Stroll through Scripture for Sunday September 13, 2026
Based on Genesis 6:5-22; 8:6-12; 9:8-17
We move into a new cycle in the Narrative Lectionary. This cycle starts with the story of the flood. It stretches out over three chapters to give us the highlight of the story. There’s a lot to this story, and the story raises a ton of questions.
I’m grateful that we are looking at this story as fully as we are. Too often it seems that we gloss over the story or have a Precious Moments figurine version of the story.
It’s important to keep in mind that Genesis 1-11 is the pre-history section of the Bible. We call it myth. Myth is a sacred story that expresses a truth without it having to be literally true. Essentially Genesis 1-11 was an ancient people’s attempt to explore the human condition and our relationship with God. Genesis 1-11 is not about science or literal history. You can think of these chapters as people asking the core question – how did we get to this point?
This is important to keep in mind as we read any of the stories of Genesis 1-11. Because if we try to read the flood account from a literal basis, we end up with loads of problems or something like the Ark Encounter in Kentucky which cost approximately $100 million to construct. The literal reading of Scripture ends up being problematic because it demands answers and certainty. Faith isn’t about certainty.
As for the story, it starts with God seeing the wickedness of humans being great in the earth. It was so bad that Scripture tells us that God was sorry that God had made humans. Wow. Just sit with that for a moment. After you get over the initial terror of the situation, consider some possibilities. The possibilities require us to step away from 21st Century American culture.
A polytheistic view was the common view. This means that the gods of ancient polytheism saw humanity far different from the God of the Hebrew Scriptures. We also see this difference in the creation story and the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. From a polytheistic view, humanity was created to serve the gods. The gods are not concerned with the morality of humans, as they are not seen as anything more than labor for the gods. The gods created humans so they could labor and the gods could rest.
The God of the Hebrew Scripture though sees things differently. Humanity is a part of God’s good creation. Humanity wasn’t created so that God could rest. Humanity was created out of love. God holds humanity as something special and as such, in this passage we hear how disappointed God is.
This leads to the destruction of creation, and finally the resting of the bow in the sky. Whereas the gods of polytheism are always battling each other for power, there are theologians who have interpreted the bow in the sky as God putting God’s bow (as in bow and arrow) down – being seen as God promising to stop wage war on creation and humanity, unlike the gods of the polytheistic view.
The other part that we need to be aware of is the ancient cosmology, which saw the earth as the center of the universe, encapsulated in a dome that surrounded it. This connects to the creation story in which creation is set apart from the chaos represented by Leviathan. The waters, which represent chaos, are held back by the dome of creation. And when the flood happens, we hear about the dome opening above and below, signifying that God was letting chaos into creation.
The story of the flood also takes its inspiration from other similar flood narratives of the Ancient Near East of that time. While the stories vary in who the characters are, they have consistent themes.
It’s worth pondering this story and how it is connected to the other parts of Genesis 1-11 and how these stories contrast with other cultures of the time and area. They express a different view of humanity and relationship with God.
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