Noah

Bear with me, please.  Our local Christian radio station gave what I would consider to be a glowing endorsement of the movie Noah, which is now in theatres.  They did so based primarily on the idea that this would be a good way to start a conversation about the Word of God.  Director Darren Aronofsky called his movie “the least biblical biblical film ever made,” The Telegraph reported.   OK.  Let us begin here.  This movie is not a bad movie.  But it follows the biblical account so loosely that it is fair to say the only thing that ties the two is the occurrence of a flood that destroys the entire population of the earth except for those humans and animals aboard the ark, and a character named Noah.  The filming is impressive.  The story line is interesting.  But it's not God's story.  It's not Noah - not God's Noah anyway.  It's not God's intent, not his heart, not his purpose, not his redemption.  It's the director's own story, and has virtually nothing to do with the account in Genesis.  If you are not tied to that account, if you don't care what is done with it, this movie will be OK for you.  If you are, or if you go to this movie expecting to have a launching point to discuss the actual event per scripture, you will be starting from scratch, and the majority of your conversation will be pointing out what was wrong.

I'll just post the actual text, from the book of Genesis, chapters 6-9, though by his own admission, the director was not making any attempt to follow it, and in almost all cases attempts to portray people and events are exactly the opposite.  The worst aspect in my opinion?  Nephilim as rock monsters.  

Wickedness in the World

When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.

The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

Noah and the Flood

This is the account of Noah and his family.

Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God. Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.

Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high. Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit high all around.  Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks. I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you. You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.”

Noah did everything just as God commanded him.

The Lord then said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation.  Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth. Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.”

And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him.

Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth. And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah. And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth.

In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.

On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark. They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings. Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark. The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. Then the Lord shut him in.

For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered.  The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits.  Every living thing that moved on land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind.  Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died.  Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth.Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.

The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.

But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down,and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.

After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.

By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry.

Then God said to Noah, “Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground—so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it.”

So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on land—came out of the ark, one kind after another.

Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

22 “As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.”

God’s Covenant With Noah

Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.  The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands.  Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.

“But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being. 

“Whoever sheds human blood,
    by humans shall their blood be shed;
for in the image of God
    has God made mankind.

As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it.”

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him:  “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth.  I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come:  I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds,  I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”

So God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.”

The Laughing Thief

Elijah is the laughing thief!  I noticed recently that his perfectly fine laugh, which I love very much, had vanished!  It was replaced by a neighbor kid's laugh.  Chris tells me that this kind of assimilation is normal, that kids tend to act like their friends.  As a person with a ridiculously loud laugh that does not appear to take on the nature of anybody else's, I am baffled.  And sad.  I hope his laugh will return.  I tried prompting him for a while, pointing out when he was using his friend's laugh and not his own, but nothing worked.

Recently I started reading again.  This, after more than a decade of reading almost nothing but textbooks.  I personally do not find textbooks all that interesting to read.  I actually think they damaged the part of me that loved to read - drove it deep inside where it took years to emerge again.  In November, I started reading again.  One of the series I started was the Percy Jackson books by Rick Riordan.  Now don't judge me too harshly for reading a middle-school series! They are super quick reads, and are very clever.  If you've seen the movies and not read these books, you're doing it wrong.  I have yet to encounter a movie that was better than the book it was based on, but these movies are especially horrible deviations.  You'll want to start with The Lightning Thief if you decide to read these.

Here are some grown up books that I really liked as well.  :)






Lynn Austin's series Chronicles of the Kings was fabulous.  These books begin when Hezekiah was a small boy, and progress in five volumes through the redemption of King Manasseh.  These books are based on scripture and are historically accurate as far as customs of the times, so if you have previously skimmed over the evil that is warned against in the Old Testament regarding child sacrifice and idolatry, you will encounter it here, and it is not observed from a distance.  Just a warning.








The next one was also great - it's basically the Bible in story form.  It's called "The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel" by Walter Wangerin, Jr.  While this is a novelization, it sticks very close to the scriptural account.  This book will take the events from the calling of Abram through Jesus and put them in order for you in story form.  It's very well done and very easy to understand.







The final series I'll tell you about is Shannara by Terry Brooks.   I love Tolkien, and all things fantasy, so Chris recommended this series to me.  I started with "The Sword of Shannara" and am currently reading my tenth book in this series.  I love them.  If you like fantasy, check them out!  The allegories in this book are very interesting, and it is continually clever writing and characters.







I've read some other books, but I don't believe they are worth mentioning.  I'm not sure that I'd recommend them, anyway.  If you stumble upon them, it won't be because I directed you there!