To recap from the previous post: The Hebrew theologians looked at the world as it was in the aftermath of the destruction of all they knew and loved, and realized that violence was, at the least, endemic in human society; and that its roots can be found in the primeval past. The impulse to kill a perceived rival—even a brother—is a common human response to differences of opinion. From the earliest times stronger men bullied and dominated other men, and banded together to bully and dominate other groups of men; the pattern of a strong man of influence declaring himself the ruler over the others is seen in tribe, city, and nation. It seems assumed that it is normal for the strongest to force control over those around them—to seek to dominate all others, and to force them to obedience and slavery. Thus the strong man, the warrior, is most valued by society for the ability to bully, to plunder, and to kill for his own community’s prosperity.
This, the theologians of Genesis 1-11 saw. The Flood Narrative begins with a starkly pessimistic statement: ‘God saw that the wickedness of men multiplied on the earth, and that every intention of the human heart was only evil continually’ (6:5). That word ‘intention’ stands in counterpoint to Gen 2:7—the basic sense of the word yester/yatsar is ‘form’. ‘The Lord God formed the human out of the ground…’. After Eden the human yester becomes malformed by persistent abuse.
So, God decides the only solution to this corrupt and violent society is to return the earth to the primordial formlessness that was ‘in the beginning’, before he began to create. The prophet Jeremiah draws a helpful picture of this very action as he watches a potter forming clay into vessels for food and drink. “I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him … Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel” (Jer 18:3-4,6). This is a promise of re-formation of the malformed.
Two matters to note by the end of the Flood story. One, there is one family of humanity that survives for the new beginning, ‘Noah finds grace’. Two, the conclusion is not a vision of peace and human kindness, as might be expected. Rather than ‘they lived happily ever after’, the tone is nearly as stark as the beginning of the story: “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth” (Gen 8:21). This leaves one asking, why go through all the bother of de-creation for nothing to change afterwards?
There is no neat answer to this, and it is not my purpose here to offer a nuanced response. I will just point to a subtlety of the narrative itself found in verse 21. Note the difference at the end; in 6:5, the formation of the human heart is ‘only evil continually’. Here, the depravity is not total; ‘from youth’ is a way of saying ‘from the age of moral responsibility’.
Which leads to our first note in the paragraph above: Noah found favour. We will come back to this.
No comments:
Post a Comment