The two floods of Genesis

We’re told in the book of Genesis how the Lord unleashed a Flood upon the earth.
In fact, if we look closely, there were two floods, one after the other.

The first Flood

The first Flood is the flood of waters.
“The fountains of the great deep burst forth and the windows of the heavens were opened”- ch7 v11

The details of the event are not important.
I’m interested in the Lord’s motives for doing what he does.
We can see two sets of purposes governing his actions.

On the one hand, he wants to remove the presence of Sin from the world.
The Lord sees that “the wickedness of man is great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart is only evil continuously” (ch6 v5).
One of the symptoms of the corrupted world is that the earth is “filled with violence”.
Therefore the Lord is “sorry that he made man upon the earth”, and determines to make an end of them, to blot them out.

On the other hand, he wants to keep the presence of humanity in the world.
Noah has found favour in his eyes.
This makes his willingness to “blot out” the human race less complete.
He tells Noah to build an ark so that he can save himself and his family.
He promises to establish a covenant with Noah, and after the Flood is over he keeps that promise.

The Lord is facing a dilemma which goes back to the opening chapters of Genesis.
He established the human race in the world, under himself, but the relationship had broken down.
They set their own wills against his, deciding for themselves what was right and what was wrong.
They fell away into Sin and disobedience.
The natural consequence is the violence which now fills the world, as they continue to set their wills against each other.
The tree of what knowledge?.
The story of Cain and Babel

The premise running through the Bible is that God cannot be reconciled with Sin.
That accounts for his first purpose in the Flood.
But as long as Sin remains part of human life, the Lord’s two purposes are logically incompatible.
If Sin is to be removed outright, then the human race must be removed outright.
If the human race is allowed to remain, then Sin must be allowed to remain.

The story of the Flood shows that God is unwilling to take the first option.
In a pattern which becomes familiar in the Old Testament, he threatens the ultimate recourse and then draws back.

For the moment, this means that he’s obliged to accept the second option.
The drastic action of the Flood has not succeeded in removing Sin from the world, as becomes clear from the sequel.
God admits as much; his reason for promising not to repeat this Flood is that “the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (ch8 v21), which is much the same reason as he gave for sending the Flood in the first place.
When the reason for doing something becomes a reason for leaving it alone, that’s an admission of defeat, if only a temporary defeat.
Perhaps he’d better think it out again.

If he wants to rebuild his relationship with humanity, the first requirement must be to find some way of detaching them from Sin.

The second Flood

The second flood is the flood of Abraham’s children.

God made a special calling of Abraham, taking him away from his father’s family.
He promised him that his descendants would be a great nation- ch2 vv1-2
More than that, he promised that they would be a multitude of nations- ch17 v4
More than that, he promised that that their number would match the quantity of dust on the earth- ch13 v16
More than that, he promised that their number would equal the number of stars in the sky- ch15 v5
The promise has been fulfilled.
If we allow Paul’s definition, that the children of Abraham are those who share his faith in God, then the number is even greater.

What was the purpose of this flood?
The key statement is the promise of a covenant;
“I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you”- ch17 v7
In other words, they will be held secure in a permanent relation with God.
The rest of the Bible is the story of that relationship.

I’ve already touched on the point that the old relationship cannot be restored without doing something about Sin, bringing man’s will back into alignment with God’s will.
Therefore the Biblical story of the relation between God and his people is constantly addressing the problem of Sin and the ways of dealing with it..

There is the method of sacrifice- God announces the conditions on which he is prepared to disregard the existence of Sin.
There is the method of Law- God’s people try to commit themselves to following God’s will more consciously.
There is the Christian approach, dependent upon One whose will has never been out of alignment with his Father’s will. This approach combines features from both the other two.
But all of them, one way or another, involve being part of the flood of Abraham’s children, unleashed upon the world from the time of the twelfth chapter of Genesis.

Thus the purpose of the second Flood is to redeem the failure of the first Flood.
It is to find a way to separate man from Sin, so that God and man can be reconciled.

Therefore the Lord isTherefore the Lord is “sorry that he made man upon the earth”, and determines to make an end of them, to blot them out. , and determines to make an end of them, to blot them out.

If your sorry you did something, that to me means you made a mistake in the past and are acknowledging it.

God can make mistakes that he's sorry for? Isn't he perfect?

I am confused.

I appreciate you taking the time to think about this so thoroughly, but why? What "God" would "make" humans with knowledge, feelings, urges just to turn around and kill them all...except for Noah of course? Something so powerful that can create a vast universe takes the time to be saddened and disappointed in "his" own doing? It's just one big trick. You put an interesting tree, with an interesting apple, with a talking snake and tell Adam and Eve to not touch it....what did "he" expect them to do? Sounds to me "God" KNEW it was going to happened, after all he created everything....So "he" gave himself a justification for mass murder. Babies are innocent in "God's" eyes but he drowned them all. Needless to say I'm not going to believe in a "God" who's a mass murdering hypocritical masochist.

a reply to: mwood
It is possible to do something that somebody else makes bad, and dislike the outcome.
You can confuse yourself unintentionally by picking up on tiny details of meaning and misusing them.

a reply to: InfinityandBeyond
He would make humans with feelings because he wants them to be there.
The point of the threat to get rid of them is to demonstrate just how seriously he does not want sin to be there.
Solving that dilemma is the theme of the rest of the Bible.

a reply to: InfinityandBeyond

Every parent does this with their child and must do this with their child if they want a child who becomes fulfilled in the course of time. The risk is that you may see your child make mistakes, sometimes grave ones, but every child has to be free to make those mistakes eventually or they will never have the chance to mature and realize the fullness of their potential.

a reply to: DISRAELI

Greetings-

Do You know of Enoch, Noah's grandpa? One will be along to explain...

namaste

a reply to: JimNasium
Great-grandfather.
According to Genesis, he wasn't present at the time of the flood.

God is perfect and made us with freewill to decide our own actions. If God had made us without freewill, we would not be man more like robots with predetermined functions.

Those that say that God make mistakes are not looking at this the right way, however you were made to look at it the wrong way if you want to.

The book of Enoch explains why the flood took place. Most of humanitys DNA was soiled or mixed imho and Noah was pure of heart and still human. He didnt join in on the mixing of bloods and what sounds like todays transhumanism movement.

I fear we heading down that road again. Indeed, nothing new under the sun. This is what is prophesied.

a reply to: DISRAELI

The answer to the second flood in your OP is what it says in chapter 3 of 1 Peter.

1 Peter 3

He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. 19 After being made alive,[d] he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits— 20 to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, 21 and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God.[e] It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand—with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.

He was put to death in the body, but made alive in the Spirit. After that, he went to preach to the imprisoned spirits. The spirits that sinned in Noah's day are then the animals placed in the ark when Adam becomes the last Adam (Christ). The Ark is Earth and baptism is the flood of water. Notice what he then says.

"this water symbolizes baptism that not saves you also..."

In John 3, Jesus says, "you MUST be born again." In 1 Kings 17, Elijah raises the widow woman's son.

17 Now Elijah the Tishbite, from Tishbe[a] in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word.”

Dew represents the small drops of water that fall on the land, then rise back up and are distilled. We are dew.

Notice what Elijah does with the son later in the chapter. He takes him up to his chamber, then restores his life. He takes him down, then puts him in the bosom of the mother. In Latin, mother is Mater / Matrix. In Hebrew, mother is Aleph (Strong) Mem (Water). Read my thread on this subject: Letters making Word

Later, Elijah is John the Baptist. How did John describe escaping the coming judgment? Baptism. Jesus was the firstfruits of those who would rise AGAIN into the waters of reality. This IS resurrection from the dead.

Matthew 3

7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8 Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. 9 And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 10 The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

11 “I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with[c] the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

There are four baptisms in scripture. Each are described in parables like the flood. Earth (Adam), Water (Noah / Elijah), Air (Word), Fire (Trials).

It's the sequence of birth and rebirth that allows a person to overcome. Each life gives a new opportunity to rise to new life. Eventually, judgment.

a reply to: DISRAELI

lol, rectification, never gonna happen. I'll never flutter around a throne singing the Kodesh. Total annihilation is his only option, and total independence is mine.

a reply to: Nechash
The Bible has never said that reconciliation would be universal, though some modern people have tried to twist it that way.
The assumption that some people would exclude themselves has always been built into the teaching.

a reply to: AlephBet
I covered the 1 Peter and 2 Peter references to the Flood in a different thread.

In any case, calling Abraham's children a "Flood" was just a way of highlighting the connection between the calling of Abraham and the previous event.

a reply to: DISRAELI

I never saw it as two flood's you now have me thinking, thank you for this.

I'm sorry for World War Two.

I didn't do it, and I wouldn't change the outcome if I could; but I'm still sorry it happened.

a reply to: tovenar
Thank you for that comment addressing mwood's quibble.
A very good illustration.

N.B. The thread (previously mentioned) which covers the New Testament references to the Flood is;
Noah the eighth