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According to the account in Genesis, Noah was the son of Lamech and the grandson of Methuselah. He and his wife had three sons: Japheth, Sem or Shem, and Ham. The order can be deduced from the Genesis record: Noah was 500 when the first son, Japheth, was born (Genesis 5:32) and 600 when the Flood came. Shem had his son, Arphaxad, 2 years after the Flood, when he was 100 years old (Genesis 11:10), making him 2 years younger than Japheth. Ham is stated to be the youngest (Genesis 9:24). (See Sons of Noah for further discussion).
Noah's wife is not named in the western canon of the Bible. Later Midrashic writings give her name as Naamah, also employed by the Book of Jasher. According to the Book of Jubilees (canonical in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church) her name was Emzara.
According to Genesis, Noah was a "just man and perfect in his generation", and "walked with God" (cf. Ezekiel 14:14,20). The "sons of god" (Hebrew elohim) and "the daughters of men" began to intermarry, and from them sprang up a race of giants. Men became more and more corrupt, and God determined to rid the Earth of its wicked population (Gen. 6:7). But God entered into a covenant with Noah, with a promise of deliverance from the threatened Deluge (Gen. 6:18). He was accordingly commanded to build an ark (6:14-16) to save himself and his family. According to Rashi, the Jewish medieval commentator, as well as Christian interpretations of Genesis preserved in the First Epistle of Peter 3:18–20 and the Second Epistle of Peter 2:5, an interval of 120 years elapsed while the ark was being built (6:3), during which Noah tried to convince the people to repent so they could avoid the wrath of God.
When the ark of "gopher-wood" (a Biblical hapax legomenon) was finally completed, the living creatures that were to be preserved entered into it. Noah was commanded to save two of each non-kosher bird, animal and creeping thing (a male and a female) and seven of each kosher bird or animal (the additional creatures were meant to be brought as sacrifices after the Deluge). Noah also stocked up on enough food to feed all the humans and animals in the Ark for a year, plus seeds to replant trees, vegetables and the like after the Deluge. After the animals were in place, Noah, his wife, his three sons, and his three daughters-in-law entered it, and then the "Lord shut him in" (Gen. 7:16). The judgment of God then fell on the guilty world:
* Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. And the Lord said, "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them" (Gen 6:5-7).
* Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth. Then God said to Noah, "The end of all flesh has come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence because of them; and behold, I am about to destroy them with the earth. (Gen 6:11-13)
The waters rained down from above and burst out of terrestrial fissures below, flooding the earth for 150 days. All life was blotted out from the earth (the fish, though, survived in the water) and when the waters diminished, the ark came to rest on Mount Ararat (in modern-day Turkey) (Gen. 8:3,4). To test whether the waters had indeed receded, Noah first sent out a raven and then a dove to see if these birds would find something to eat. The dove returned to him the second time with an olive leaf; the third time she did not return at all, as she found a place to build her nest.
After a year of occupancy in the ark (Gen. 6:13), Noah was given permission to leave it (Gen. 6:16-17). His first act on dry land was to erect an altar (the first altar mentioned in the Bible) and offer sacrifices of thanks and praise to God. God entered into a covenant with Noah—the first covenant between God and man—granting him possession of the earth by a new and special charter, which remains in force to the present time (Gen. 8:21-9:17). As a sign and witness of this covenant, the rainbow was adopted and set apart by God as a sure pledge that the earth would never again be destroyed by a flood.
Genesis 9:20-27 relates that Noah planted a grapevine and, in the first mention of alcohol in the Bible, we are told that Noah drank of the wine, became drunk and uncovered himself inside his tent (Gen. 9:21). Ham "saw his father's nakedness" (opinions differ on just what this means) and told his brothers about it. Ham's older brothers, Japheth and Shem, covered Noah's body with a garment, respectfully walking backwards and turning their faces (Gen. 9:23). When he awoke, Noah cursed Canaan, the young son of Ham, and all his descendants.
Logically, in this account, Noah followed Adam as the ancestor of all human beings. The New Testament's gospels trace Jesus's ancestry, though they are not fully consistent with each other or with the Old Testament; Luke follows the geneology back to Noah (Luke 3:36: "... the [son] of Arphaxad, the [son] of Shem, the [son] of Noah, the [son] of Lamech").
William Shakespeare's play Henry IV, Part II contains a wry comment about people who claim to be related to royal families. Prince Hal notes of such people,
...they will be kin to us, or they will fetch it from Japhet. (II.ii 117-18)
Genesis 10:5 was often interpreted to mean that the peoples of Europe were descended from Japheth. Clearly, then, any two Englishmen must have at least this one ancestor in common, and thus any individual could claim kinship with the king. |
