Noah

Our Flood Story.....

Noah, a righteous man, had three sons--Shem, Ham, Yefet.

God saw the corruption on earth and told Noah to make an ark, for God is about to bring on a cataclysmic flood. But God will establish a covenant with Noah and his offspring. Along with his wife and children, Noah is to collect two, male and female, of every bird, herd-animal, and crawling thing. Of the "pure" (suitable for ritual sacrifice) animals, Noah is to take seven pairs, male and female; of "unpure" animals, two pairs; of birds of the sky, seven pairs.

The rains came, and fell for forty days and forty nights, covering the entire earth. All left on earth died. After 150 days of water filling the earth, God caused the wind to blow so that the waters subsided. The Ark settled on the mountains of Ararat.

Forty days later, Noah sent out a raven, who kept coming back and forth until the waters dried up. Then he sent out a dove, who returned. Seven days later he sent out another dove, who came back that evening with an olive leaf. Seven days after that, Noah sent out another dove, who did not return.

God told Noah to leave the Ark with his family and all the living things that were in the Ark with him. Noah built an altar to God, making sacrificial offerings from all of the "pure" animals and birds. This pleased God, who said, "Never again will I doom the earth because of man...nor will I ever again destroy every living thing."

God blessed Noah and his sons, giving them control over all animals and birds, all that crawls on the ground and lives in the sea. But humans are not to eat any flesh with its life blood in it. And any human who kills another human must have his own blood shed. God established the covenant with Noah with the sign of the rainbow.

Noah's sons, from whom the world was established, were Shem, Yafet, and Ham, the father of Canaan. Noah planted a vineyard, drank from the wine, became drunk and exposed himself in his tent. Ham saw this, and went out to tell his brothers. Shem and Yafet walked backward into the tent so as not to see their father's nakedness and covered Noah. When Noah awoke and learned what Ham had done, he cursed him, saying that Canaan would be servant to the offspring of his brothers.

Chapter 10 lists the descendents of Noah's three sons.

Chapter 11 tells the story of the tower of Babel. Everyone on earth had one language and one set of words. They came to a valley in Shinar and decided to build a city and a tower with it's top in the heavens--". . . to make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered all over the face of the earth." God saw this and said, "If this is what one people with one language have begun to act, there will be no barrier in anything they scheme to do. Let us confound their language, so that one will not understand the other." God scattered them from there all over the earth, and the building stopped. And it was called Babble, because God confounded the speech of the earth.

The parasha ends with the recounting of the line of Noah's son Shem, continuing through the line of Peleg. This is the line of Terah, father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Abram married Sarai, who was barren; Nahor married Milcah, daughter of Haran; Lot was born to Haran, who died in Ur, the land of his father. With Abram, Sarai, and Lot, Terah sets out from Ur for Canaan. When they came to Haran, they settled there, and Terah dies there.

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Babel-ings

The story of the Tower of Babel is just nine verses, yet it has a prominent place in out language and literature. It's usually used to connote a lot of noise, but no communication. But they were all speaking the same language....what was so bad? Why were they scattered? Why were they reduced to "Babel"?

With one language, you'd think communication would be clear and present. It should be easy to live in community. There was the opportunity to communcate, to share with each other. But what do they build. Houses, for shelter to protect their families? A large, wide place for gathering together? Places condusive to working together, watching out for each other? No, they chose to build a tall tower where some will be over others who will be over others--setting up a system of inequality. And who will be at the top? Will that be the person whose name is known? What's being set up is an empty hierarchy, not a community.

So, it's not the language of words that forms community. We need to communicate on other levels, sharing ideals, ethics, the need to look out for each other. This kind of communication will build the strong structure of community, not a confusing tower of babble.

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Noah