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. Those identity markers cease to exist. His entire world has been swept away. He has to make sense of himself without so much as a hobby or a hometown.
To relate this to modern times, it would be like suddenly finding yourself in a world without sports, restaurants, pop culture. Apple computers? No such thing. Nike shoes? No such thing. Hollywood? Starbucks? The Superbowl? Your grandkids are scratching their heads.
Without a culture to contextualize your life, who are you?
Noah is battling seasickness and asking himself this very question. He is forced to make sense of himself in a brand new way. The world that created him has been stripped away. What remains––his character, his family, his faithfulness, his experiences––these constitute the only identity he has left.
Without as single male contemporary, Noah certainly feels lonely! He misses the company of an older person. No matter how much he appreciates God’s deliverance, no matter how much he loves watching his kids have more kids, in certain respects his heart remains on the other side of the flood. Noah 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 refers to Job’s experience as a storm.) Job had an identity crisis of his own. Even after all things are restored to him (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 beforehand, those who died when a literal storm killed them (Job 1:18-19). Job mourns them even after God blesses him in the latter part of his life.
In a similiar way, I have to think Noah’s heart breaks when remembers his former life. A large part 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 is of the old world more than he is the new one. To see this, we have to set two lineages side by side.
First look at Shem’s lineage in Genesis 10. These are those living after the flood.
Now read the lineage of those living before the flood (Genesis 5). You’ll notice the language is different:
Now we spotlight Noah. Specifically, look at the two verses that bookend his life (Genesis 5:32 & Genesis 9:28-29). Bringing these verses 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.
Pulling out the middle section, we find that Noah’s life is encapsulated by language that resembles those who came before the flood.
Why?
Because Noah is of the old world. Unlike his sons, he is a man of the past. He bridges humanity to the future, yes, but most of his life experience remains on the other side of the flood. Unlike his sons, he will, in large part, remain a foreigner in this new world.
Contrast Noah to his three sons. From an early age, his sons grew up expecting a new beginning. Their short time in the old world was spent preparing for the new one. Their minds were always looking forward. But Noah? He spent 600 years in the old world! And 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. So naturally, Noah is attached to the older generations more than the newer. The old man Noah belongs with his fathers on the other side of the flood, and so the Torah, poetically, uses language that attaches him to the lineage of Adam and Seth. But his kids, living most their life after the flood, go on to populate a new world, knowing a rhythm different than that of Noah and his fathers.
