Tag: promise

Every Animal is Kept Alive

Posted on by jovial_cynic

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.
Genesis 6:18-20 (NIV)

If you’ve followed my posts about the different “kinds of animals” in Gen 1-3, and how we seem to have a picture of Israel (livestock), the Gentiles (the wild animals), and the Enemies of God (the ones that creep), you may see this as prophetic and extremely hopeful.

The way it is written, this covenant appears distinct from the one that occurs after Noah gets off the boat. This one seems… redemptive.

10

Posted on by jovial_cynic

Now Jared lived 162 years, and fathered Enoch…
Now Enoch lived sixty-five years, and fathered Methuselah…
Now Methuselah lived 187 years, and fathered Lamech…
Genesis 5:18, 21, 25 (NASB)

Now Lamech lived 182 years, and fathered a son. And he named him Noah, saying, “This one will give us comfort from our work and from the hard labor of our hands caused by the ground which the Lord has cursed.”
Genesis 5:28-29 (NASB)

For the Rabbis, 7 is “perfection,” and 10 is “completion.”

Tenth from Adam, we have another oddity. It’s the first time the name of the son is not immediately shown. Everywhere else, it would have said, “and fathered Noah.” Instead, it pauses. So we, too, must pause.

The Book

Posted on by jovial_cynic

This is the book of the generations of Adam. On the day when God created man, He made him in the likeness of God.
Genesis 5:1 (NASB)

Genesis 5 starts out mentioning “the book of the generations of Adam.”

It’s the first time we see this word “book.”

It means “book” or “writing,” but it also means “missive” or “instructions.” Like a decree… or a Promise.

Driven Out

Posted on by jovial_cynic
We read in Genesis 3 that after disobedience, God “drove out” the man from the garden. It feels like we’ve been kicked out. Banished. Hell?

The word is used again later in a story linked to something important: it’s the word used when Sarah drives out Hagar.

And she said to Abraham, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.”
Genesis 21:10 (NIV)

While we wrestle with Sarah’s unkindness and Abe’s foolishness and Hagar’s slave-status, there’s something that Paul says later about this story that we have to understand. These characters represent something.

For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. His son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a divine promise.
Galations 4:22-23 (NIV)

There’s so much talk about “works” and “faith,” and Paul links these concepts to slavery and freedom as it relates to God’s promise to us.

When Sarah demands that Abe “get rid of” Hagar and the boy, she is using this same word of “banishing” as Genesis 3.

The link should be viewed through an eternal lens: God is banishing the slavery of works and our own attempts at attaining status and relationship from the garden. The Garden is Holy.

He’s not kicking US out. He’s kicking out the works of the flesh.

How do we know this?

Because if you read the text closely, God only banishes Adam from the garden, and not Eve, who represents Life. The spirit. The one through whom God promises to bring redemption. Not through through One born of the flesh, but born of the spirit.

And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
Genesis 3:22-24 (NIV)