Summarising chapter 13.

Not all the violence in the OT can be attributed to human agents.

Take the flood, for example.  A cross-centred hermeneutic prompts us to discern Satanic powers using their God-given authority to brng this about.

Scripture assumes as certain solidarity between the human, animal and inanimate kingdoms.  In Gen 6:12f the same word (sāhat) is used to describe human sin, the effect of this on the earth, and the punishment.  This indicates that the flood ‘was an organic, not a judicial, divine judgment’.

As God-commissioned rulers and guardians of the earth, our ancestors, as they became more and more wicked, dragged the rest of creation down with them (Gen 6:5,11-13).  As a result, God withdrew, for a while, his restraining Spirit (Gen 1:2; 6:3; 8:1), ‘thereby allowing sāhat (“corruption”) to reap its own sāhat (“destruction”).’

The people in Noah’s day said to God, in effect, ‘Leave us alone!’ (cf. Job 22:16f).  And that is what God did.

While the author of the Flood narrative (reflecting his ANE background) ascribes this judgment to God, he never actually depicts God actively bringing it about (see the descriptions in Gen 7:6-17).  The agents of destruction were the floodwaters and the springs of the deep, not God.  And remember that water and flood, in biblical thinking about divine judgments, represent destructive cosmic forces.

So, just as at times God allowed nations that were ‘bent on destruction’ to punish Israel, so at other times he allowed destructive cosmic forces to do the same through ‘natural’ disaster:

‘Without a stronger power to hold him in check (cf. 2 Thess 2:6–7), the one who holds “the power of death” (Heb 2:14) and who has been “a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:14) was temporarily unleashed, allowing the power of hell to break loose.’

In the language used, the narrative portrays the Flood as the undoing of God’s good creation:

Gen 1:2 – God’s Spirit hovers over ‘the deep’, perhaps to prepare it for creative acts to follow, or to restrain it.

Gen 1:6f – God places a ‘vault’ to separate the waters under it from the waters above it.  The vault may be seen as a bulwark against chaotic, destructive forces.  This is reversed in the Flood narrative, Gen 7:11, 21.

Yahweh’s placing of his ‘bow’ in the sky after the Flood signifies the successful end of his battle against his cosmic foes.  The agents of punishment are themselves punished.

The stages of creation in Gen 1 are more or less followed in the re-creation following the Flood:

‘Just as God originally caused his ruach (“Spirit,” “breath,” or “wind”) to restrain “the deep” (Gen 1:2), so he now caused his ruach to push back and restrain it once again (8:1). The separation of the waters above and below the land was reestablished. Plant life then reappears, followed by the reintroduction of animals on the now-dry land and the reissuing of the original creation mandate for humans to multiply on the earth and exercise dominion.’

It is clear, then, that the Flood is not something that God did, but rather something that he stopped doing:

‘As God’s revelation on the cross leads us to expect, God was once again using evil to punish evil as a sign pointing to, and a steppingstone toward, his ultimate judgment and victory over sin and evil on Calvary.’

Even though the author of the Flood narrative mistakenly ascribes the destruction to God himself, nevertheless the biblical account differs from other ancient accounts of the flood.  In the Gilgamesh Epic, for example, the flood was sent because a deity named Enlil was irritated by how noisy humans had become.  In the biblical account, by contrast, God is grieved by humanity’s wickedness and the need for judgment of it (Gen 6:6).

Moreover, in the biblical account, judgment only comes after God has spent many centuries striving with humans to prevent it.

Furthermore, the primary purpose of the Flood was not to punish, but to rescue God’s creation project: a project that was threatening to disintegrate with, for example, the begetting of the Nephilim, products of unnatural sexual union between fallen angels and human women (Gen 6:1-4).  Heb 11:7 and 1 Pet 3:19f both stress the salvific, rather than the punitive, aspects of the Flood.