility. Later, when there is a monarchy, or a priestly leadership class, the innocent, poor and dependent people they are responsible for also bear the chastisements brought on by the "shepherds" who fail. There is a tension in the story between this kind of "collective" vision and an equally strong vision of individual responsibility and existence before God. Later we will be told in no uncertain terms that children will not be held responsible for the sins of their fathers, that each person will be judged on his or her own "merits" whether those merits be earned or won through faith in Christ. But the "collective" dimension has a continuing reality too. We do bring the innocent down with us when we sin.
So Noah and his family build the ark , gather a remnant of the creation onto it, and endure forty days of God's wrath. Forty is a magical number in Scripture. Later there will be forty years in the desert for Moses and the people with him. And Christ will spend forty days and nights in the desert as well. When Noah and his family leave, they offer up a sacrifice of those "clean animals" on board [there are two accounts woven into the story - one giving two of each animal and one that provides a few others so that this offering can be made]. God makes a "covenant" with Noah, expanding his "dominion" over the creation by giving him meat to eat as well as plants, but man is to refrain from eating the blood of the animals, and God places a rainbow in the sky as a "sign" of his covenant with man.

So God tries to start the project over, but it doesn't take long for us to see that things are not going to change much. Noah, being a descendant of Cain, is a tiller of the soil and he plants a vineyard. He gets drunk on its grapes and his son Ham disgraces himself by looking on his father's nakedness while he is drunk. In punishment for this, Ham is consigned to a destiny of servitude. 19th c. pro-slavery apologists used this to justify the perpetual slavery of the black race, which was believed to be included as descendants of Ham.

And chapter 11 describes the splintering of man's language into many tongues as a result of man's pride in building a tower of Babel to "make a name" (11:4) for themselves. So the overall narrative leaves us with a creation still far from what it is God intended. In His next attempt, he will take another tack, starting instead with one faithful man.