The Old Man Noah

I’ve heard it said that the flood is, at its core, a story of identity crisis. Typically when people get to know you, they get to know you by your interests, your friends, the places you go and the things you do. But imagine Noah aboard the ark on his knees before the Lord. He has none of that anymore. His entire world has been swept away. He has to make sense of himself without so much as a hobby.

To relate this to modern times, it would be like you suddenly finding yourself in a world without sports, without restaurants, without pop culture. Apple computers? No such thing. Nike? No such thing. Hollywood? No such thing. Your hometown? It doesn’t exist anymore. Starbucks? Coffee is a thing of the past. The Superbowl? None of your grandkids have heard of it. 

In a world without context, who are you? 

Noah is battling sea sickness and asking himself this very question. He is forced to understand himself as God sees him. The surrounding culture has been stripped away. What remains––his heart, his character, his family, his faithfulness––makes up his identity before the Lord.

Identity remains an issue even after the flood. Coming off the ark and starting again, Noah is an old man in a new world. The next-to-oldest male is 500 years younger than him. Beyond his immediate family, every other person in the world is at least 600 years younger than him! Having no contemporaries, no friends who can even begin to relate to him in his old age, certainly he feels lonely! And so he misses the fathers. His misses the company of an older person. No matter how much he appreciates God’s deliverance, and no matter how much he enjoys watching his sons have sons and daughters of their own, in certain respects his heart remains on the other side of the flood. He spent the majority of his life there, after all. 

I have to relate this to Job. Job also lost his whole world in a storm. (Job 38:1 literally refers to Job’s experience as a storm.) Job had an identity crisis of his own. (Job lost his kids, whereas Noah did not. But Noah lost his friends, whereas Job did not. They both weathered the storm with their wives.) What we see in the story of Job is that, even after all things are restored to Job (Job 42:10), God never takes away the pain of his loss. Job still has to grieve his previous life. We read that “the Lord blesses the latter part of Job’s life more than the former part” (Job 42:12) and that Job goes on to have “seven sons and three daughters” (Job 42:13). Nevertheless, Job never forgets the children he had at first, those who died when a storm blew in and killed them (Job 1:18-19). Job remembers them and longs for their presence even after God blesses him in the latter part of his life. And so, too, Noah’s heart breaks when remembers his former life. I can’t help but think a large portion of him died right along with the others.

The Torah does an interesting thing with Noah. It groups him with his fathers, as if to suggest Noah belongs to the old world more than he does to the new world. To see this, we have to set two lineages side by side. First look at Shem’s lineage in Genesis 10, and keep in mind that these people represent “the new humanity,” those living after the flood.

Now that you have a sense for how it reads, compare it to Seth’s lineage back in Genesis 5. You’ll notice the rhythm is totally different. These are people living before the flood:

Now look at Noah. There are two verses that bookend his life (Genesis 5:32 & Genesis 9:28-29). Bringing those together, we read:

After Noah was 500 years old, he became the father of Shem, Ham and Japheth. After the flood Noah lived 350 years. Noah lived a total of 950 years, and then he died. 

You can see how the language corresponds to Seth’s lineage. It follows right along with the repetitious nature of Genesis 5. You just have to remove the events in the middle to see that Noah’s life is told in a manner exactly like those before him. Why is this, though?

It is because Noah is of the old world. Noah is different than his sons in this regard, because his sons belong to the new world. And if I may explain: Noah is certainly the patriarch of the new humanity, but even still, he is a foreigner to it. His ties to the old world make him unlike subsequent generations. And you’re thinking––weren’t Shem, Ham, and Japheth also of the old world? Because they were born prior to the flood as well. But you see, they grew up as dad was building the ark! They had known from an early age that a new beginning was coming soon. Their short time in the old world was spent preparing for the new world. Their hearts and their minds were always looking forward. But Noah? He spent 600 years in the old world! For much of his life, he knew nothing of a flood! For at least five centuries, the old world was the only world as far as Noah was concerned. And so it goes that Noah is attached to the older generations more than he is to the newer generations. The old man Noah belongs with his fathers on the other side of the flood. And so the Torah poetically groups him in with the lineage of Adam and Seth. And his kids living after the flood go forth in a new world, knowing a rhythm different than that of Noah and his fathers.