All of history pivots in Genesis 7 & 8. The flood is not simply the end of what was before. It is also the beginning of something very new. Such a pivot may be seen illustrated by a simple number exercise, a study in symmetry.
We see a chiastic structure of 7-40-150::150-40-7. It’s a menorah pattern! It balances the advance of the waters and their retreat, the destruction and the revival, the punishment and the recovery. The central stalk is God’s pass over, where He remembers Noah and the ark and saves them from the surrounding floodwaters.
As the floodwaters subside to reveal mountaintops, please understand that this is not a return to the old world. No! It is the revealing of a new creation! We’re beginning again. Think of the ark as a re-imagined Garden of Eden. The ark encapsulates man and all the living creatures which once dwelled with man in the Garden. The ark brings the ol’ gang back together again. It’s like a family reunion. When Noah and his family emerge from the ark, they are like the four rivers that emerge from Eden to water the earth. They are the four couples who spread out to populate the world. At the moment they step off the ark, history begins again. We’re witnessing the second beginning of human history in a new creation. And if we take the time to see it, what we’ll discover is that the second beginning is a reflection of the first beginning. By that I mean we will see the same elements in both accounts. Let’s unpack the parallels, those between the story of creation and the story of re-creation.
In Genesis 1, the Spirit of God is upon the water. In Genesis 8, God causes a spirit to pass over the earth which has returned to water. (By the way, “spirit” and “wind” are the same word in Hebrew: ruach). Next in Genesis 8, the waters above and below are stopped, a clear parallel to the division of waters on Day 2. Day 3 of creation tells of the exposure of dry land and the creation of plants, represented in Genesis 8 by the exposure of dry land and the olive branch. Day 4 is characterized by the luminaries which mark signs and seasons, seen again in Genesis 8:22 as God pronounces day and night, heat and cold, summer and winter. Day 5 gives us the birds of the air, and of course we have Noah releasing various birds into the air. And as Noah steps off the ark and surveys a new world, I can’t help but be reminded of Day 6, man’s first day on earth with the animals. I picture Noah standing at the foot of the ramp leading down from the ark, and the animals passing by him one by one as they make their exit. This is the second sort of animal parade in history. In the first one, man had named the animals. In the second one, man had saved them.
Standing on a new earth under a warm sun, Noah hears the voice of God. God instructs Noah in a manner that is parallel, if not identical, to the way He instructed Adam earlier in Genesis. Again we hear the command to be fruitful and multiply. Again we are told that man is made in God’s image. Then, just as Adam was given instructions pertaining to food, so too Noah is given instructions pertaining to food.
As Genesis 8 closes, Noah, fresh off the boat, builds an altar and brings an offering to the Lord. We can’t read over this because it is among the most beautiful moments in Scripture. For a whole year Noah has had to devote all his energy to saving the animals, and yet now, immediately after their deliverance, he brings them as an offering! And as he builds the altar, we have to imagine him stacking stones smoothed and shaped by the floodwaters. Offering every pure animal on this altar, let us note that this offering is of significance for world history. As Rabbi Hirsch explains, “It is evident from many passages in Scripture that an altar of stone is a manmade structure through which the earth, as it were, ascends Heavenward. We are commanded to build the altar. It must not stand upon arches or pillars. It must be in direct contact with the ground, a continuum, as it were, of the earth. For the altar symbolizes the elevation of the earth to God through the actions of man. The constructed altar symbolizes man elevating himself above nature and exalting himself through creativity to the level of free man, so as to ascend from there to God. Thus, by building an altar to God on the earth newly restored to Him, Noah consecrated the whole world and made it a sanctuary. There, the deeds of man will join stone to stone, until the entire earth becomes God’s consecrated mountain.”
What a shift! From Genesis 6 where the whole earth was corrupt in God’s sight and filled with violence . . . to the end of Genesis 8, where the whole earth has been renewed and rededicated, made right and begun again. You can see why the flood is as much a prologue as it is a conclusion! And amazingly, the connections don’t stop here! The parallels continue into Genesis 9. Those parallels can be illustrated as follows:
