The Descendants of Noah
The Descendants of Noah
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Blameless
These are the descendants of Noah, a righteous man who was blameless among the people of his generation and who walked with God:
Noah fathered three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
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The story of Adam’s descendants ends with God’s decision to wipe them out because of how wicked they had all become. Only one brief mention of Noah offers a glimmer of hope. But in Genesis 6:9, the emphasis shifts to focus on Noah and his family, while the fate of the rest of humanity fades into the background.
The story of Noah’s descendants is the fourth of the twelve major sections of Genesis.1 It is the only one in which the titular patriarch plays a primary role. All the others contain either a genealogy of the patriarch’s descendants or a story in which the primary actors are his children. But despite his important role, the story of Noah’s descendants is not about Noah. Nor is it about the destruction of the rest of Adam’s descendants. The flood story is about Noah’s descendants and how his line, the line of the promised offspring, survived.
Noah’s importance in a story about his descendants highlights his vital role in their survival. Noah’s line—and only Noah’s line—survived the flood because of Noah’s obedient faith. Genesis doesn’t say anything about Noah’s sons being righteous and actually portrays Ham in a very negative light. But God saved them for Noah’s sake because he alone was blameless for the atrocities that had filled the earth with injustice.
Ruined
Now the earth stood ruined before God. It was filled with injustice. God saw the earth and how thoroughly ruined it was because of the ruined behavior of all the creatures on the earth. So God said to Noah, “I have decided to bring an end to all creatures because they have filled the earth with injustice. Therefore, I will ruin them along with the earth!”
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Genesis 6:11–13 portrays a court scene in which the earth itself stands trial before the divine Judge. God once again surveyed his creation, as he had at end of the sixth day.2 But what was once “very good” had become “thoroughly ruined.” The Hebrew verb shahath (“to ruin, destroy”) occurs four times just in these three verses. The repetition emphasizes the fact that the flood did not destroy the earth. Sin already had. The spread of sin had reached to every creature on earth and had ruined God’s perfect creation.
Having examined the evidence, the Judge pronounced his verdict and informed his human representative of his decision. He decreed that those who had ruined the earth would themselves be ruined along with it. Ever since the fall, the situation had continually grown worse and worse, and the time for punishment had come. God determined to cleanse the earth, and righteous Noah needed to know about it.
Noah’s Ship
“Make yourself a ship of cypress wood, divide it into stalls, and coat it with pitch inside and out. Make the ship three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide, and thirty cubits high. Make a roof for it, and set it a cubit above the top of the walls. Put the door of the ship on one side, and make three decks inside of it.”
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God forewarned Noah about the coming judgment and gave him clear instructions on how to save himself and his family. If Noah did not want to be swept away with the wicked, he would have to build a tevah. This word describes both the large ship that saved Noah and his family and the small basket that saved baby Moses but occurs nowhere else in the Bible.3 These two watertight, floating vessels contained precious cargo, but neither had any kind of steering mechanism.
Noah’s ship, traditionally called the ark, had three long decks, each divided into stalls (literally “nests”) for the different kinds of animals. It had a door in one side and an opening between the top of the wall and the roof to let in light and air (a common construction technique in tropical climates). Noah made it out of wood and sealed it with pitch. The identity of the tree (called gopher in Hebrew) is uncertain, but cypress wood was commonly used to build boats in the ancient Near East.4
The exact size of the ship is also uncertain. A cubit is the length of a person’s forearm from elbow to fingertip. Much later, it was standardized to about eighteen inches, based on the size of the average man. This would make the ship 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high (15 feet for each of the three decks). But the actual size of Noah’s ship probably depends on how tall Noah was. Regardless, it would have been more than big enough to draw the attention of everyone in the vicinity.
Covenant
“Then I will cover the earth with floodwater to ruin every creature under the sky that has the breath of life in it. Everything on the earth will die. But I will confirm my covenant with you. You will enter the ship with your sons, your wife, and your daughters-in-law.”
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Having commanded Noah to build a ship, God proceeded to explain why. For the third time, he decreed his intention to wipe out humanity. But for the first time, he revealed how: he would send a catastrophic flood that would drown every creature that breathes air. But Noah and his family, along with a small segment of all creation, would survive by boarding the ship.
God called his promise to save Noah and his family “my covenant with you,” a covenant he would confirm after Noah built the ship.5 This is the first explicit reference to the important biblical concept of covenant relationships.
A covenant is a treaty between two parties that usually involves commitments from both and consequences should either prove unfaithful. In this case, God’s promise of salvation was conditioned on Noah’s willingness to build the ship. Should Noah refuse to keep his end, he would face the same fate as the rest of humanity.
Saving Creation
“As for all living things, you are to take male and female pairs of every creature into the ship so they remain alive. Pairs of every kind of bird, every kind of animal, and every kind of creature that glides along the ground will come to you to remain alive. Gather all kinds of food, whatever you need so that you and the animals will have food.”
God’s merciful salvation did not end with Noah and his family. Through Noah, it extended to all creation. The three categories of animals listed in Genesis 6:20 recall those used in the creation account.6 Only the fish and other aquatic animals are missing. But all the creatures who could not survive long in water would come to Noah in male and female pairs. Noah would then lead them onto the ship, where they would find salvation alongside the remnant of humanity, who would also board the ship in male and female pairs. In preparation, Noah would have to gather enough food to feed them all.
Noah’s actions in rescuing the land animals from certain death provide a glimpse into God’s original intention for humanity as rulers of the earth. The rest of humanity had ruined creation by pursuing their own evil desires, but Noah saved creation by obeying God’s commands. Rebellious humanity brings death to the earth. Obedient humanity brings life.
Obedience
Noah obeyed. He did everything exactly the way God had commanded him.
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In one short verse, Genesis summarizes the entire construction of the ship, which must have taken years. It gives no further details because none are needed. Only Noah’s obedience mattered. He took God’s warning seriously and made all the necessary preparations in order to save his family.
Genesis 6:9 makes it clear that Noah was a righteous man, innocent of the wickedness and violence that pervaded humanity. However, that innocence alone did not save him. He still could have refused to obey or caved under the ridicule that certainly came his way when his neighbors inevitably noticed the enormous construction site in his yard. Then he would have died, innocent but faithless. But Noah obeyed.
Hebrews 11:7 lists Noah among the heroes of faith not because of his righteousness but because “he heeded God’s warning about events yet unseen.” He proved his faith by obeying the command without any evidence of an impending flood other than God’s word. In this way, he condemned his faithless generation and gained a different kind of righteousness, “the righteousness based on faith.”
Righteousness based on good deeds has never been a means of salvation for God’s people. But neither can faith without obedience save because that isn’t faith at all.7 Faith and obedience are not polar opposites but two sides of the same coin. Noah and his family survived because Noah alone had enough faith to obey a command that sounded like lunacy.
- See The Families of Genesis.
- Genesis 1:31.
- Barnwell and Kuhn, Notes on Genesis 1:1–11:26, Gen. 6:14a; Hamilton, Book of Genesis: Chapters 18–50, 280; Reyburn and Fry, Handbook on Genesis, 157; Sailhamer, “Genesis,” 119; Wenham, Genesis 1–15, 172; see also Exodus 2:3, 5. The "ark" of the covenant translates a different Hebrew word.
- Sailhamer, “Genesis,” 119–120; Walton et al., Bible Background Commentary, Genesis 6:14.
- See The Covenant Confirmed.
- Genesis 1:21, 24–26; 2:19–20.
- See James 2:14–17.