noah

can an overture have an anti-climax? if it can, then with the story of the begining chapters of genesis that i am suggesting form an overture to the whole christian bible reach the anticlimax.

the story is too long to repeat here. it begins with genesis 6:5 and continues through chapter 10. so much happens in the story that it itself could be its own opera, or the overture for all that follows. i will not try to pick out all the threads of the music so much as to suggest how one might listen to this story and how one might remember it as one reads later scripture. the noah story both recapitulates many of the themes of the earlier chapters, and introduces others which won't be developed until the new testament.

it is the story in which god is grieved by the evil that has come into his good creation, and it is the first time we hear of grace.

one easily remarkable feature of the noah story is its repetitons: like the creation story, noah's saga is told both from what i have suggested is the more theoretical viewpoint, using "el"--usually translated "god"--for the name of the holy one, and from the personal viewpoint, using "YHWH," the unpronouncable name--for which most translators substitute "lord." (it is the "lord" who has noah bring into the ark seven of each clean anima.)

the ark should cause one to look forward to other boxes the holy one will use in working out our salvation: the ark in which moses is sent onto the nile, and also the ark of the covenant; its wood suggests the wood moses will cast into the bitter waters of marah, and also to the cross. and the instructions for its building may remind us of the instructions for the construction of tabernacle and temple.

the flood is not just destruction. it is decreation. the waters that had been divided into those above the firmament and those below are rejoined. they prevail. then once again the ruach, the spirit, appears: "and god made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged."

the dove which will appear at jesus' baptism in the jordan makes her first entrance here.

there are differences, important ones, from the short but packed genesis legends that have come before and the salvation history that is to follow. the lord "will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake." the command to "be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth" is part of god's new blessing, part of what is sometimes called the noahic covenant, sealed with the rainbow.

but there is something most unusual in the role of the several sons in the noah story. chapter ten will be the usual explanation, "the generation of the sons," in this case of noah, linking them to future places, peoples, and events. but first will come one of the strangest episodes in genesis, which we often reduce to "the curse of ham." it is worth reading:

"and the sons of noah, that went forth of the ark, were shem, and ham, and japheth: and ham is the father of canaan. these are the three sons of noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread.
and noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: and he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. and ham, the father of canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. and shem and japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their fathers nakedness.
and noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. and he said, cursed be canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. and he said, blessed be the lord god of shem; and canaan shall be his servant. god shall enlarge japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of shem; and canaan shall be his servant." (9:18-27)

this is one of the most ironically powerful passages in all of scripture. it seems to support leon kass's claim in the beginning of wisdom that genesis is centrally about teaching men to be good fathers. here hung-over noah, in his anger, curses his son canaan (a.k.a. ham). the irony is that of course it is shem, whose descendants will soon occupy the rest of the oldestament, who will become slave to the egyptian hammites.

indeed i would suggest that the wine that makes noah drunk looks for ward to the cup of psalm 75:9-10(:
"in the hand of the lord there is a cup, and the wine is red:
it is full mixt, and he poureth out the same.
as for the dregs thereof,
all the ungodly of the earth shall drink them . . . ."),
the cup about which jesus prays in gethsemany.

but between us and the great work of salvation described in the rest of the bible is stil the towering climax of the overture: babe.