“The waters…bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. ”
To be lifted “higher than the mountains” is to prefigure the eternal Mount Zion, which “shall be established as the highest mountain and raised above the hills.” This place of communication with the one, true God is a place of holiness. Only those with “clean hands and pure heart” can climb the Lord’s mountain. Likewise, only Noah, who was just before God, was worthy to ascend above the waters in the sacred ark.
“Make yourself an ark…and cover it inside and out with pitch.”
(Here are the first and second parts of the scholion on this verse.)
God could easily have destroyed the entire cosmos and started over. Creating from nothing poses no obstacle to God’s designs. However, He spares those who find favor with him. Even more, He desires that men and women participate in the reconstitution: Noah must save the animals and his family (and we are not told if they have found favor with God as Noah did). God will not work to defeat evil, nor to recreate, without Noah.
“Make yourself an ark…and cover it inside and out with pitch.”
(Here is the first part of the scholion on this verse.)
God’s instructions to Noah indicate that the ark is a miniature cosmos. God is the ‘Divine Geometer’: just as He created the cosmos by ‘drawing a circle on the deep’ and ‘marking out the foundations of the earth’ [Prv. 8: 27, 29], so the ark is harmonious, measured, proportioned. The same can be said of the Ark of the Covenant, the Temple, and even of Jerusalem as a whole: “Walk through Zion, walk all round it; count the number of its towers.” [Ps. 48: 12]
All these holy spaces must be kept pure. When the sin of Jerusalem grew too great, God withdrew His presence, and the city fell. Let this not be said of the new temple of our bodies.
“Make yourself an ark…and cover (kaphartta) it inside and out with pitch.”
This act of covering signifies purification and propitiation. In Exodus and Leviticus, the covering of the Ark of the Covenant is called the kipperot. It is the fundamental place of expiation of sin. The act of ‘covering’ purifies Noah’s ark, protecting it from the chaos that is about to be unleashed by sin. The ark will be a miniature cosmos, preserving creation from un-creation.
This is the image by which those who are ‘baptized into Christ’ are saved from the wrath that is to come. Christ, who became for us an ‘expiation’ (Romans 3: 25—the Greek hilasterion translates kipperot), covers our sins, purifying us in order that we may be preserved for the new creation.
“My spirit shall not abide (LXX: katameine) in man for ever, for he is flesh.”
This is a temporary state of affairs, ending with the Incarnation. As John the Baptist testified, “I saw the Spirit descend as a dove from heaven, and it remained (emeinen) on him.” [John 1: 32] Thus, the true ‘Son of God’ who looked from afar with longing at the lives of men, came down not for physical marriage, but to be the Bridegroom of the Church in the Spirit. And since we have been made one flesh with Christ, the Spirit also remains in us. This is the bread which came down from heaven. He who eats this bread, and thus becomes one with Christ, will live forever.
“And all flesh died that moved upon the earth…everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died.”
So we see all living creatures in the air and on land are conceived of as having a bi-partite nature of ‘flesh’ and ‘breath’. There is no distinction between human beings and animals in this way of thinking. Animals would seem to partake of a soul that is not distinguished, at least in this context, from a human soul. What does distinguish human beings is being made in the image and likeness of God.
“Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence.”
The corruption of the earth is not tied to the concept of sin. This is because where there is no covenant, there is no sin. Yet even without the covenant, mankind is held accountable for corruption because “although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him.” [Rom 1: 21]
“The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair.”
These spiritual beings gave up the prerogatives of angelic life, having been seduced by the flesh. “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain.” [Prv. 31: 30] But the true Son of God, moved by the neglect of our spiritual natures, became Incarnate of a chaste Virgin in order to lift us up above the angelic realm, so that we might become the new adopted ‘sons of God’.
“I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer.”
The wandering mind is a sign of unrepented anger and envy. “There is nothing more disposed to render the spirit inclined to desertion than troubled irascibility.” [Evagrius, Praktikos 21] It is notable that, when the murder of Abel is discovered, Cain issues no apology to God. Indeed, he challenges God and implies that God did nothing to stop him from committing murder. Cain’s wandering is a further consequence of his own willfulness, rather than an ad hoc punishment devised by God. As usual, the punishment is simply the effect of the sin upon the sinner.
Even without Cain’s repentance, God is merciful and listens to his plea for protection, ironic since Cain accused God of failing to protect Abel. This is surely a dynamic we all fall into in our relationship with God.
Compunction breaks the hard ground of the heart, allowing us to till it and sow the virtues. Cain’s failure to repent is projected onto the failure of the ground to ‘yield…its strength.’ [4: 12] We see that, paradoxically, the practice of compunction, which often has the appearance of weakness, is in fact a source of strength for those willing to admit falling short of the glory of God. This allows us to draw our strength, not from the material resources of our earthly natures, but from inexhaustible divine graces.
“ ‘The ground…has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.’ ”
The language here is intentionally sacrificial. In murdering his brother, Cain has not merely offended against an abstract moral precept, even if one ordained by God. He has, perhaps unwittingly, offered a sacrifice to the ‘chthonic’ gods of death, paid them homage, obeyed their arrogated prerogatives. Behind the failure of Cain’s initial offering of ‘fruit of the ground’ [4: 3] there may lie some kind of pact with the ‘gods of the ground’ which made the offering unacceptable to God. Notice that the text at 4: 3 does not specify that these are first-fruits, whereas Abel’s sacrifice is of a firstling. Had Cain already offered fruits of the ground to fertility gods?
And who would these pseudo-gods be? Have we even heard of such beings, at this early stage of Genesis? Or am I reading a supplementary mythology into this account? Certainly, the mythologies of the creation and fall are not told in full in the first chapters of Genesis: we do supplement these chapters with other notices regarding Leviathan and the fall of Lucifer. However, we should return for a moment to the curses of Genesis 3. There are two: the serpent is cursed and made to go about upon his belly (on the ground); and the ground itself is cursed. Instead of the ground naturally obeying God’s plan to be fertile, it now brings forth ‘thorns and thistles’, and the man will have to do battle with the ground to get his food. Finally, at death, the man and woman will return to the (cursed) ground, indicating that death itself is a type of covenant with the cursed ground, the realm of the serpent.
The man will be forced to ‘eat the plants of the field’ [3: 18]. This means that the ease of and beauty of the garden give way to the uncultivated wilderness as a place of back-breaking work. The wilderness, in many ancient urban-centered cultures such as Israel, is the place of un-creation, where demonic activity runs unchecked by God’s creative shalom or order. It seems to be the place where Cain is doing his work. And it seems to be the place where he has premeditated the immolation of his brother. He reveals this (in the Greek and Syriac version) by luring Abel out: “Let us go out to the field.” [4: 8]