The Noah story is odd. In the imagination of children’s storybooks, it is about happy animals two by two; but if we read it in scripture we find it is actually a story about God deciding to kill everyone because people were so corrupt: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.So the Lord said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them’ ” (Genesis 6:5-7).
In the midst of all this we find Noah, who found favor with God (6:8); he was “a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God” (6:9). Apparently the strategy is, if we wipe out everyone else (6:13) and start over with the family of this one righteous man (6:18), that will restore things to the way they’re supposed to be. But the biblical text goes on to show us that this plan does not work. We read about Noah and his family building the ark, gathering the animals, and weathering the storm – while all the sinners get killed in the flood – but then we find out that there were still sinners stepping off of the ark.
Then Noah drinks himself into a stupor, and ends up passed out naked in his tent (9:20-21); his son Ham sees him like this, and tells his brothers. How will Noah deal with this situation? He could repent for his foolishness: that would be a model worthy of our emulation. But Noah does not do that. He could act like it’s Ham’s fault, and curse at him; that wouldn’t be pretty, but we’ve all known people who would rather blame others than admit that they did something stupid. But Noah does not do that, either. The story tells us that Noah uttered an eternal curse on Ham’s descendants. Rather than taking responsibility for his own actions, rather than dealing with a temporary embarrassment, Noah’s self-righteousness escalates the situation into a down-the-generations enmity between peoples: “Cursed be Canaan; lowest of slaves shall he be to his brothers” (9:25).
What we see in the flood story, then, is something like a parable showing that the wipe-it-all-away-and-start-over strategy doesn’t work: you had sinners before, and you’ve still got sinners afterwards.
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We are not good at penitence, O Lord. We get embarrassed, and like Noah we are ready to escalate the consequences of our own bad behavior onto others, many times over. Turn our hearts away from
our self-righteousness and back toward you, in humble repentance.
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