On Genesis, Part 11: The End of Sinners

On Genesis, Part 11: The End of Sinners

Aside from the explicit description of fornication between the Nephilim and the daughters of Adam which is found in the opening verses of Genesis chapter 6, there are only implications and subtle indications in Genesis as to the full extent of the sins of men and angels. However since all flesh had become corrupted, according to verse 12 of Genesis chapter 6, and since not only the children of Adam, but even the beasts of the land had to be destroyed for that same reason, it is evident that there must have been some truth to the account of the treachery of the Nephilim in the corruption of the beasts underlying what is found in the Enoch literature. But evidently, Noah and his family had never taken part in those sins, as Noah was perfect in his race, which describes his sons as well as himself, and therefore their flesh had not been corrupted. So the Adamic man which Yahweh God had created would be preserved through Noah and his sons, while the rest of the race would be destroyed for their iniquity. Out of all the sins of men, race-mixing with another race, in this case the Nephilim, is the explicit reason given in Genesis chapter 6 for the destruction of the entire race of man.

Yet the Nephilim themselves were not entirely destroyed in the flood of Noah, where it becomes apparent that Yahweh God deals with fallen angels differently than he deals with sinful men. This is evident even in the King James translation of Genesis 6:4 where we read in part that “There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that…” So while all of the children of Adam were destroyed except for the family of Noah, various of the descendants of the Nephilim are mentioned in Genesis chapter 15, Numbers chapter 13, and as late as the time of David, in the account of Goliath and his brothers 1 Samuel chapters 17 and 21 and 1 Chronicles chapter 20. These are some of the giants, or Nephilim, who were in the earth “in those days and after that”, referring to the time following the flood, and with that we also see that while the flood was evidently a far-reaching event, it was only a local flood, covering a limited region of the earth’s surface, and not the entire globe or planet. We certainly cannot assume that those Nephilim had survived on the ark of Noah, because Yahweh God brought the flood upon man for mixing with the Nephilim, and Noah was being separated and preserved because he did not mix with them, so having Nephilim on the ark would defeat the whole purpose of the flood. That is also the obvious reason why there is no mention of Nephilim on the ark.

Much later, the apostles Jude and Peter had each explained that the fallen angels, evidently meaning their descendants, are still found in the world today. Where Peter had written in reference to them, in chapter 2 of his second epistle, he said in part: “12 But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they understand not; and shall utterly perish in their own corruption; 13 And shall receive the reward of unrighteousness, as they that count it pleasure to riot in the day time. Spots they are and blemishes, sporting themselves with their own deceivings while they feast with you; 14 Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin; beguiling unstable souls: an heart they have exercised with covetous practices; cursed children…. 17 These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever.” The language which Peter had employed to describe the Nephilim, the fallen angels or “angels that sinned”, is very similar to that which is found in the epistle of Jude. However Yahshua Christ Himself had also referred to them in other ways, for example in Luke chapter 10 where He said: “18 … I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. 19 Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” This is why Christ had also referred to His enemies as the offspring of vipers, meaning that their parents were vipers.

Earlier in that same chapter Peter had explained that Yahweh God had “5 … spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, [the Greek reads ‘Noah the eighth preacher of righteousness,’] bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly”. Yet even earlier, in chapters 3 and 4 of his first epistle, Peter had explained that those same ungodly men of the race of Adam would hear the Gospel of Christ, where he wrote in 1 Peter chapter 3 that “18 … Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: 19 By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; 20 Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.”

So these children of Adam who were “sometime”, as the King James Version has it, or more properly, who were at one time disobedient, would not be lost in the flood, but rather, they would be saved in the flood even if they had died, since Yahweh God had already promised man that he would be delivered by clinging to the Tree of Life and since Christ, who is that Tree of Life, is also the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Furthermore, it is evident that they were “at one time disobedient” because they had broken the one law which their first father Adam had been given, which is the commandment not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which they did by race-mixing with the Nephilim. But ultimately, as Paul of Tarsus had also explained in Romans chapter 5 and in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, the entire Adamic race shall be preserved, although it is also certain that there are both temporal punishments and eternal consequences for sin.

In the words of Solomon we read in Ecclesiastes chapter 1 that “12 I the Preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13 And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith. 14 I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit. 15 That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.” In other words, man was purposely placed into a world which he himself could not keep straight, or rectify. Therefore the vanity of the life of a man, and his own hopelessness in the world, is a trial from God by which man is exercised.

Much later, Paul of Tarsus would make a similar assertion in Romans chapter 8 where he wrote: “18 For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. 19 For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. 20 For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, 21 Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.” Later in that chapter, where Paul compares this creature to other things which had been created by God, it is evident that the creature of which Paul had spoken is the Adamic creation, the man of Genesis chapters 1 and 2, the same man of which Solomon had written. So the purpose of man in this life is to experience vanity, and evidently also the consequences of sin, while coming to realize, sooner or later, that his only hope is found in God Yahweh, and therefore he should be obedient to Him. That is also where we had left off in Genesis chapter 6, where in its final verse we read: “22 Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.” The Nephilim, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the bastard races which come from them are only part of the lesson, and they are to be disposed of at the end of the age, which is the fire prepared for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41).

Now where Genesis chapter 7 begins, Noah has had nearly a hundred years from the birth of his sons in Genesis 6:10 to the coming of the flood, as it is reckoned in the ages at which his sons had begun to have sons of their own in Genesis chapter 11. These hundred years are also evident in the words of Yahweh earlier in that chapter where He is recorded as having said “3 … My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.” Evidently, from that time it was about twenty more years until Noah was called and given his instructions, and much of the remaining hundred years would have been spent both raising his sons and building the ark.

So now we shall commence with Genesis chapter 7:

1 And the LORD said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.

As we had explained in our commentary for Genesis chapter 6, Noah was seen as having been righteous because he was Perfect in His Race. Here the Hebrew word translated as generation is once again דור or דר, dowr or dor, and in the Greek Septuagint it was once again translated as γενεά. As we had explained, the Hebrew term primarily represents the concept of a circle or circuit, and of men it is therefore a generation as period or circuit of the years of life, as Gesenius had explained in his Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon. But there he had also explained that as a verb, the word means to go around, to go in a circle, and therefore also to remain, to delay, or to inhabit [1]. In Daniel chapter 3 a “plain of Dura” is mentioned, and the name is defined in Strong’s Concordance (# 1757) as meaning circle or dwelling.

In Genesis 6:9 we read in part “These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations”, and the context of the clause which describes Noah as having been “perfect in his generations”, translated from the word dor, is the descent or genealogies being referenced where it reads “These are the generations of Noah…”, translated from the word towledah. So we would assert that in this context, which is a reference to that same statement in Genesis 6:9, the word dor is a remaining, and implies that Noah was a perfect remaining of his genealogy, which is his race. Each generation of man is a circuit in the perpetuation of the race. Likewise, the word γενεά is primarily a race, stock or family, and was also sometimes used to refer to a generation in that same sense. Where γενεά is used to describe a generation, it should always be understood to describe the generation of a particular kind or race, and cannot be justly separated from that concept.

[1 Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament, translated by Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, Baker Books, 1979, p. 193-194.]

Now the narrative turns towards the beasts:

2 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female. 3 Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.

The phrase “by sevens, the male and the female” informs us that seven pairs of every clean animal were preserved upon the ark. The word for two, שנים, or shenayim, is a dual form and it is unclear as to whether two pairs were meant, or only one. In the Septuagint, where a Hebraism appears in which the Greek word for two is repeated twice, which Brenton had translated as pairs, it seems to indicate that two pairs were meant. (ἀπὸ δὲ τῶν κτηνῶν τῶν μὴ καθαρῶν δύο δύο, ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ,) A similar Hebraism appears in the Gospel of Mark (i.e. Mark 6:39, 40), and is called “distributive doubling” by some scholars.

This is the first time in Scripture that beasts are distinguished as clean and unclean, in spite of the fact that the dietary law would not be given at Sinai for nearly another two thousand years. Therefore, if it is acknowledged outside of the law that there were animals which were unclean, then there were animals that should not be eaten, even without the law. So it stands to reason that those animals which are unclean still should not be eaten to this day, because the designation of unclean animals transcends the law. Those animals which are unclean are nevertheless preserved here, albeit in smaller quantities evidently because they are not eaten, and therefore they must have a purpose in the creation of God apart from being eaten. Notice also that Yahweh told Moses to keep pairs of animals, a male for each female. In modern husbandry it is common to keep only one male for a multiplicity of females, and to slaughter all of the other males for food.

While it may be noticed that the birds are not distinguished as clean and unclean, neither would we make any conclusions based on the omission. However in the Septuagint, unclean birds are mentioned, and the Greek text is lengthier than what is found here, where in Brenton’s translation of the Greek we read: “And of clean flying creatures of the sky sevens, male and female, and of all unclean flying creatures pairs, male and female, to maintain seed on all the earth.” Unfortunately, none of Genesis chapter 7 has been preserved in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

There are many childish conclusions which are premised upon things of which the Scripture does not inform. For example, some people make the assertion that man was created to only eat vegetables because Adam ate no meat before his fall from grace. However Yahshua Christ being the “Lamb slain before the foundation of the world”, the concept of animal sacrifice and the consumption of meat must have existed before the foundation of the world. Then Abel, having been a keeper of sheep, must have been raising those sheep for consumption or there would be little point in keeping them. It is also plausible that Abel must have learned to keep sheep from his father Adam. Now here, Noah taking many more clean animals onto the ark than unclean animals, that must also have been an assurance that he and his family would be able to eat meat for food after the flood.

4 For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth. 5 And Noah did according unto all that the LORD commanded him.

Here we are informed that Noah had a week to board all of these animals, and regardless of how we may imagine that it was done, it is evident that having been done in such a short time, Noah hardly had to travel very far to gather them. Nor could the animals have come from far away, exotic locations. So this once again indicates that the flood was only regional in nature, and did not cover the entire planet, nor did it destroy living creatures living outside of the region. While it may be argued that if the flood were only local then the birds may have just flown away, rather than boarding the ark, many common species of birds upon which men rely are not capable of flying very long distances. Some can fly only in very short hops.

This is also the first time that it is recorded where it had rained upon the land of the Adamic patriarchs. In Genesis chapter 2 we read: “5 … for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. 6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.” But this does not necessarily mean that it had never yet rained anywhere on the entire planet. Everywhere that we see the word earth here in the English version of these chapters of Genesis, the word would have been much more appropriately translated as land. As we had explained in our last presentation, in the King James Version the same Hebrew word was translated as earth just over 700 times, and as land over 1,500 times. The word earth simply meant ground to Medieval Englishmen, and since Galileo did not face Roman inquisition until 1615, the King James translators in 1611 could not have had any firm understanding that the entire planet should have the word earth as a name. Rather, it had not yet rained upon that land described as Eden, in the area of the four rivers named in that same chapter, and what was happening on the rest of the planet is outside of the scope of the Scriptures. Evidently, there was an ecosystem in the region which at that time did not necessitate rain in order for plant life to flourish.

Here we have not failed to notice that Adam and Eve were ejected from the Garden of God, in the closing verses of Genesis chapter 3. But the Garden was not Eden itself. Rather, the Garden was in Eden, and we need not imagine that Adam and Eve had gone very far. The Garden was “eastward in Eden” (2:8) and Adam was “sent … forth from the Garden of Eden” (3:23) but not necessarily from the wider region described as Eden in Genesis chapter 2. While we cannot know the specific area in which the flood had occurred, it certainly seems to have been in that same proximity described as Eden earlier in Genesis. There is an Assyrian word akin to the Hebrew word for Eden which is generally translated as steppe where it appears in Assyrian inscriptions.

There have also been many archaeological discoveries of evidence of floods in several places in Mesopotamia, although in various places modern archaeologists assign them diverse dates and orders of magnitude. Yet even a flood of this magnitude does not necessarily leave up to 11 feet of silt, as Sir Leonard Woolley had discovered at the ancient Sumerian site of Ur, or any significant amount of silt which would be evenly distributed across the area it covers [2]. Therefore while the archaeological data is a frequent subject of debate, the debates are often skewed because the denominational Christians using the data to uphold the Biblical flood account insist that the Biblical flood covered the entire planet, which is not true. They also believe, according the the Masoretic Text, that the flood must have occurred at approximately 2350 BC, and that is not true since the Septuagint chronology, as well as that of Josephus, would move the date back another 900 or so years. Several tribes originating in the affected region have myths of a great flood, among whom are the later inhabitants of Mesopotamia as well as the Ionian Greeks.

[2 The Flood: Mesopotamian Archaeological Evidence, Creation/Evolution Journal, Volume 8, No. 2, National Center for Science Education, https://ncse.ngo/flood-mesopotamian-archaeological-evidence accessed April 14, 2023.]

6 And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth.

Noah was five hundred years old when he began having sons, which is evidenced in the closing verse of Genesis chapter 5, so the hundred year period during which he built the ark is once again evident in the text. The figures are corroborated in Genesis chapters 9 and 11.

7 And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood.

There are many hare-brained claims concerning the souls which were on the ark with Noah, however the text does not leave any room in which we may imagine that any of them were corrupted. If Noah was “a just man and perfect in his generations” that would include the sons who were on the ark with him, and their wives, and it would have also included his grandchildren who were born shortly after the flood. Paul of Tarsus wrote in Hebrews chapter 11 that: “7 By faith Noah was warned. Being cautious about things not yet seen he prepared a vessel for preservation of his house; by which he condemned the Society, and of that righteousness in accordance with faith he became heir.” Noah had condemned the society by his actions, which in turn had testified of the truth of Yahweh God. But for Noah to have done so without hypocrisy, he and his house must have been blameless, and like Noah, they all must have been perfect in their race, pure children of Adam undefiled by the race-mixing fornication of the Nephilim.

Now there is another mention of the beasts:

8 Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth, 9 There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah. 10 And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.

This is the fulfillment of the proposal found earlier in verse 4. It does not appear that Noah, even in a small region, could have located and captured wild animals, and collected and herded domesticated animals in such large numbers in only seven days. Perhaps Yahweh God Himself had sent the animals to Noah, calling those which He knew had not been corrupted. However that is also just speculation, and the method of collection can only be conjectured. But the hand of God in the collection is also plausible, because however many hundreds or even thousands of animals there were, the ark had three levels, and each level had a total of 33,750 square feet of space, if the cubit may be calculated at 18 inches. If animals occupied two and a half levels of the ark, that is approximately 84,375 square feet of space. A modern American football field is only 57,600 square feet. For a modern dairy barn, Pennsylvania State University suggests 36’ feet of space be allotted to a stall for a 1,500 pound dairy cow [3]. That would be 504 square feet needed for seven pairs of such animals. Leaving half of the space for other necessary uses, including food storage, the ark may have accommodated nearly 1,200 36-foot square stalls, or nearly 84 504-square-foot stalls. The calculations are conjectural, but they are based on the description of the ark and worthy of consideration in any attempt to picture how many animals the ark may have held, so here we only attempt to view the flood from a realistic perspective. While many animals are much smaller than cows, this space would certainly not be sufficient for every species on the planet, many of which are much larger than cows, but it certainly would have accommodated the animals in the region that the children of Adam had inhabited at that time.

[3 Designing and Building Dairy Cattle Freestalls, Pennsylvania State University, https://extension.psu.edu/designing-and-building-dairy-cattle-freestalls, accessed April 14, 2023]

11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. 12 And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

The Septuagint has twenty-seventh rather than seventeenth both here and in Genesis 8:4, where the ark had come to rest on higher ground five months later. While it rained for forty days, the waters were on the earth for even much longer than five months, as we read in Genesis chapter 8 that one year later, “in the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dried.” So while it took some time for the waters to abate, the land was not dry for a year and ten days after the flood had begun.

The opening of the windows of heaven is a poetic description of rain showers, as there were waters above the firmament, or the expanse of the sky, which is evidently a description of a thick cloud cover. In 2 Kings chapter 7 the children of Israel had been suffering a drought, and we read the following: “1 Then Elisha said, Hear ye the word of the LORD; Thus saith the LORD, To morrow about this time shall a measure of fine flour be sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria. 2 Then a lord on whose hand the king leaned [a man upon whom the king depended] answered the man of God, and said, Behold, if the LORD would make windows in heaven, might this thing be? And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof.” The reference to windows in heaven in that passage is also a reference to rainfall, a lack of which had been the reason for the drought. Rather than windows of heaven, the Septuagint Greek has cataracts of heaven.

Where all the fountains of the great deep had opened up, it is not unreasonable to think that earthquakes may have broken the ground above subterranean aquifers, which are common in many regions, causing the waters beneath the earth to pour out into the land. While there are many theories concerning a more precise location for the flood of Noah, and I also have some my own, they are all mere conjecture. We can not even be certain that the shape of the land today is entirely the same as before the flood, because as the text says here, all the fountains of the great deep had been broken up. However a study published in 2020 in the Journal of Earth Sciences and Geotechnical Engineering titled Hydrogeology of the Mesopotamian Plain: A Critical Review, has the following in its abstract: “The Mesopotamian Plain hydrogeologically is a semi-closed basin where most of the groundwater accumulates in the central and southern parts of the plain. However, [a] small part of the groundwater flows out of the basin to the Gulf. This special character has significant effects on the depth and type of the groundwater in the plain.” [4] Being a semi-closed basin today, it is plausible that the flood did occur in Mesopotamia, although of course there are other possibilities.

[4 Hydrogeology of the Mesopotamian Plain: A Critical Review, Journal of Earth Sciences and Geotechnical Engineering, Volume 10 Number 4, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340081652_Hydrogeology_of_the_Mesopotamian_Plain_A_Critical_Review, accessed April 14, 2023.]

So on the day it first began to rain:

13 In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark; 14 They, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort. 15 And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life. 16 And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in.

Noah and his family evidently enter the ark at the proverbial last minute, on the very day it had begun to rain. Perhaps the act of Yahweh himself shutting Noah and his company into the ark is symbolic of the fact that man cannot save himself without the hand of God. Speaking of the beasts, the words “after his kind” here may be significant, because that is how Yahweh had created the animals. However where certain of the beasts are destroyed in the flood in the subsequent verses, those words do not appear.

17 And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth.

As we shall see in Genesis chapter 8, the waters were upon the earth for just over a year before it was completely dried. But here it is only informing us that it took forty days of rain for the waters to lift the ark off the ground. The ark being 30 cubits high, which is 45 feet, a good portion of it may already have been under water before it could actually float. Since boats do not float until there is sufficient displacement, while there may have been a significant sudden surge of water at the beginning of the flood, after that it rose more gradually, which is what is indicated here.

18 And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters. 19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. 20 Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.

The same word translated hills in verse 19 is mountains in verse 20. The Hebrew word הר or har (# 2022) is a hill or mountain, or a hill country, a place of hills, a highland. The flood did not necessarily cover every mountain on the planet, which is a ridiculous assumption, but rather, every hill in the land where the flood had occurred. If Mount Everest were to be covered by a flood, the surface of the entire planet would have to be inundated with water over five-and-a-half miles deep, which is ridiculous to imagine even after 40 days of rain. While Mesopotamia is bordered by high mountainous lands east of the Tigris and north of the Euphrates rivers, most of Mesopotamia and adjacent portions of Arabia are on a vast plane with hills not exceeding 1,600 feet in elevation, and a very large section of Mesopotamia with an adjacent portion of Arabia has elevations of only about 200 feet above sea level. Where it says in verse 20 that “fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail”, evidently it took only about 22 ½ feet to inundate the land where the flood had occurred.

Some years ago, discussing the plausible growth of the population of the Israelites from the time when Jacob went down to Egypt to the giving of the law at Sinai, in our commentary on the latter portion of Galatians chapter 3, we presented the mathematical possibility that with each couple having seven children, the population can grow to 1.3 million in the eighth generation. The same mathematics being applied to Seth, who was only one man rather than the 75 people who had accompanied Jacob, would demonstrate that the population of the children of Adam could easily have been at least 150,000 by the time of Noah, and was perhaps several times more than that. But it was not necessarily large enough to force any of them to move beyond the bounds of the land which they occupied, as the Mesopotamian plain is capable of supporting tens of millions of people.

Since the family of Noah was located in lower Mesopotamia after the flood, which is apparent in Genesis chapters 10 and 11, and since there is no indication of any arduous journey on their part after the floodwaters had abated, it may be rationally deduced that the area of the flood and the location where the ark had landed were also within reasonable distance of lower Mesopotamia, and if it were not actually there that the flood had occurred, it must have been in some nearby area.

But we do not make these assertions in reference to Mesopotamia because we would insist that the flood must have been there. Rather, because according to the Genesis narrative it is the most likely candidate for the location of the flood, we only hope to demonstrate how it could be possible, and how a local flood would have killed up to what may have been a million people. Being caught in a low-lying area in even just a few feet of water would eventually be lethal as travel would become extremely difficult, and the continually rising water would have made it virtually impossible to escape fatigue and drowning. It must also be noted that there is no way that men other than Noah would have known to prepare for such a calamity.

So what we read next is an inevitable outcome:

21 And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: 22 All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.

Now the text virtually repeats itself again, using slightly different terms, which is evidently for emphasis:

23 And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark. 24 And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.

In the opening clause of verse 23, the Hebrew text has a form of the verb for destroyed which should have been rendered as “he destroyed”, in reference to God. After a hundred and fifty days, only the highlands had emerged from the waters, which we see in Genesis 8:4 where we read that “… the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.” However it would be another seven months after that before the waters completely abated and the land was dried, according to that same chapter.

This is the end of sinners, and according to the words of Christ Himself, it is the end which sinners may expect once again today. In the days of Noah, men were race-mixing with the Nephilim, or at least, allowing their daughters to race-mix in that manner, and it also seems that even the animals had been corrupted in a similar manner. Now today, for the first time in history since Noah, men are once again permitting their daughters to intermingle and commit fornication with other races on a widespread scale, and both animals and plants are being hybridised or genetically modified in large numbers.

In reference to this Yahshua Christ had said, as it is recorded in Matthew chapter 24: “24:37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. 38 For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, 39 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”

But in the end, as it is also promised in the Enoch literature, all the bastards shall also be exterminated in the Lake of Fire, as Christ Himself had explained of the goat nations in the parable of the sheep and the goats recorded in Matthew chapter 25. So, for example, in the Enoch literature of the Dead Sea Scrolls, in the scroll labeled 4Q204, we read: “Exterminate all the spirits of the bastards and the sons of the Watchers”, and this certainly seems to have been speaking prophetically because they were not entirely destroyed in the flood of Noah. Then, in Revelation chapter 2, in the message to the church at Thyatira, we read in part: “20 Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. 21 And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not. 22 Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds. 23 And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works.” The race-mixers were given according to their works here in Genesis chapter 7.

Ostensibly, Yahweh God destroyed the children of Adam in the days of Noah primarily because they were race-mixing, and now, as it is in the days of Noah, Christ will kill the children of fornicators because they are also products of race-mixing. Since no bastard shall enter into the congregation of Yahweh, which is the law in Deuteronomy chapter 23, then no bastard is written into the Book of Life, and is instead destined for the Lake of Fire of Revelation chapter 20. Then from another aspect we see that Noah was perfect in his race, and certain of the ancients, those who wrote the Genesis Apocryphon as well as the much older Book of Noah, perceived that to mean that Noah was so white in his appearance that even his parents thought he was a child of heaven. So to be that white is how they had interpreted the phrase which the King James Version translates as “perfect in his generations”.

So the flood of Noah is also an allegory for today, and the reasons why the children of Adam had faced death in the days of Noah are the same reasons why Christians face tribulation and the death of their own children in the Revelation of Yahshua Christ. However even if the circumstances of the days of Noah are the same as those of the anticipated return of Christ, the method of punishment is not the same. So we read, in 2 Peter chapter 3: “4 … Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. 5 For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: 6 Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: 7 But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. 8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the LORD as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 9 The LORD is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. 10 But the day of the LORD [which is the anticipated return of Christ] will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. 11 Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, 12 Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? 13 Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.”

In spite of Peter’s words, which may or may not have been meant to be interpreted literally, after Isaiah chapters 65 and 66, and Revelation chapters 21 and 22, the new heavens and earth are not necessarily a new physical creation, but rather, a renewed system of Godly government and society arranged according to the laws of Yahweh. Neither is the destroying fire necessarily literal, but rather represents Christ and those who are with Him at his return, along with those who heed the call to come out of Babylon as He is about to return. But in any event, as Noah waited a hundred years, patiently building his ark while awaiting the deliverance of Yahweh from a sinful world, that also stands as an example to us today, as we also anticipate the end of sinners. We should all endeavor to be like Noah in the midst of a near-completely corrupted world.