The 5 Books Meander, Week 2 (Noaḥ)

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2 responses to “The 5 Books Meander, Week 2 (Noaḥ)”

1. 

   November 1, 2020

   Kathy

   Week 2 and God chooses you destroy his creations- rather than let the evil and corruption continue to spread and grow even worse. Here we see Gods sovereignty in that he decides who lives and who dies. And also beginning of the pattern of keeping a ‘remnant’ of his people alive and safe to carry on.
   I also thought it was interesting that after the flood that humans became omnivores and animals carnivores. I guess before that- only plants were eaten or were supposed to be eaten- and animals were given over to fear of humans.
   And the covenant! First with Noah to keep him and the fam safe, and then another covenant to not destroy the earth again with water. (One less thing we have to worry about eh?)
   More about covenants next week

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2. 

   November 12, 2020

   Maggie

   The big story in the section is of course the flood, but I want to looks at something a little different from the period after the flood. In chapter 9 we see God telling Noah and his descendants to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth and ostensibly based on the next two chapters they do this. Except then we get to Chapter 11 and the story of the tower of babel – which seems on the surface to be another example of God being perhaps petty?
   But maybe there are a couple of things here that bring us back to the command we saw in chapter 9 – rather than filling the earth, we seem to be clustered in a city and rather than creating global diversity we are instead a homogeneous community (which maybe is not what God wanted).
   The other interesting piece I find here is the focus on the people creating something themselves and the hubris perhaps of wanting to “make a name for ourselves” rather than continuing to be people who are the children of God. So the problem was two-fold, 1) not doing what God originally told us to do, and 2) thinking that we could by ourselves reach the heavens in a sort of co-equal place with God. Remember God likes it when we walk with “him” and things get messy (e.g. big flood) when we focus on human desired activity.

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