The Contention Leading Away, or Finding the Trees from the Forest:Scholars of the Bible point out Genesis 6 is told in two voices: the Priestly writer emphasizes the progress humans made in understanding their relationship with God. The Yahwist writer describes God’s compassion in being grieved in His heart and closing the door for Noah getting into the ark. Then scholars start deciding which part was added in which century. Forgetting ancient Jewish scribes have long maintained that the first books of the Bible were actually one word from God that man has struggled to put into his own understanding, his own chapter and verse, and with punctuation.
The Argument:
Scholars then get all hung up on the details of the animals, how this is possibly true or untrue. Then the arguing really heats up to be about which society records a huge flood. And did the great flood actually occur. Contention, argument, words and fur all fly.
The Need:
Mankind has a great capacity to distract away from hurt, physical or emotional. Genesis 6, the great flood, is a story of suffering. Why do people have tragedy, illness and have suffering? How does God react to pain! Why isn’t it all good?
Just maybe this is a roadmap to living past the hurt: God saw life has wickedness, He didn’t live in denial. God acknowledges the wickedness is deep, hurtful and evil. This wickedness in our lives is sometimes forced upon us and sometimes it is us, we ourselves.
He had regret, sorrow and anger. God is seeking justice. God seeks justice, so when we afflict others, we should still want the balance of justice in order to put ourselves back on the right path of God. When we have injustice forced upon us, we should continue to pray, hope and work for justice.
God did not seek revenge. We shouldn’t either.
In the midst of God’s hurt - His plan unfurling - He finds a blessing and finds gratitude. God gives a blessing in the midst of His right to suffer, His right to be angry, to sulk, to take revenge and to inflict punishment. God gives a blessing and seeks a reason to find a blessing.
Genesis 6:5-10
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* When the LORD saw how great was man's wickedness on earth, and how no desire that his heart conceived was ever anything but evil,
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he regretted that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was grieved.
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So the LORD said: "I will wipe out from the earth the men whom I have created, and not only the men, but also the beasts and the creeping things and the birds of the air, for I am sorry that I made them."
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But Noah found favor with the LORD.
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These are the descendants of Noah. Noah, a good man and blameless in that age,
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for he walked with God, begot three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
* [6:5-8:22] The story of the great flood here recorded is a composite narrative based on two separate sources interwoven into an intricate patchwork. To the Yahwist source, with some later editorial additions, are usually assigned Genesis 6:5-8; 7:1-5, 7-10, 12, 16b, 17b, 22-23; 8:2b-3a, 6-12, 13b, 20-22. The other sections come from the "Priestly document." The combination of the two sources produced certain duplications (e.g., Genesis 6:13-22 of the Yahwist source, beside Genesis 7:1-5 of the Priestly source); also certain inconsistencies, such as the number of the various animals taken into the ark (Genesis 6:19-20; 7:14-15 of the Priestly source, beside Genesis 7:2-3 of the Yahwist source), and the timetable of the flood (Genesis 8:3-5, 13-14 of the Priestly source, beside Genesis 7:4, 10, 12, 17b; 8:6, 10, 12 of the Yahwist source). Both biblical sources go back ultimately to an ancient Mesopotamian story of a great flood, preserved in the eleventh tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic. The latter account, in some respects remarkably similar to the biblical account, is in others very different from it.
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