“Cosmic Hyperbole”
Genesis 9:1-17
We are wrapping up the story of Noah and the flood today. Noah and his family came out of the ark. Noah immediately built an altar and prepared a sacrifice which God accepted. Although God realized the human heart remained bad, at least Noah was willing to work with Him.
Today’s Scripture begins with God blessing Noah and his family. Notice God repeats the phrase He gave to Adam and Eve, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the land.”
Next, God instructed Noah on how to prepare food. Back in Genesis 6:21, God told Noah to prepare food for himself and the animals as they boarded the ark.
Now that they are off the ark, God instructed Noah how it should be done differently, in reference to the first time He commanded all humanity given in Genesis 1:29-30. Initially God gave every plant (except one) for food,
Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.
Following the flood, God provided a new program of eating in light of humanity’s violent nature that was revealed in the flood narrative, Genesis 9:3,
“Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.”
When human nature was pre-violence, a plant based diet was sufficient. But at this point, humans had been taking life, so God regulates these changes with guidelines that express the same ethical principles we will find in the laws of Mount Sinai.
Humanity’s violence also causes changes with how they will rule over the animals. In Eden, the context was Adam having a peaceful relation with the animals. Post-flood due to violence, the animals see humans as a source of fear and threat, because at this point humans now see them as a source of food.
God was quick to qualify this decision. Taking the life of another creature did not mean humans were God. Humans were allowed to eat the meat for sustenance, but they could not eat the blood because blood was synonymous with life.
Today we may wonder why such a distinction is made because the eating of blood is naturally repulsive. However, Sarna, Nahum M. Sarna writes in, The JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis.” Jewish Publication Society. 61.
“It might be thought that the eating of blood would be so naturally repulsive as not to require legal proscription, but the history of the subject discredits such a notion. The frequency with which the prohibition is repeated in the Torah legislation testifies to the attractiveness of the practice in ancient times. Its appeal lay in the premise, explicated in Leviticus 17:11, 14 and Deuteronomy 12:23, that the blood constituted the life-essence. Consequently, popular thought had it that one could renew or reinforce one’s vitality through its absorption of blood.
For this reason, blood played an important role in the cults of the dead in the ancient world. In the Torah, however, precisely because blood is the symbol of life, it belongs to God alone, as does life itself.”
All life, animal and human, belongs to God, and so humans are responsible to God for how they treat life.
After establishing how Noah and his family could eat, God offers the first formal covenant speech and ceremony in the Hebrew Bible. It sets the design pattern for all future covenants that God will make with others, such as Abraham, the Israelites, and David.
God’s covenant speech is designed in three movements. The first movement, vv. 9-11, introduces the topic of the covenant and its content along with the future stability of the cosmos.
The second movement, the most significant information, vv. 12-16, provides the confirmation of the covenant with God setting His bow in the clouds. A sign given by God to confirm His commitment. The third movement, v. 17 sums up the significance of the whole event. Following numerical significance, the word “covenant” happens to appear 7 times.
This first covenant God makes is not just a covenant between Noah and his family. God makes this covenant with all creation. It is a “cosmic covenant” through a covenant with Noah. The word covenant occurs 284 times in biblical Hebrew. The Hebrew word “covenant” means, “A solemn commitment of oneself to undertake an obligation.”
When God makes this covenant it is significant to recognize that unlike the gods of Israel’s neighbors who made promises contingent upon the people upholding their terms, God obligates Himself alone to sustain the covenant He made with all the Earth after the flood.
God’s sign has significance as well. We have all resonated this sign with the rainbow, which makes for a picturesque story book. However, the direct translation is, “bow in the clouds.” The image of God hanging up His weapon, His bow, evokes the thought of peace, of reconciliation, a bridge between Heaven and Earth and that of hope, where light triumphed over the darkness of the chaotic storm. This image quickly gets turned around in the very next chapter where we will meet the bow hunter and animal slayer, Nimrod.
Noah becomes the archetypal seed of the woman, which was proclaimed in Genesis 3. The flood narrative is not really about the judgment of the world, it’s about Noah and how he was saved from that judgment. The story is not about how God sent a flood but to show how God saved Noah. The ark is the focus of the author’s attention, not the flood. Noah stands as a priestly figure, a new Adam, one who is able to dwell in divine presence. Noah foreshadows the high priest in the tabernacle, who alone can enter the holy of holies and make atonement.
All this to remind us that we are not reading the script of the footage taken of a historical security camera describing exactly what happened, detail by detail. Instead, we are reading a story, breathed by God through humans, about a particular human. The Torah is a narrative given to the Israelites to reflect on who they were in relationship to God.
So at this point I am going to go out on a limb and share my thoughts on what I believe Noah and the story of the ark represent in this literary context.
There are some Christian subcultures that take this story and mark it as a pillar issue on not just whether you believe in a certain interpretation of the flood, but whether you believe in Jesus or whether you can even call yourself a Christian. I have mini discussions like this with many of my students at Friendship Village School. I can quickly discern what they have been taught in Sunday School and they are adamant they hold the truth. I would like to preface my thoughts here that it’s not about whether those who think differently take Jesus more seriously than I do. I believe we both love Jesus and want to follow Him and share the good news about Him because we believe it’s really good news.
We have many who have been debating the archeological or geological data from various angles so that it actually fits with the literal meaning of the text. This is fine, but it does very little in generating a real meaning of what the text was designed to say. Suffice it to say, whether it was a global flood or a local flood that occurred, the story reflects the collapse of the cosmos as the biblical authors understood the construction of the cosmos. Let’s face it, the authors did not share our modern understanding of cosmology. The word for “land” used in the story, does not mean “globe.”
When you look at Genesis 7:11-12, the two phrases, “the fountains of the great deep burst open” and “the windows of the skies were opened,” refer to the ancient conception of the waters above and below, that were separated on day two of Genesis. For them, these cosmic waters existed and were held at bay by Yahweh.
The flood was seen as a cosmic collapse, a de-creation narrative, with a divine purpose.
Here are some examples:
> In Genesis 6 God doesn’t talk about one particular tribe of humanity, He gives a universal declaration of the human condition,
“The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.”
> The flood was not declared or described over one part of the land. It was a cosmic collapse.
> Noah was instructed to take pairs of “all” the animals.
> The size of the ark was also of cosmic proportions, becoming its own miniature cosmos.
> The height of the waters over the mountains, leads us to think of a cosmic event.
The author has clearly presented a catastrophic event with cosmic proportions.
Some theological scholars call this a way of writing a “cosmic hyperbole.” Where the word hyperbole is used with literary intention to exaggerate, to make a point. When we approach the Scriptures as a narrative we should also recognize literary tools that are used to create a meaning. Hyperbole is one of those tools.
This is not the only place in Scriptures where hyperbole is implemented as a narrative tool. In fact, biblical authors regularly use hyperbole to communicate the cosmic meaning of an event.
The flood story actually begins this important design pattern about God’s cosmic judgment against humanity’s evil. We also find it in the story of the ten plagues on Egypt, as well as in the conquest of the Canaanites in the book of Joshua.
Take the first plague on Egypt. We read that Moses went up, struck the water of the Nile with the staff and all of the water that was in the Nile turned to blood. The fish died. The Nile became foul. The blood was through all the water of the land of Egypt, cosmic.
The very next sentence we read that the Egyptians dug around the Nile for water to drink. This shouldn’t be controversial, we talk like this all the time (just said). This is one way people communicate, using hyperbole to demonstrate a point, not define an event.
So to say that, all the land, means it was pervasive in its meaning and the significance is that Yahweh was asserting His authority as cosmic creator. Think about it, there was a spot where they could get water or else they would’ve all died. How long can humans survive without water? 3 days.
The literary meaning intended of this cosmic hyperbole is to talk, not about its scope as such, but about its meaning and significance as Yahweh asserts His authority as sovereign and creator.
Back to the flood narrative. It has been placed in between the genealogies of Genesis 5 and Genesis 10. If we look before and after the flood narrative, we will discover pre-flood characters who were still present after the flood.
Genesis 6:4; we read about the Nephilim
Numbers 13:31-33; we read about the Nephilim
Genesis 4:17, 19-21; we read about Cain after he left Eden and his descendants were “the father of those who live in tents and raise livestock” and “he was the father of all who play stringed instruments and pipes.” In Genesis 15:18-19; the Lord makes a covenant with Abram and gives them the land of the Cainites. In Numbers 24:21-22; Balaam saw the Cainites. In Judges 4:11; Heber the Cainite had separated himself from the Cainites, and pitched his tent
The purpose of Scriptures is to communicate God’s story. The flood narrative seems to be a cosmic portrayal of a real flood story in ancient Mesopotamia. There are many flood accounts from Mesopotamia that go back beyond the year 2,000 B.C.E.
There is also evidence of occasional catastrophic floods. Mesopotamia is a huge flood plain where two large regional rivers merge together. The biblical authors intentionally provide a stylized and creative presentation of the flood narrative in order to make theological claims.
Rather than focus on a “literal” meaning of this story, I think we should focus on the “literary” meaning of this story. The meaning is that God was exerting His cosmic authority to sustain creation.
I may witness a car crash. I can describe what I saw to the police as a witness, but I can’t describe what it means to those people who were in the crash. I can surmise that it’s an event that will be remembered for a long time and have some physical and monetary impact on their lives. There’s a huge difference between establishing that an event happened and interpreting its meaning.
The Bible authors were trying to not only tell what happened but more importantly they want to reveal God’s eternal purposes.
There are a lot of people, especially in America, who hold the young earth creationist view presented by John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris, in their 1961 book, The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and its Scientific Implications.
However, if you are interested, Tremper Longman, III and John H. Walton wrote the book, The Lost World of the Flood: Mythology, Theology, and the Deluge Debate, where they lay out the argument that the flood story contains cosmic hyperbole.
As we read through the Scriptures may we continue to look at the texts to hear a divine word to give us authoritative guidance in our lives. May we allow different interpretations of a text like this and yet follow Saint Augustine’s suggestion to allow charity in all things.
God’s judgment and mercy are bound together as he rescues Noah and his family through the chaos waters of the flood. Noah offers a sacrifice on the high place in response to God’s goodness, but the cycle of folly, division, and violence begins anew, as we will discover as we continue reading through the book of Genesis.
Check in time.
The authors, being used by God to write the Scriptures, want to get across more than just what happened, they want to express what it means to God’s people.
What does this mean for us today?
The story of Noah reminds us that God has sovereignty as the creator, not only on a cosmic scale but on a community scale and all the way down to our individual lives, when we let Him. Noah was a member of humanity when God claimed, ”that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.” and yet God saw Noah’s heart and was sovereign to save not only Noah but also those who went with him onto the ark. Noah wasn’t perfect, as we will discover next week, but Noah found favor with God because, “he walked faithfully with God.” May the same be said of us.
Let’s pray.
