Genesis 9:8-17

Additional suggested texts: Psalms 19; 104:10-30; 148; Job 38-39

The lection from Genesis is the Priestly author’s conclusion to the flood narrative that begins at 6:1.  The Noahide covenant is the first in a series that will include the Ancestors (Abraham/Sarah et al.), the Exodus community (Sinai covenant), and the Davidic monarchy (2 Sam 7:11-17; Ps 89:3-4).  The beneficiaries of these covenants narrow increasingly from the whole world to a single dynasty.  Here the covenant is universal and unconditional: God makes the covenant “between me and the earth” (v 13), and the covenant applies to “all future generations” (v 12).  

God promises never to destroy the earth again by a flood.  The sign of the covenant is the rainbow, symbolizing God’s weapon.  Just as the rainbow comes at the end of a storm, so it is a sign of the end of God’s “arrows” of lightning, part of the weaponry of a storm deity (Ps 18:14; 77:17).   The great storm that destroyed all breathing things except the ark’s occupants is over. 

The story of Noah is a favorite for children, but the story raises some troubling adult questions about God and about the relationship between humans and other animals.  At first sight, there is an irony in our use of the story to talk about protecting the earth when the story portrays God as destroying the earth. Why did God destroy all breathing creatures, and not just those wicked humans?  Why should all the birds and bears and beetles have to die?  The answer seems to be hinted in 6:11-12.  A literal translation: “Now the earth had destroyed itself in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence.  And God saw that the earth had destroyed itself, that all flesh had destroyed its way on the earth.”  As a result, God vows to destroy “all flesh … along with the earth.”  Here there is no focus on humankind (contrast 6:5-7); “all flesh” has gone astray.  What could this mean?

There are two possibilities: the animals could have devoured plant life to the point of denuding the land (note what locusts can do!); or the animals could have eaten carrion or killed and eaten other animals (hence the “violence”), contrary to God’s way (Gen 1:30).¹ We cannot be sure, but it is clear that all breathing animals have joined with humankind in self-destruction that has engulfed the earth itself.  “All flesh” has somehow stepped beyond their natural limits in a way that is suicidal, ruining the elegant balance and symmetry of the creation that God pronounced as “very beautiful” (1:31, alternate translation).  Indeed, the introduction to the flood narrative (6:1-4) posed the same problem: “the sons of God” (heavenly beings) mated with human women to produce a race of giants, a miscegenation that threatens to transcend human finitude (cf. 3:4-5; 11:4).  In these primeval stories, humans consistently try to be superhuman rather than super humans.²  When God destroys the earth, therefore, God is simply completing a process that was already underway. 

Recognizing the mutual culpability of “all flesh” (note that sea creatures are not included!) is important if we want to understand the full ecological dimensions of the story.  To take the story literally or historically is to ruin it.  The story is a myth, strikingly similar to other flood stories of the ancient Near East.  Whether there could have been a time when humans and all animals were strict vegetarians is beside the point.  Rather, one meaning may be that over-consumption proved to be self-destruction.  Since it would take three Earths to provide for everyone the resources that North Americans use, there is an obvious lesson here!

If “all flesh” is at fault for the flood, it is also true that “all flesh” is a partner in the covenant.  In our passage, “all flesh” appears five times.  The Noahide covenant community is not just human; it includes all animals who are “with us” on the earth (v 10), “every living creature” (vv 10, 15, 16).  With such numerous repetitions, the author underscores the interdependence of all living things.  That interdependence (including plants) is demonstrated by the modern science of ecology as well as ancient religious stories.  To take one example, in the biblical worldview all creatures “have the same breath” because we are created by the breath of God (Eccles 3:19; Psalm 104:27-30).  From science, we know that we rely on the process of plant photosynthesis to provide us with oxygen, just as we provide them with carbon dioxide.  As one author says, “This exchange of gas is what the word spirit means.  Spirituality is essentially the act of breathing.”³  When we destroy a rainforest, we are cutting out part of the Earth’s lungs—and therefore our lungs.

Poet Mary Oliver points to our refusal to acknowledge the Noahide covenant community: “we are all / one family // but we love ourselves / best.”⁴  Those of us in the Christian community need to confess that such self-centeredness is rooted in our biblical tradition.  Boasting of our status as the “image of God” (Gen 1:27), we have declared ourselves the “measure of all things.”  Instead of seeing ourselves as stewards of God’s creation, we have acted as if we own the place.  We have acted as Master rather than Major-Domo.  We have “subdued” the earth (Gen 2:28) in ways that reflect the brutal connotations of that word (e.g. rape, warfare).  One need only look back to the preceding passage in Gen 9:1-7 to see the ambiguity of our role.  There God says that all the other animals (we are animals too!) will live in “fear and dread” of us.  Moreover, God now grants to humans the right to kill and eat other animals, ending their vegetarian restriction.  So another irony appears: the animals who are our covenant partners are also our food, an element of the story that does not appear in children’s books!⁵

“We are all one family but we love ourselves best.”  In the flood narrative, God orders humans to protect all species—even those that are ritually “unclean” (7:2).  While the history of the earth has known five periods of mass extinctions, only now are we in the midst of one that is largely caused by humans.  We are causing extinctions at a rate of one thousand times the historical rate.  Between 10% and 15% of mammals, amphibians, birds, and conifers are threatened.⁶  Many will be sent the way of the passenger pigeon—into oblivion.  In the Noahide covenant, God promised never again to destroy the earth by a flood.  The African-American Spiritual says “God gave Noah the rainbow sign: no more water, the fire next time.”  Is global warming the fire next time?  Will we destroy the earth, like our antediluvian ancestors, or will we live according to the covenant in which we are united in a spiritual community that includes all creatures?   Another song is called “All God’s Critters’ Got a Place in the Choir.”  May we have the wisdom and the justice to make space in the loft.   

by Dr. Thomas W. Mann, Parkway United Church of Christ, Winston-Salem

 

 

¹ See Anne Gardner, “Ecojustice: A study of Genesis 6.11-13,” in The Earth Story in Genesis, ed. Norman C. Habel & Shirley Wurst (Cleveland: Pilgrim, 2000), 118-122.

² See Sallie McFague, Super, Natural Christians (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997).

³ Lynn Margulis, “Talking on the Water,” Sierra (May/June, 1994), 72. 

⁴ “Clamming,” in Dream Work (New York: Atlantic, 1986), 24. See my study, God of Dirt: Mary Oliver and the Other Book of God (Boston: Cowley, 2004). 

⁵ See John Olley, “Mixed Blessings for Animals: The Contrasts of Genesis 9,” in The Earth Story in Genesis, ed. Norman C. Habel & Shirley Wurst (Cleveland: Pilgrim, 2000), 130-139.  See also Daniel Cowdin, “The Moral Status of Otherkind in Christian Ethics,” in Christianity and Ecology, ed. Dieter T. Hessel and Rosemary Radford Reuther (Cambridge, MA; Harvard, 2000), 261-90.

⁶ Ecosystems and Human Well-being  (Washington: World Resources Institute, 2005).