Audela

Noah

The preacher of righteousness through whom the human line survived the flood

Place in the genealogy

  • Luke · name 67 · Jesus back to AdamFrom Terah back to Adam, and to God

Where Scripture records this person

  • Born to Lamech, named for the comfort he would bring.
  • Found grace; commanded to build the ark.
  • Enters the ark; the flood comes.
  • The waters abate; he builds an altar.
  • The covenant, the rainbow, the drunkenness and his death.
  • By faith prepared an ark, condemning the world.
  • Eight souls saved by water.
  • A preacher of righteousness.

Who this person is in Scripture

Noah lives in a generation Genesis describes as filled with violence and continual evil imagination. Against that background the text says he found in the eyes of the Lord, and that he was just, perfect in his generations, and walked with God. He is given a command no one had heard before, to build a vessel for a flood in a world that had not seen judgement on that scale, and he did it, Genesis says, exactly as God commanded him.

He and seven family members survive. When the waters fall, his first recorded act is to build an and offer sacrifice, and God responds with a sealed by the rainbow. Yet Genesis refuses to leave him a hero: chapter 9 records his drunkenness and the shame that followed, a reminder that the man through judgement still needed grace afterwards.

Family, as Scripture gives it

Father
Lamech
Spouses
Noah's wife, unnamed in Scripture
Children
Shem, Ham, Japheth

All nations after the flood descend from these three sons (). Luke's line runs through Shem.

Events Scripture records

  • Finding graceThe order matters: grace comes before the description of his righteousness in verse 9.
  • Building and preachingThe years of building were years of warning.
  • The altar after the floodHis first act on dry ground was worship, not settlement.
  • The drunkennessRecorded without excuse, in the same chapter as the covenant.

In order

  1. At 500 yearsShem, Ham and Japheth born
  2. Before the floodCommanded to build the ark and warned of the coming judgement
  3. At 600 yearsThe flood begins; he enters the ark
  4. After the floodBuilds an altar; receives the covenant of the rainbow
  5. AfterwardsPlants a vineyard, becomes drunk, and is shamed
  6. At 950 yearsDies

Historical setting

Background, kept separate from the text and given only where it is responsibly supported.

Other ancient peoples preserved flood accounts, but Genesis differs at the point that matters: the flood is a moral judgement by one God, not a quarrel among gods disturbed by human noise.

The ark's dimensions in describe a vessel built for floating and survival rather than for sailing anywhere, which fits its purpose.

Promises and covenants this life carries

  • The flood shows that God judges, and the ark shows that he provides one way through the judgement he announces. Both truths are needed to understand .
  • The of keeps the world standing so that the promise of can be worked out in history.

How Scripture connects this person to Christ

  • There was one door into the ark and God shut it (). Jesus says, I am the door (), and the exclusiveness is the mercy: God provides a way rather than leaving people to make their own.
  • links the eight through water with baptism and the of Jesus Christ, so the flood is read in Scripture as a picture of salvation through judgement.

What this teaches

  • Obedience often has to run far ahead of evidence. Noah worked for years on a warning about weather no one had seen.
  • Deliverance does not make a believer safe from himself. The man who survived the flood fell in a , which is why warns whoever thinks he stands to take heed.
  • Worship before settling in is a discipline worth copying. The came before the .

Questions the text can answer

Was Noah saved because he was righteous?

Genesis puts first. Verse 8 says he found grace in the eyes of the Lord; verse 9 then describes him as just and walking with God. The follows the grace rather than earning it.

His later drunkenness settles the question. The man in the ark still needed mercy after the flood.

Why does Jesus mention Noah's days?

In he uses them to describe ordinary life carrying on, eating, drinking and marrying, until the day the judgement arrived. His point is not wickedness but unpreparedness.

Read further in Scripture

  • Jesus makes the days of Noah the pattern for his own coming.
  • Noah named with Daniel and Job as a righteous man.
  • God's oath after the flood used to guarantee his mercy to Israel.

Read in the Bible

Back to the genealogy of Jesus