Boy oh boy, it has been a while! My life has been very busy lately, so I haven’t had the time or energy to dedicate to Taking Root. When Pastor Nancy asked me how frequently I planned on posting articles, I told her “I’ll post whenever I feel like it,” so at least I’m keeping to that promise! Hopefully now that the Pastor Nominating Committee has completed our duties and my term on Session is finished, I’ll have some more time (and brain-power) to commit to Taking Root. Regardless, let’s finish up this series on the flood, shall we?
Seeking Patterns: Noah and Lot
Here we are – at the end of our flood series! I hope it’s been helpful to walk through all of the patterns that connect these different stories, as well as rethink how we read them in the first place. We still have one more stop before we tie a bow on this series – the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. It makes sense to connect this story to the flood doesn’t it? At its core, both stories are about God causing complete destruction, of course they have similarities. And a fair warning – this article does cover a heap of bizarre sexual content found in these stories. This one isn’t particularly PG-13.
Story Overview
Let’s start with another overview: This story begins with two angels entering the town of Sodom as Lot was in the gateway to the town. Lot invited them to stay at his house that evening. Before these angels went to bed, the men of Sodom came to Lot’s house, and demanded he release the angels so they “can have sex with them!” Lot begged them not to do this, even offering his own daughters as a substitute. They soon became angry and tried to break in, but the angels saved Lot and stuck the men with blindness.
The angels then told Lot and his family to get out of the city, because God was going to destroy it. Lot and his daughters made it to the town of Zoar, but his sons refused to go, and Lot’s wife looked back (which the angels warned against) and turned into a pillar of salt (Which isn’t as random as it may seem – natural salt formations are common near the Dead Sea where Sodom and Gammorah were thought to be located)
Pretty strange story so far, isn’t it? Well, buckle up, because it gets weirder. Lot and his daughters left Zoar to live in a cave. Lot’s daughters decide to get their father drunk with wine, and then sleep with him. They became pregnant, and birthed “Moab… the father of the Moabites” and “Ben-ammi … the father of the Ammonites” and that is where the story ends.
… pretty weird stuff.
Looking for the patterns
So, what similarities do we see between Noah’s story and Lot’s story? I think we can break this down simply by separating it into 3 parts – God’s Judgment, God’s Motive, and the Aftermath.
God's Judgement
First of all, and probably most obviously, we see God’s judgment come with complete destruction. God did not simply destroy the people or the cities, He destroyed everything. “He demolished these cities, the entire plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and whatever grew on the ground.” Just like how God destroyed everything in the world with the flood. It’s like God erases what is there to start with a blank slate.
“Understand that I am bringing a flood – floodwaters on the earth to destroy every creature under heaven with the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish.”
He demolished these cities, the entire plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and whatever grew on the ground.
Genesis 6:17
Genesis 19:25
God's Motive
This is where things get interesting. Of course, we know that Sodom and Gomorrah were extremely corrupt, “and their sin is extremely serious.” In the previous chapter, God says to Abraham “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.” Abraham hates the idea of an entire city being destroyed, so he begins to bargain with God. He talks God down to 45 people. Then 40… then 30. Eventually God agrees that He will not destroy the cities if He finds only 10 righteous people among them. That’s a pretty low bar, but just like the flood, only one family is found to be righteous. Just like how Noah’s family was the only righteous family that could be found, only one family is found to be righteous in Sodom and Gomorrah – Lot’s family. So that’s why God destroys Sodom and Gomorrah, right? Well, that’s only one reason.
If you go back to the opening of Genesis 6, you’ll find that there are actually two reasons that God decides to enact the flood. The second reason given is the depravity of mankind, but what’s the first reason given? The “sons of God saw that the daughters of mankind were beautiful, and they took any they chose as wives for themselves.” We see spiritual beings having sex with human women… In the story of Lot, he protects the angels from the men who want to have sex with them. Notice the similarities? This seems to be Jude’s understanding of this story as well:
“as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.”
Jude 1:7, NKJV
Note – There are many poor translations of Jude 1:7. The greek phrase translated here as “strange flesh (ἑτέρας σαρκὸς)” literally means “flesh of another type.” Many claim this verse discusses homosexuality (probably due to vague translations such as “sexual perversion” or “unnatural desire”) but this conclusion does not seem to be supported by the text. Every time the word “ἑτέρας” is used in this conjugation, it clearly speaks of something of a different nature. This includes things like different languages (1 Corinthians 14:21), a different/distorted gospel (Galatians 1:6), someone of another nation (Hebrews 7:13), a non-Aaronite priest (Hebrews 7:11 & 15), a different route/direction (James 2:25), etc. This seems to demonstrate that Jude understood that God’s motive in the story of Sodom and Ghammorah is at least in part due to the “mingling” between angels and humans.
The Aftermath
So… this is where both stories get pretty weird. In Noah’s story, this is the weird part where Noah gets drunk and “uncovered himself” and his son “Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his brothers.” In the story of Lot, one of Lot’s daughters gets him drunk, sleeps with him, then tells her sister to do the same on the following night.
So, one way meditation literature communicates is by seeing these patterns side by side, and seeing what pieces of the sorry reflect one another, and where they subvert each other’s themes. The authors would often leave stories intentionally vague, forcing you to interpret the story in light of other stories to get the whole picture. These two stories are great examples of how we can do that! Let’s compare the two stories:
Both stories contain fathers who were recently saved from complete destruction because they were considered righteous.
In both stories, the fathers become drunk from wine.
After becoming drunk, something bad takes place with their children
The antagonists of both stories are people whose descendants become the progenitors of entire nations – almost like an origin story for a whole people.
Lot’s daughters birth “Moab… the father of the Moabites” and “Ben-ammi … the father of the Ammonites.”
Ham is constantly referred to as the “father of Canaan” in this story. In fact, Ham is never cursed for what he did, but his descendant Canaan was!
We seem to be missing a piece of the puzzle, don’t we? We see Lot’s daughters rape Lot in Genesis 19, but what on earth happened in Geneses 9 with Noah? It’s almost like the camera fades to black, and we just need to imagine what’s going on. There are many interpretations of these verses, but what most folks agree on is that something is implied to have happened beyond Ham simply seeing his father naked.
Lot’s daughters did all of this to “preserve [their] father’s line” and Ham is repeatedly called “the father of Canaan” in this story (while none of his brothers are referred to in this manner). It seems like the author is using this repetition to call attention to something important in the story. Heck, the word “Canaan” shows up 5 times in these 10 verses! The parallels between these stories could imply that Ham being the “father of Canaan” has something to do with “Noah’s nakedness”… but… you all know how biology works.
I’d like to share one interpretation of this passage (the interpretation I agree with most), one that may seem pretty far-fetched at first glance. Some have of the story seems to imply that Ham raped Noah’s wife. It seems like a pretty major leap in logic to say that Noah’s wife was raped, doesn’t it? She isn’t even mentioned in the story after all. It only refers to Ham’s “father’s nakedness,” not his mother’s – but looking into the Hebrew phrase “father’s nakedness” can be pretty illuminating.
“If there is a man who sleeps with his father’s wife, he has uncovered his father’s nakedness.”
Leviticus 20:11
At the end of the day, we can’t be certain that this is what the author was trying to communicate – and because of this, there are many different interpretations that vary from each other. Furthermore, most of these explanations are perfectly sound interpretations. The one thing we do know is this: That whatever the author was trying to communicate, it seems deeper than a surface level reading of the story.
There is a lot more that could be said about this, but these articles have a tendency to grow longer and longer! This series was supposed to be MUCH shorter than it ended up being, and each article much longer than intended. Moving forward I’d like to keep the length under control. Until then – thanks to everybody who read all 5,315 words of this flood series!
Matt
