Violence and Noah’s Flood

Peter Paul Rubens, The Tiger Hunt, 1616

This discussion is taken from chapter 12 of my forthcoming book, Noah’s Flood and the Philosophies of Men.

We are told in Genesis 6:7, “And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.” For the word “repenteth” in the King James Bible, Bible Hub shows the Hebrew word, נִחַ֖מְתִּי (ni·ḥam·tî), which means “to sigh, breathe strongly, to be sorry, to pity, console, rue, to avenge”. It seems interesting, to me, that the Hebrew word for pity and revenge is the same word. How did the Hebrews distinguish between those, at least to us, two diametrically opposite perspectives? To me, this verse makes no sense: God was sorry, pitied, rued, or avenged His own creation?

Then we read in Genesis 6:11-13, “The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.” Bible Hub says that the Hebrew word וַתִּשָּׁחֵ֥ת (wat·tiš·šā·ḥêṯ) should be translated as “to go to ruin”, so, it seems that “corrupt” is an adequate translation; furthermore, Bible Hub confirms that the Hebrew word, חָמָֽס׃ (ḥā·mās), should be translated as “violence”.

We are told in Moses 8:26, “And the Lord said: I will destroy man whom I have created, from the face of the earth, both man and beast, and the creeping things, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth Noah that I have created them, and that I have made them; and he hath called upon me; for they have sought his life.” This verse makes even less sense: God destroyed everything because Noah rued the creation? This issue will be discussed at more length in chapter 14.

We also read in Moses 8:28-30, “The earth was corrupt before God, and it was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah: The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence, and behold I will destroy all flesh from off the earth.”

Aaron Schade, professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University, and Matthew Bowen, professor of Religious Education at Brigham Young University–Hawaii said, “The final three verses of the Book of Moses take us back to what had become of God’s creations: ‘And God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt.’ Regarding this language in Genesis 6:12, Gordon Wenham [tutor in Old Testament at Trinity College, Bristol, England] writes, ‘The deliberate echo of [Genesis] 1:31 here heightens our sense of the tragedy that has overtaken the world since its creation. Then God was pleasantly surprised by his creation: here he is shocked by its corruption.’ (Wenham, Gordon, Genesis 1–15, 171, Zondervan Academic, 1987, 2014) In the creation account, where God ‘saw everything that [he] had made, and behold, all things which I made were very good’ (Moses 2:31) or ‘very obedient’ (Abraham 4:31), he sees that it has now become the opposite. In a real sense the Flood would constitute an uncreation of the earth and a return to the unorganized state wherein it existed before the completion of God’s creations. This all comes as the people defy and reject God’s ways. As a result of the people’s wickedness and impenitence, the Lord would need to ‘uncreate’ and ‘re-create’ the earth through the Flood.”¹

I strongly disagree with this assessment. The God I worship is omnipotent and omniscient. He is neither “pleasantly surprised” nor “shocked”. He is not a victim of His own creation, so he does not have to ‘uncreate’ and ‘re-create’ the world! I do not believe that God was sorry, pitied, rued, or avenged His own creation.

If we look at Genesis 6:11, “The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.” Apparently, all the animals were to be destroyed because they were “corrupt” and “violent”. I am not certain what exactly is meant by that verse. However, I will attempt to give the interpretation that “pleasantly surprised” and “shocked” seem to imply. Let’s take lions as an example. Supposedly they were originally created as herbivores not carnivores. Such a creation would make lions of the creation look totally different than the lions of today, in at least three ways: 1. Today, lions have teeth specifically designed for tearing apart and eating meat. Their teeth are not at all adapted to chewing large quantities of plant matter. The “creation lions” would have had entirely different teeth. 2. A lion’s small intestine is around twenty feet long. That length is only about 13% as long as that of an herbivore, which is very long to absorb nutrients from very low-nutrient raw plants they eat. Lions would quickly starve to death on a total plant diet. 3. Carnivore eyes face forward to better focus on their prey; herbivore eyes are to the side to better watch for predators. To my knowledge, there are no skeletal or fossil remains of any such herbivorous lion. Such a creature, apparently, exists only in the fantasies and philosophies of men.

So, here is what the creation and flood stories seem to be telling us: Lions were first made as herbivores. Then they became corrupt and violent and started eating other animals—thus requiring a complete change in their anatomy, because God rued and was surprised by His own creation. I don’t know who was supposed to be responsible for this change in “creation”. If the “violence” exhibited by carnivorous lions was not part of God’s creation, then it must have come from Satan, which puts him into the position of creator.

However, two herbivorous lions were found worthy to enter the ark. None-the-less, their offspring soon returned to their violent, corrupt ways, and started killing other animals again. This story does not sound like God is in control of nature. Rather this scenario sounds like the type of “philosophy of men” that would derive from a society, like the Babylonians, who had a whole plethora of gods, none of whom were very competent or omnipotent, but were vindictive.

Then there is the violence of men to consider. Going back to Genesis 6:7, we read, “And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.” Again, this sounds like a vengeful god who created humans for his own pleasure and vowed to destroy them because he was surprised at how they turned out. The God I worship is the loving Father of our spirits. We are told in Hebrews 12:9, “Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?” He knows each one of us and what we will do during our trials on earth. He is never surprised by our behavior.

We are told in Ephesians 1:3-6, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.” The word “predestinated” in these verses is another philosophy of men creeping into the scriptures, this time, from the translators of the King James Bible, who were Calvinists and believed in the false doctrine of predestination. According to Bible Hub, the Greek word προορίσας (proorisas) should, more correctly, be translated as “foreordained”.

We were all, as God’s children, foreordained to accept Christ in our pre-earth life. But our omniscient Father knew beforehand that many of us would choose evil and violence over good and peace. The prospect of that happening so frightened our premortal spirit selves that one third of our spirit brothers a sisters chose to follow Satan rather than face the uncertainty of free agency. God gave us the free agency. Then why would he be surprised that some of us exercised it and chose violence, and turned away from him? He wasn’t.

So how did we get the story of why the “earth” was flooded? It is my opinion that Noah and his family experienced a very real, very traumatic, flood; the story of which was passed down, generation upon generation, as part of the Israelite family history. It was not the story of a global flood, brought on by some vengeful god, who was surprised at how badly his creation had gone wrong. Then the Israelite intelligentsia spent seventy years in Babylon, hearing the oldest story ever written, the story of Gilgamesh and a great, world-wide flood. Those Israelite scholars picked up that myth and added it to their own flood story, thinking it would enhance God’s power: as if He could unleash his anger and destroy the whole world because it grieved Him, repented Him, that He had made it—like some impotent, incompetent god of the Babylonians.

Then, there’s another problem: Only around 1% of all animal species made it onto the ark. If all animals were bad, whatever that means, wouldn’t the 99% that didn’t make the ark still be bad after the flood? As discussed in the previous chapter, only birds, large quadrupeds, and reptiles made it onto the ark. Maybe they were the only ones who had become violent. I’m not exactly sure what a violent sheep looks like. Maybe the lions let onto the ark were the only good, herbivorous ones around. Maybe the 99% of animals not making the ark were not violent. Did that include sharks? If sharks were not violent when they were created but became violent in the antediluvian world, then why were they spared from being killed by the flood, if that was the purpose of the flood?

Again, these challenges to the Flood story are not meant to challenge the story I have suggested in chapter 1; they are only intended to challenge, what I consider to be, the ridiculous story of how the world works if the Great Flood was universal, as taught to the Israelites by the Babylonians.

Trent Dee Stephens, PhD

trentdeestephens.com

stephenstrent7@gmail.com

References

1.     Schade, Aaron P.,  and Matthew L. Bowen, The Book of Moses: From the Ancient of Days to the Latter Days, RSC/BYU/Deseret Book 2021; BYU Religious Studies Center; rsc.byu.edu/book-moses/moses-8-noah-flood)