December 6, 2018 No comments

Genesis 6:8-9, The Original Grace

But Noach found favor in the eye of YHVH. (Genesis 6:8)

This is the first appearance of the all-important Hebrew word chen (or alternatively, the Greek charis, common to the Septuagint and New Testament). This is an important word to properly interpret, because for better or worse, it is key to understanding salvation doctrines extant in the world today.

It appears as “favor” or “grace” in Genesis 6:8, and the reality of it is that it will be inconsistently translated throughout the rest of the Scriptures.  In Christian circles “grace” seems to be the de facto translation; the hymn does not ring “Amazing favor, how sweet the sound” after all. There exists many songs, poems, books, soliloquies, odes and clichés about the “grace” of God, but credence to His “favor” is surprisingly lacking.

One such saying, “saved by grace” – which appears in translations of the New Testament such as Ephesians 2:8 – has almost become a Christian cliché of sorts.  Ministries and even movies are named after it.  Every Christian pastor I’ve ever met has preached it, but being honest with myself I have questions, and this is my way of challenging what I’ve been thinking about for a long, long time.

If “grace” is looked up in any and every concordance, it’s defined in some way by the word “favor” or even “unmerited favor.” One such example can be found in Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology (1996):

 “An accurate, common definition describes grace as the unmerited favor of God toward man.”

However, when we look up Baker’s definition for favor, it reads this way:

“Finding favor means gaining approval, acceptance, or special benefits or blessings… The favor that human beings receive from God depends on his good pleasure and is often extended in response to prayer or righteous living.”

Interesting.

May I even ask, but if “grace” and “favor” come from the same word (chen or charis), how can one be unmerited, but the other be merit-based, “dependent on righteous living”?

I’m concerned that there is confusion as to what grace – and being saved by grace – actually means. For clarity’s sake, we must take an honest look at the context of Scripture.

In the context of Ephesians 2:8 for example being “saved by grace” means we attain God’s charis through trusting Him (vs. 8). No one disputes this. However, we sometimes neglect the context of what Paul means here, as we have also ceased walking as dead men in our transgressions (vs. 5), with a commitment to walk the rest of our destiny in good works (vs. 10). Therefore, this context suggests salvation is NOT unmerited if the saved lifestyle must in contrast to the “sons of disobedience” (vs. 2).  In other words, I’m saved by God’s “favor” meritoriously: through trusting Him first, and continuing in righteousness forever and ever. Paul is not just talking about the beginning of my salvation, he talks what my salvation should always look like.

Noah’s life is actually a prophetic glimpse of the Judgment to come (cf. Matt. 24:37-39), so we should investigate if the first appearance of chen meshes with our current understanding of “saved by grace”. If it doesn’t, we might have a serious problem, because our hope of salvation is linked to the “days of Noah”, including how Noah was “saved by grace”. There is absolutely zero difference in being “saved by grace” and “finding chen in the eye of YHVH.”

It’s occurred to me lately that the twenty-first century understanding of “grace” focuses on the bargain for the recipient, but rarely do we ask ‘what’s in it for God?’  Swapping the atonement of Yeshua’s life for otherwise unpardonable transgressions is indeed a great bargain for sinners – and that’s proclaimed far and wide.  However, this is not to be confused with “grace”.  That forgiveness is “mercy” or “atonement.”  But God gains nothing by granting mercy; He offers mercy liberally.  However, when God grants favor, He’s getting a return on His mercy He invested – and that’s the major difference.  Indeed, asking for God’s mercy – by which He forgives sins – is the beginning of salvation, but it’s not the end of salvation.  After hearing of God’s mercy, one may “look back after putting his hand to the plow” (Luke 9:62), be blot out of the Book of Life (Rev. 3:5), might return to his vomit (2 Pet. 2:22), or any kind of relapse occur to a man who once attained mercy.

Yeshua often said, “many are called, but few chosen.”  Everyone finds His mercy to be a sweet sound, but few actually respond with a life of righteousness that God can use. If you are of the few to keep going, you walk in the realm of favor.  And this endurance, this life of righteous living is the completion of salvation, exemplified in the life of Noah.

I once proposed that there was a message of God and Noah’s relationship hidden within a very deep, intimate look into the heart of God, but now, His favor is openly declared in black and white.

Noah’s “attainment” (the Heb. matsa means “attained” or “reached”) means that God saw something that made Noah worthy of favor while everyone else could only reach the point of destruction.  And what God actually saw comes a bit later: “Come into the Ark, you and all your house, for you alone have I seen as righteous before Me in this generation” (Genesis 7:1, emphasis mine).

So what was in it for God? God had found righteousness that lasted an entire generation. The Scripture also says:

This is the history of the generations of Noah. “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time. Noah walked with God.” (Genesis 6:9)

God saw Noah was still righteous after walking with Him those many years… he had “endured to the end, and was saved…”

I challenge you, dear reader, when you read or hear about “grace” or “favor” – and you will, because it’s everywhere – try to find the implied response of righteousness that is embedded in its context.  It doesn’t matter if you’re reading about Noah, Yeshua’s teachings about righteousness, or Paul’s – they all agree on this point. We are offered mercy in exchange for a life of righteousness, and if we walk righteously, we shall forever be favored.

May we all escape as Noah escaped.

 

 

 

 

 

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January 16, 2018 No comments

Genesis 6:8, The Unnecessary Verse

But Noach found favor in the eye of YHVH. (Genesis 6:8)

This is an interesting transitional verse that ties together two similar accounts of the antediluvian world.  The first history (vv. 1-7) is the Falling Away from the perspective of God, while vs. 9 begins the same history through the perspective of Noah. In fact, the specific language of verse 9 (“this is the history of Noah”) indicates this was the introductory language of an ancient scroll (See Genesis 2:4 for another example with similar language; it was also likely the introduction of another scroll preserved in the Bible).

If we read the first 13 verses of Genesis 6 straight through, it is admittedly redundant though consistent in theme.  The words of God’s judgments on mankind are different (a topic for a later time), as is the description of man’s relations with one another.  This was so compiled quite like the Creation, the Torah, the Chronicles of Israel, the Gospels or even some epistles – we often get different versions of the same themes.

What’s interesting here is this “link” connecting these two similar accounts of the horrific time before the Flood.  Verse 8 isn’t necessary; the Scriptures could have progressed from verse 7’s “I will destroy man whom I have created from the surface of the ground—man, along with animals, creeping things, and birds of the sky—for I am sorry that I have made them” to verse 9’s “This is the history of Noah…” without a hitch in the flow.

The reason for this unnecessary verse is of course, beautiful: God wants the focus of the Flood story to be how Noah escaped, not on everyone else’s destruction!  His divine hand guided the scripture to make this salvation of Noah leap from the page.  Thus God is diverting our attention to what it should be – i.e. how do I find what Noah found?  or even the emphatic ‘Perhaps I can find favor myself!’

Yes, the story of the Flood is a violent one – there can be no denying that, but it is also a story of salvation, and with this unnecessary verse, I suggest our intended focus is leaping off the pages of Scripture:  God is inviting us to also find favor in Him. ◊
September 8, 2017 No comments

Genesis 6:6-8, Erasing Creation while Disclosing the Meaning of Life

The LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him in his heart. The LORD said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the surface of the ground—man, along with animals, creeping things, and birds of the sky—for I am sorry that I have made them.” (Genesis 6:6-7)

I understand that this is uncomfortable reading about God’s wrath extending to the animal kingdom, so let’s address that elephant in the room (see what I did there?). I might not alleviate that discomfort, but I will offer an explanation.

In your discomfort you may have noticed the several animal groupings (beasts, birds of the sky, creeping things) which are vertabim quotes from the creation account of Genesis 1.  I interpret this as an allegory to ‘erasing’ history, which is precisely how the verb em’cheh (“I will destroy”) is employed elsewhere in Scripture – denoting the blotting out of words from paper.

The allegories to Genesis 1 also invite us to review what went wrong. After all, this is sort of like God “rewinding” the creation script, is it not?  When we do, we read that we were charged to “bear fruit and increase. Fill the earth and conquer it, and subjugate the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and every living thing that moves over the whole earth.” (Gen. 1:28)

May I suggest that we didn’t do ANY of this?  While it’s true we did start increasing in number (Gen. 6:1), we didn’t tame the animal kingdom – we instead subjugated each other.  We murdered, we ruled by force, we built harems and enslaved fellow men.   We did not expand outward, but inward, and this enabled animals to lose their instinct in fearing us (cf. Gen. 9:2).  The takeaway here is that the animal kingdom is at its best when man is at his best, but that’s not what occurred.  We let the earth become unable to be tamed, which stemmed from an abundance of wickedness.

The Heart of God

This bears repeating:  no other scripture offers such a deep glimpse into the Almighty.  No other verse dares to look into the heart of the One True God,  and I take this as an invitation to investigate.

First, I’d reiterate something I found earlier in Genesis 6:6, that the Divine Name (YHVH) and the verb yinachem (having the same root as the name of Noah/Noach) are together side-by-side, surrounded by depictions of chaotic hearts. Whether it be the evil imaginations of men’s hearts (vs. 5), or the grief inside the Almighty’s heart, I believe this is a deep, prophetic revelation showing that Noah wanted to flee wickedness as much as God craved fellowship among righteous men.  According to the rest of the story, this is exactly what happened.  God and Noah found each other, as demonstrated by the very next verse:

But Noah found favor in the eye of YHVH.  (Genesis 6:8)

And the impetus for this covenant stemmed from a simpatico distaste for the evils of mankind and a mutual search for righteous, holy fellowship:  “The LORD said to Noah, “Come with all of your household into the ship, for I have seen your righteousness before me in this generation.” (Genesis 7:1)  We were created to live righteously that we might fellowship with the Holy One.  As a matter of fact, this is the meaning of life!

Frankly, I don’t believe God discloses secrets to just any scrub who decides to casually read the Bible.  It’s more His nature to reveal intimacies to those who are intimate with Him.  That’s why the grief inside God’s heart was fully disclosed as a WARNING.  When the grief was great enough, YHVH reached a tipping point and began to erase His creation.  This is provided as a prophecy.  Other Scriptures show that there will again be a time when lawlessness will abound in the earth (Matt. 24:12), and that YHVH will not preserve Mankind after they forsake the point of life:  to live righteously before the One True God and have fellowship with Him.

Finally, the last revelation from this – and another tie to the Creation story – is how men “grieved” YHVH in his heart.  The word for “grief” is et’sev,  which is from the same root word used after Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden.  In both judgments of woman and man (in Gen. 3:16-17), God used “itzavon” to explain what life would be in a post-Paradise world.   I suggested then that itzavon should not be understood as physical pain (i.e. the pain of childbirth), but rather emotional stress or grief that comes with raising children all-day-every-day, or the sweat-of-your-face labor that just might feed your family and pay all the bills.

So we have stressful situations that qualify as itzavon, but most men will work jobs that suck before letting his family starve.  To compare this with God’s grief, we’d have to imagine a man tolerating so much abuse from his family that he’d say “they’re on their own, I’m out.”  Or, to a greater extent, we have to imagine a mother turning in her derelict sons to the police.  The anguish that these men and women experience isn’t accrued overnight.  It’s a grief symptomatic of long-term mental abuse and disappointment.  In other words, the Scriptures show that this et’sev – experienced by a long-suffering God – was likewise grief built over time, as men continually ran away from Him.

If we do not live righteously and fellowship with the One True God,  we are not doing as we were created to do, like petulant children who curse, disobey and otherwise abuse their parents.  Every man has a breaking point, and apparently so does God! Let us not grieve Him; let’s bring ourselves into righteous order and fellowship with Him.  In this way we shall be confident we’ll be on the right side of God’s next breaking point, and not have our creation erased. ◊
August 5, 2017 1 Comment

Genesis 6:5-6, Noah and God’s Hidden Love Story

The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was continually only evil.  The LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him in his heart. (Genesis 6:5-6)

The more I study the Word of God in Hebrew, the more I fall in love with it.  We really do lose so much in translation.  If I had read the above verses in my trusty and copyright-free World English Bible, I would’ve probably missed the nuances that beg to be discovered in Hebrew.

But before digging into the depths of Hebrew, there are two phrases repeated between these two verses that are conspicuous enough, even in English.  They are “Mankind in the earth” (haadam ba’aretz) and “his heart” (lib-o).  This isn’t a coincidence; it’s a pattern – and it’s up to us to follow that pattern and discover why these words were so woven.

This pattern seems to follow two lines of thought:  a connection of mankind with the earth and what’s going on in the heart.   At first I thought these were two parallelisms describing the statuses of both men and then God, but these do not seem to be clever rephrasing of the same thoughts, as we are accustomed to seeing elsewhere in the Bible (i.e. ‘ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find’).

No, this is something different.  It’s frightfully different, in fact.  Considering that Moses was once told by God “no one can look into my face and live” (Exodus 33:20), it’s sort of shocking that there is this glimpse into the Almighty’s heart.   This certainly hasn’t escaped my attention; there’s definitely something God wants us to learn here.

So if we hone in on the “Mankind in the earth” and “his heart” verses in the Hebrew, we see that they are have similarities (which I emphasize in bold):

The first is: Kiy rabah raat ha-adam ba-aretz wa-khal yetzer mach’sh’vot lib-o raq ra kal-ha-Yom (that great was the evil of Mankind in the earth, and every form of imagination of his heart is evil all the day).

The second is: Kiy asah et ha-adam Ba-aretz wa-Yit’atzev el-liB-o (that He made Mankind in the earth, and it pained him at His heart)

So we can see these two thoughts about the evil of mankind on one hand, and the pain experienced by God on the other, were similarly constructed (This is an example of a chiasm which is often found throughout the Bible).  Now there is one small but gargantuan phrase which separates the “evil of man” and “pain of God” thoughts.  Can you guess it?

It’s wa–yinachem yhweh (“And YHVH regretted”).  Its significance?  The root of this verb yinachem is shared by the name of Noach (Noah).  That cannot be a coincidence. This is a deep sod revelation that Noah and YHVH are TOGETHER, caught in between the evil of Mankind and the pain of the Almighty!  In fact, this prophetically and spiritually suggests that Noach – as he was running away from the evil of mankind, met YHVH as He was trying to forget the pain in His heart.  And it was here, in the middle, where they found each other.  So in the middle of all this chaos, we get this hidden love story.

A little later in the text we read that Noah was “found” by God (see vs. 8).  Maybe, just maybe, the Word is giving us additional hints as to how that meeting came about.

You may not agree with how I see things prophetically in the Word, and I can live with that.  But as the proverb says, “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but the honor of kings to search for it” (Proverbs 25:2).  This is one of those “things”.  I can honestly say that my experience in reading about Noah has been amplified, and I hope it is for you as well. ◊
July 22, 2017 2 Comments

Genesis 6:4-6, The Nephilim May Have Been Giants, But They are Still “Just Flesh”

The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when God’s sons came in to men’s daughters and had children with them.  Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. (Genesis 6:4)

Opinions on the identity of the Nephilim range from the constructive to the flat-out bizarre, but no matter their intentions, I think almost all such speculations are based off the wrong questions.  We focus on the WHO the Nephilim were, but we don’t often ask better questions, such as:  ‘what did the Nephilim DO?’ or ‘what is it about the Nephilim God wants us to learn?’ To this latter point, it’s obvious God wants us to learn from them, seeing how He made them noteworthy by the simple fact He included them in His Word.

Thus ‘what happened?’ is the right question to ask, because as it stands almost no theory on the Nephilim really answers this question.  All theories generally treat their existence as an “aside”, yet none of them paints the Nephilim a warning for future generations.

It’s remarkable to me how the bizarre theories (i.e. the Nephilim were space aliens visiting the Earth from time to time) ignore how the Bible describes them.  Even some of the more dominant theories – i.e. the Nephilim were the giant offspring of fallen angels and human women – also surprisingly dismiss some of the more obvious facts disclosed to us.  This is something followers of the One True God must correct, as these theories misrepresent the Book and makes us seem like myth-tellers.  For one example, the Nephilim are often compared with the Greek Titan myths.

Therefore, it is imperative that any teaching on the Nephilim require textual criticism, logic, and God’s ‘what happened’ lesson.  And because we don’t want to ignore the facts that God DOES disclose to us, here’s what we can learn from the text:

The Nephilim were giants.   In the book of Numbers there is a description of Nephilim that reads:  “The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that eats up its inhabitants. All the people who we saw in [the land] are men of great stature. There we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim. We were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.” (Numbers 13:32-33)

There can be no doubt from this description that the Nephilim were giants, but when made to be something more, like space aliens or fallen angels, specific words get ignored.

The Nephilim were just human men.  There are only two places where the word n’filim appears (in Genesis 6 and Numbers 13, both of which I already cited).  In both cases they are clearly described with words applicable only to human beings. Numbers 13:32 uses am (people or tribe) and iysh (meaning “man”). In Genesis 6:4, iysh is also used, twice in the phrase “these are mighty men of old, men of renown.”  Lastly, Genesis 6:3 is the third indication of the Nephilim’s humanity, which not only calls them ‘men’ but also reads “he is just flesh” (using the word basar for ‘flesh’), which denotes the flesh-and-bone existence of mankind in the derogatory way.  To put it a modern way, God is dissing the Nephilim when He says “he is just flesh“!

They had sexual intercourse with human women.  It’s a tall order to consider the Nephilim as anything other than human men, especially when they had to have the tools necessary for you know… having children.   In other words, their iysh parts had to mesh with iysha (women) parts.  So the Bible betrays anyone who wants to enlarge the Nephilim beyond the status of regular men.

Speculations about the identity of the Nephilim traditionally hinge on the phrase “sons of God” (starting in Genesis 6:2). Admittedly, it is an awkward phrasing, but the writers were seemingly differentiating from its textual counterpart – the “daughters of men“.  It wouldn’t have the same effect if it read “men saw women, that they were good“.  They took poetic license for a number of reasons.

I’ve written about one such reason here.  The Hebrew ben (meaning “son”) was used a lot in the verses around Genesis 6, as is bat (“daughter”).  This carries with it spiritual undertones, meant to portray God looking at a world where his creations – his sons and daughters – were experiencing a spiritual drowning long before the physical one in the Great Flood.

There are also more practical reasons, too.  The text does not say “b’nai elohim” like we’d expect for “sons of God”, it has a definite article and reads ‘b’nai ha elohim‘ – literally “sons of the gods” (as skeptics are quick to show).   However, this is not a nod to polytheism.  Remember, the Nephilim are described in the human terms of iysh, am, and basar.  So this is either a contradiction, or poetic license.  I’ll continue to advocate reading the first few chapters of Genesis under a poetic lens and emphatically suggest that this is more of the same.

The word “elohim” is one of those terms that can only be interpreted through context. So is the entire phrase “b’nai ha elohim“.   For starters, ben doesn’t always denote “male-child” but it can also mean an entity.  For example, in 2 Kings 2:3 ‘sons of the prophets‘ clearly means just ‘the prophets’.  Additionally, elohim doesn’t always mean God (i.e., as in Genesis 1:1), it can also mean ‘rulers’.  A well-known example of denoting rulers as ‘elohim‘ can be found in Psalms 82: “God presides in the great assembly.  He judges among the gods. How long will you judge unjustly, and show partiality to the wicked?” (vv.1-2) and again says,  ‘I said, “You are gods, all of you are sons of the Most High.  Nevertheless you shall die like men, and fall like one of the rulers.” (vv. 6-7.  By the way this is also the exact point Messiah was making in John 10:34).

So given that the definition of elohim can mean ‘rulers’, and that these elohim had real human children, by context we can understand these ‘b’nai ha elohim‘ were human rulers provoking the One True God to wrath (which by the way was the same situation in Psalms 82).  We can conclude that these rulers were abusing their power, and building harems for themselves.

The fact of the matter is, Genesis 6:4 is clarifying who the “b’nai ha elohim” were.  Obviously, by using the term “in those days, and even after, so that” we know this was an insertion by compilers hundreds, maybe thousands of years after the fact.  The irony is, they probably were trying to clarify any confusion about who the b’nai ha elohim might’ve been!  They made it a point to highlight the Nephilim as two things: they were famous (men of name) and they were gibborim (powerful).  In other words, they were in fact our mysterious ‘b’nai ha elohim‘!

In other words, Genesis 6:4 is saying, ‘Remember those ‘elohim‘ who took women as wives, all that they wanted’? Well, this was when those infamous Nephilim were in power.  They were the rulers who took wives so that they would bear children to them, to keep the Nephilim in power.’

In other words, the Nephilim saw women as “good” (tovot, cf. Genesis 6:2, not ‘fair’ or ‘beautiful’ as some translate it) in the sense that women were “useful” for keeping them in power, because the more sex they had, the more the odds increased that they would have Nephilim children – powerful gibborim men to dominate the world.

In my last post I proposed that at some point men stopped his outward expansion into the Earth and set his sights inward – on dominating men and women and establishing a powerful dynasty of Nephilim rulers.  And God did NOT create men and women to be under the control of a gibborim dynasty:

The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was continually only evil. The LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him in his heart. (Genesis 6:5-6)

Keep in mind, that these gods – like the rebuke of Psalms 82 – were ruling with corruptness and violence (cf. vs. 11).  They ruled by force; they took what they wanted violently.  If they wanted additional wives, they took them.   If they did not bear giant children for the Nephilim, the Nephilim gave her away to one of the non-Nephilim. So much in every way, the Nephilim were controlling who was being born.  That is why the Bible emphasizes their positions as rulers (bnai ha elohim) and being gibborim, as well as tying that to how they took wives and had children… for THEMSELVES.  In those days everything revolved around how they kept themselves in power.

I’m sorry if this disappoints anyone who wants to believe in space aliens or fallen angels who impregnate women.   The truth is, while these corrupt rulers may have been giants, they were not gentle giants – they were brutal giants, who destroyed the lives of many people on the earth.  All in all, as the LORD said, at the end of the day they were still “just flesh“, and received the same death that these powerful gibborim was powerless to stop.

 
July 16, 2017 1 Comment

Genesis 6:1-3, When Man Forgot His End of the Bargain

When God created men and women, He blessed them with the whole earth and said “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:28).   

Men and women didn’t have any trouble fulfilling at least one part of that commandment;  at some point they did “multiply” and start filling the earth:

When men began to multiply on the surface of the ground, and daughters were born to them… (Genesis 6:1)

However, as for the rest of that original blessing, man didn’t uphold his end of the bargain.  God may have granted men the whole earth and its fullness, but mankind didn’t tame (or subdue) it.  ‘Having dominion over every creature’  is a far cry from what God told Noah after the Great Flood:  “The fear of you and the dread of you will be on every animal of the earth… (Genesis 8:2)”  Somewhere along man’s timeline, we veered off course.  From this I deduce that at some point, mankind quit his expansion into the Earth and stopped coming into contact with her wildlife, which is why the beasts had lost their natural instinct to fear man.

The rest of Genesis 6 explains what went wrong.

God’s sons saw that men’s daughters were beautiful, and they took any that they wanted for themselves as wives. (Genesis 6:2)

So instead of Man branching out and subduing the Wild – making the earth work for him – it seems that men stopped looking outward.  Rather, they looked inward and began to subdue not the Earth, but each other.

A woman was meant to become one flesh with her man by supporting him and at times even opposing him toward their mutual destiny, while at the same time being the anchor of the family unit.  However, it seems by the time of Noah, women were being treated by the dominant sex as a commodity and being auditioned, selected and/or traded among men.  To this point even Messiah Yeshua said, “as in those days which were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ship, and they didn’t know until the flood came, and took them all away…” (Matthew 24:38-39).

I can argue that at some point such men became oblivious to the rest of the earth, and focused only on establishing themselves.  However, the text emphasizes that the chief industry of those days not appear to be crops, flocks or anything related to ‘taming the earth’.  Instead the text points to the chief industry being the trafficking of women.

If this is the case,  then this new female identity as a “commodity” to one day join a harem as her highest level of achievement would’ve completely altered the family structure forever.  As opposed to having a voice within her family, she would now live to be preferred by the “sons of God” (more to follow on them).  The consequences of that restructuring would also negatively affect the nurturing and raising of children.

When men expand their influence and tame the earth, he needs a Living God.  By definition, this is called “adventure” and “pilgrimage”.  All of the great men of old encountered God when they sojourned to places like Beersheva (Avraham), Bethel (Yaakov), or even Horev (Moses).

However, when a men turns inward and enslaves himself, he kills that sense of pilgrimage. He alters the need for God to be in control, because he becomes that control. He also kills the need to commune with a Living God.

Simply put, these new controls put in place by man in those days proved to be incompatible with the Spirit of YAH, even as God strove with us to bring us back to His will for us:

“The LORD said, “My Spirit will not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; so his days will be one hundred twenty years”” (Genesis 6:3).

There is still much to be said about the particulars of those days – i.e. who the Nephilim were and so forth, and that will definitely be my next topic.  For now, the main point is to show how the Earth’s destruction came about mainly due man altering the creation of God.  They killed the family structure by making women commodities.  They stopped up their spirit of pilgrimage which consequently led to God striving with them.

If we think about it, a lot of men were destroyed when they lost their ability to expand and sought to control men.  King Saul lost it when he feared the people.  Solomon also lost communion with God when he stopped expanding the kingdom and built himself a harem.  In short, it’s a pattern that will repeat itself over and over again.

I suppose this is a warning not to lose my sense of pilgrimage.  It’s true that when I feel comfortable, I want to keep a comfortable lifestyle.  I might even be controlling those around me to keep what I have.

And this is exactly what I’m reading in Genesis 6, just on a larger scale.  That’s exactly the point I’ll make when I tackle the identities of the Nephilim and their contribution to the fall of the ancient world, as well as the rest of humanity.

 

 

 

 

 
March 31, 2017 3 Comments

Genesis 5:32-6:3, Why Did Noah Wait So Long to Have Children?

And Noah is a son of five hundred years, and Noah begetteth Shem, Ham, and Japheth. (Genesis 5:32, YLT)

Noah sure did wait a long time to have children.  Comparatively speaking, his ancestors became fathers at the average spring chicken age of 120 (based on the average age of the patriarchs in Genesis Chapter 5).   The choice in wording is also interesting, as this verse specifically uses the word ben, which typically means “son”.   The Hebrew ben isn’t used to describe how any of Noah’s patriarchs became fathers; it’s only attached to Noah to poetically describe the years of an older man’s life.

Is there anything to make of this?  Could it be that there is something more beyond the poetry that gives us a clue as to why Noah remained childless for so long?

I believe the Scriptures DO offer us answers.

“And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all that they chose. (Genesis 6:1-2, emphasis mine)

Here’s that word “ben” again (this time in plural form, b’nai).  I’ll venture to say that the Word of God might be trying to teach us something about being a son, a son of the Most High God that is.  Let’s forget all the gross speculation about these “sons of God” being aliens or fallen angels, and instead consider that the author is trying to show how Noah kept his status as a son… while the rest of mankind lost theirs.  Perhaps the Word is showing that men substituted fellowship with the Holy One for the company of women.  I believe my interpretation fits the context, especially after reading the very next revelation:

Yahweh said, “My Spirit will not strive among man forever, in whom only is flesh; and his days will be one hundred twenty years.” (Genesis 6:3, my translation).

In Noah’s 480th year (the Flood came when Noah was 600; cf. Gen. 7:11), God lined out how long mankind would remain on the Earth.  While putting this mark on mankind, He certainly isn’t calling them “sons of God” anymore.  He’s now seeing them as something much worse – specifically he calls them “flesh”.   This is how God will hereafter describe humanity up to the flood, especially when He shows Noah His vision, i.e. “the end of all flesh has come before me…” (vs. 13).

This wasn’t intended of course.   It’s perfectly clear that we were made to fellowship with His Spirit, even if He would strive for us for a time.  However, In God’s view, men rejected following God’s spirit and instead chased flesh.  Men lost sight of being “sons of God” to the point of just becoming your average bag of flesh:

“Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Yahweh was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him in his heart.” (Genesis 6:5-6)

This is not an account of fallen angels, this is an account of fallen men!  This was a time when Yahweh looked at the earth and no longer found any “sons”… except for one.

Interestingly enough, whereas the above Scripture says “Yahweh was sorry” that verb is actually yinachem – the same root bearing Noah’s real name “Noach”, who “was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time. Noah walked with God.” (vs. 9)

I believe the reason Noah abstained from bearing children was because he looked at the world in the same way Yahweh saw it – with much grief.  I believe Noah walked with God so closely that he was also nachem (sorry) that God made man, and didn’t see any reason to bring a child into the world.   In fact, I don’t think Noah even considered fatherhood until God’s Spirit marked out a remaining 120 years, and gave Noah a vision about entering the ark with sons of his own (cf. Gen. 6:18).   When Noah saw these things, I believe Noah adjusted his life to the will of the Spirit  – and is this not what every righteous man aspires to be?  To be such a man who adjusts his life to the will of the One True God?

In short, Noah was being a son amidst a great deal of flesh.

If any man is not a son of God, he is just a walking bag of bones.  Noah’s life exemplifies how we all must have our walk with the Almighty – even if the whole world falls away. ◊
March 6, 2017 No comments

Genesis 5:29-5:31, Beware the Jackpot of Wickedness

And he named him Noah, saying, “This same will comfort us in our work and in the toil of our hands, because of the ground which Yahweh has cursed.” (Genesis 5:29, WEB)

At first glance, this reads as if Lamech is prophesying over Noah’s life – and many have drawn that very conclusion.   After all, it makes a compelling argument, as some of the details spoken by Lamech seemingly come to pass.  For instance, during Noah’s lifetime, YHVH declares “I will never again curse the ground on account of man” (cf. Genesis 8:21).  Furthermore, in the very next breath (vs. 22) God declares that the Earth’s new climate will feature a clear-cut “seedtime and harvest” – which allows us a bit of “rest” in between – as opposed to the constant, undefined planting/gathering times as might have occurred prior to the Flood.

So it’s easy to see why Lamech’s words are traditionally read in a positive light, but what happens when we read the events declared by Lamech in chronological order?  Well, they might have a different feel to them:

“Yahweh cursed the ground,
And because of that our hand is full of stress [itzavon].
But this one will relinquish [nacham] us from our work.”

[Note: “hand” should be interpreted metaphorically as it appears in singular form (“not hands as many Bibles say).  Also, I think itzavon should be understood as “stress.”]

Read in chronological order, it’s easier to detect a little hostility and blame in Lamech’s words, isn’t it?  So whatever Lamech meant, it’s tricky – so we need to understand his words, beginning with what Lamech intended with the name “Noach”.

‘Noach’ is derived from the Hebrew verb nacham, which can mean “comfort” or “consolation” (as is often translatied), but usually means a complete reliquishing from abrasive situations, such as a rainstorm after a long drought, or “turning a wasteland into the Garden of Eden” (i.e. Isaiah 51:3).  Whenever nacham is used, something abrasive is turned away for someone else’s benefit, such as:

“I will give thanks to You, the LORD; for though you were angry with me, your anger has turned away and You comfort [nacham] me (Isaiah 12:1, emphasis mine).”

Isaiah loved using this word nacham, and I imagine that’s because Isaiah often wrote about complete turnarounds in Israel’s present and future.  Probably the most famous has to do with the advent of the “voice of the wilderness”.  Interestingly enough, there appears to be striking coincidences designs in word choices between what Isaiah declared over Israel and what Lamech declared over Noah:

Comfort ye [nachamu], comfort ye [nachamu] My people, saith your God.  Speak to the heart of Jerusalem, and call to her, that her warfare [tsava] hath been completed… accepted hath been her punishment, that she hath received from the hand [yad] of Jehovah Double for all her sins. (Isaiah 40:1, YLT)

Put in a different way, Isaiah showed how Israel received “double” for her offenses (in contrast to a double payment for a job well done) – a ‘jackpot’ for transgressions against the LORD.  However, YHVH also promised a time of “relinquishment” (nacham) and turning away from His punishment.

So now that we understand the meaning of nacham, let’s understand Lamech’s intent in naming his son “Noach”.  The first question I have is, from what did Lamech seek relinquishment?  Of course he wanted a relinquishment from the curse of the ground started by YHVH.  However, where I get hazy is he didn’t want YHVH to relinquish it but… Noah?!!

The truth is, Noah didn’t relieve the earth from any curse – … it was actually YHVH who gave the earth the respite Lamech wanted, but it was also YHVH who first relinquished Himself from mankind, as is written:  “and Jehovah repenteth [nacham] that He hath made man in the earth, and He grieveth Himself — unto His heart.” (Genesis 6:6, YLT)  So if you’re still with me, there are two competing destinies for Noah – one from Noah’s flesh and blood father, and the other from his Father in Heaven.  It appears they have a different idea of what is relinquished from the Earth.

Let’s remember, when Noah was born, there was already an ever-increasing heap of offenses which started when “men began to profane the name of YHVH” (Genesis 4:26).  And with an abundance of offenses already evident in that world, what was Lamech expecting?  Did he think his fellow man was somehow worthy to be relieved of such a curse?

I think it’s time we read these words with a negative connotation, as Lamech appears to pin all blame on YHVH for earth’s peril (where have we heard THAT before?) – not to mention expecting Noah to somehow ‘cheat’ the curse of God.

And why wouldn’t Lamech think that?  After all, others had seemingly ‘cheated’ their own relief through innovations and accruing wealth, and I’m speaking of the “other Lamech”, who was fifth from Cain (Lamech the father of Noah was seventh from Enosh).  The sons of this “other Lamech” made him famous and powerful – why couldn’t Noah do the same?

When our children are born, we’re beaming with pride, and expect them to save the world.  We hope they’ll grow up and build rockets travelling at light speed or find cures for every cancer.  However, what we don’t say is “my son will cure the cancer that YHVH created” – but this is exactly how I read Lamech naming his son.  I detect an undertone of hostility and despair to YHVH – not a prophecy.

I’ve written before about the similarities between the two Lamechs – not just as namesakes, but that they act as ‘bookends’ for the genealogies, they are both quoted, they both evoke a previous curse from YHVH, but now I’m going to expand this thought even further…  they both act as gods.  Lamech the fifth from Cain made up his own vengeance (see Genesis 4:24), while Lamech the seventh from Enosh thought that a man – his son – was going to out-fox God and His curse.

To reiterate, these similarities between the two aren’t coincidence; they’re signs.  This is a road map showing when the offenses – which began with profaning the name of YHVH – reached their completion, marking when the two main peoples (of Adam and Enosh) reached the fullness of transgression.

If you don’t believe the former coincidences are a sign… you will believe the next one.

It’s easy to read the Scriptures and catch that the number seven stands for the completion, fullness, or complete end of something.  The sacrifice of high Holy Days are only complete with seven animals, the wall of Jericho fell on the seventh turn, the prophet Daniel says “seventy sevens are determined… to make an end of sin, to seal up…” (cf. Daniel 9:24), and so it is countless other times, especially in the book of Revelation, where EVERYTHING ends with seven, i.e.  “seven angels with seven trumpets, preparing themselves to sound…” (Rev. 8:6)…

So to the naked eye, Lamech the father of Noah might die insignificantly, but we who are learned might see something prophetic in Lamech’s death:

And all the days of Lamech were seven hundred seventy and seven years, and he died.  (Genesis 5:31, KJV, emphasis mine).

But wait, there’s more!  It would seem “the other Lamech” of Cain’s stock ALSO had his phenomena attached to him:

“If Cain be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold.” (Genesis 4:24, KJV, emphasis mine)

So these “777 jackpots” if you will mark the reward of transgression for the sons of Adam.  It took Cain’s ancestors five generations to win it, while the sons of Enosh reached it in seven.

The 777th year of Lamech’s life occurred just five years before the Flood, and I like to believe that’s when the fullness of sin evoked the “relinquishing” (nacham) of Mankind, as God said to 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.” (Genesis 6:13)

So the sum of these things is this:  Lamech was banking on a different jackpot than the one YHVH had in store.  True to Noah’s name, there was a “relinquishment”… but not the one Lamech foresaw.

There will be a day when the world wins the “777” jackpot – i.e. when the seventh angel sounds the seventh trumpet after the seventh last plague… so let’s make sure we’re preparing for the reward of righteousness, and not the jackpot of wickedness. ◊
January 25, 2017 7 Comments

Genesis 4:17-5:31, The Two Enochs and the Two Lamechs

In my last post I described “profaning the name of YHVH” as the gateway transgression, after which come all other transgressions.  As we read about this profaning, or polluting, of the Name (which could literally be understood as YHVH’s reputation, or legacy), it’s sandwiched between Cain’s geneaology – which ends with multiple blasphemies and evils spoken by Lamech – and Seth’s geneaology – which ends with stressful words of the other Lamech, who was the father of Noah.

The former Lamech is fifth from Cain, but the latter Lamech is seventh from Seth.  Thus, Cain’s ancestral line (at least, our written record of it) ends abruptly, but I believe this is completely by design.

This was recorded for our benefit, so that Mankind can be portrayed in that pre-Flood world as one “Lamech” or the other.  Ever prophetically speaking to us, the Bible shows that all descendants of Adam – whether they hail from Cain’s line or Seth’s – had reached their personal breaking point of “Lamech”, for better or for worse.  The former Lamech spouts off elitist and violent words, while the latter Lamech agonizes over the stress and adversity of life.  There are no other quotes in either genealogy, except from these two who share a namesake.

This is no accident; both men’s words show how Mankind had shifted to two extremes – one to the uber-violent while the other became ultra-oppressed.

Adam and Eve attempted to raise their children to be righteous as Abel was righteous, by Eve’s own admission (cf. Genesis 4:25).  However, just two generations later, Mankind as a whole “began to profane the name of YHVH.” Therefore the question becomes: ‘how did the descendants of Seth stray?’  By all appearances, Cain’s descendants reached the point of ‘Lamech’ within five generations, while Seth’s ancestors reached their tipping point in seven.  Thus it appears that Cain’s ancestors were on a fast track to perdition, while the descendants of Seth gradually followed the influences of Cain’s descendants.  This is exactly what I believe Genesis 5 shows (aside from the genealogy of Seth of course).

Anyone can spot that some of the names are common between the two geneaologies.   My question is, why?  I don’t believe in biblical coincidences; I think that such “coincidences” are invitations to dig deeper, so let’s shovel some ideas.

The first similarity is the name “Enoch”, which first appears as the name of Cain’s son, who became the namesake of a fortress Cain was building at the time (cf. Gen. 4:17).  That must’ve been some fortress, because there’s a chance that Enoch – a descendant of Seth – was named after it. (Gen. 5:18). Now I realize that’s complete speculation, but at any rate, Enoch might’ve been named after a fortress of Cain, but he definitely didn’t go the “way of Cain” – he “walked with God, and was not, for God took him.” (Gen. 5:24).

Assuming that Enoch was named after an impressive fortress, the fact remains, Enoch broke from the trajectory the rest of his peers were headed towards.  The very fact that Enoch “walked with God” is an indication that his contemporaries were not; they were more concerned with fortresses, their fields, eating and drinking, building harems, and so forth (cf. Gen. 5:28, 6:2; Matt. 24:37-38).  And who was Enoch’s most famous contemporary?  That’s right, it was Lamech, the violent entrepreneur in the line of Cain. (For an explanation of why Lamech was so famous, read this recent post).

Seth’s genealogy includes ages as benchmarks, and if we do the math, Enoch was still alive to see the birth of his grandson, which was a brisk 113 years before he taken.  However, the name given to his grandson was “Lamech”.  Thus this a hint that Enoch’s son Methusaleh was inspired by… the violent entrepreneur, even as his father was demonstrating intimacy with the One True God.

I like to imagine that God was so want of intimacy with men in those days that He literally took it where He could find it – in this case, the soul of Enoch.  Clearly no one else was joining Enoch in his walk, in fact it appears that in those days Enoch’s relatives were looking to the successes of Cain’s line, as well as the other distractions mentioned by both Moses (Gen.  6:1-5) and especially Messiah Yeshua:

“As the days of Noah were, so will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in those days which were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ship, and they didn’t know until the flood came, and took them all away…” (Matthew 24:37-39)

It wasn’t that these men were necessarily egregious in their sins.  As a collective whole, mankind was certainly violent and sensuous, but in the end, they all died because “they didn’t know” (as Messiah is quoted above).   They could have known, had they followed Enoch’s example, but it appears no one wanted to know except God, so God took him.

There will come a time again when we will have a chance to be taken, but if we envy successful people while ignoring their injustices done to others, or are preoccupied with entertainment, our careers, working, the opposite sex, and anything else aside from doing God’s will, we too will miss our Enoch moment, and perish like those in the Great Flood. ◊
December 23, 2016 2 Comments

Genesis 4:25-26, The Gateway Transgression

Recently I suggested that the words of Lamech the descendant of Cain signaled “the beginning of the End.”  In spite of Lamech being a brutal tyrant incapable of accepting any responsibility for his injustices, he and his sons were still able to influence the entire world.  They taught them how to acquire wealth, developed agricultural tools and weaponry, and even taught them entertainment (cf. Gen. 4:20-22).  However, not all influence is beneficial.  The “fathers of” their innovations influenced the whole world, but only to the wrong side of the Great Flood.  As Messiah Yeshua taught about that Pre-Flood world:  “For as in those days which were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ship, and they didn’t know until the flood came, and took them all away…” (Matthew 24:38-39).  In other words, the influence of Lamech and his sons advanced “eating and drinking” (through the keeping of livestock and the cutting of tools), and the music to accompany this feasting and harem-building.

So for all their ingenuity and gifts to the world, Lamech and his sons had no mind at all for the Living God.  Neither did the rest of the world.  Eventually, all would perish in the Great Flood.

It didn’t have to end that way, because it didn’t begin that way.  Immediately after the words of Lamech we read:

And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son, and called his name Seth: …For God has appointed me another seed instead of Abel, because Cain has slain him. (Genesis 4:25, DARBY)

I’ve written extensively how at first, Adam and Eve favored Cain instead of Abel, as Cain was firstborn, he was stronger, and had adopted his father’s trade – while Abel seemed more of an afterthought.  However, Eve’s words (presumably hers) indicate that after the Almighty publicly favored Abel before Cain, Adam and Eve suddenly realized that God’s favor was more precious than anything Cain could provide.  They realized that their “seed” was best served in the hands of one who could teach their posterity acceptance by the One True God.

So Adam and Eve saw that Cain just didn’t murder their son, but also generations of children who would’ve grown in the fear YHVH Elohim.  Perhaps we should see it this way as well.

However, life moves on, so Adam and Eve bore Seth with the goal of raising him to live as his brother Abel had lived – in the fear of YHVH, the Almighty.

So if we know Adam and Eve sought to raise their posterity after Abel’s example, but only eight souls out of all their descendants actually survived the Great Flood, we would rightly deduce that men strayed from the path somewhere on the ancestral line.

And that’s exactly what the Scriptures teach:

Seth also fathered a son, whom he named Enosh. At that time, profaning the name of the LORD began.  (Genesis 4:26, ISV)

A few Biblical translations are making editions (like the ISV version above) to portray this “beginning” (Heb. huchal) of “profaning” (qara – which means ‘calling’ or ‘profaning’), which has already been noted by several Christian commentators and the Jewish sages alike for thousands of years.

This translation better fits the surrounding context.  Case in point, if we omit the genealogy of Adam to Noah (which is most of Genesis 5), we are left with these key points in succession of scripture:

  • The history of Cain’s descendants, which culminates with Lamech’s violence and arrogance
  • When men began to “profane” the name of YHVH
  • When men began to multiply on the earth and were sensual, violent, evil, etc.

In other words, God’s word overwhelms us with the evil of Mankind leading up to the Great Flood.  However, Genesis 4:26 specifically uses the Hebrew huchal to show how the latter state “began”.

If we desire wickedness, we scoff at the “Great Flood story”.  ‘God destroy men who act exactly like me!? Preposterous!’ – so we dismiss this as fiction.

If we desire righteousness, we want to know how the latter state happened – a state SO BAD the Almighty said ‘I regret I made Man’!  So, we look to Genesis 4:26 and understand that these multiple offenses huchal (began) when men profaned the name of YHVH.  [Note: The Bible doesn’t actually say who profaned the Name; it passively says “at that time it was begun to profane in the name of YHVH.”  This was likely worded this way so the reader would not think that it was Enosh who started it, but Mankind in general].

The first three of the Ten commandments includes “you shall have no other gods before Me… you shall not make a graven image… and you shall not bring my Name to nothingness” (cf. Exod. 20). These were spoken from Heaven and etched in stone. All three are related, as all three describe profaning the Name. Profaning the Name is a gateway transgression;  a man’s future transgressions are rooted to this beginning – when a man forgets who the One True God is.  

This is exactly what happened during the time of Enosh.  Men forgot who God was, so the evil that followed was only a matter of time.

We don’t know if they made idols, or imagined up other gods for themselves. Or, in business dealings, perhaps they took oaths in the name of ‘YHVH’ while swindling one another.  Perhaps they did all three.  Whatever happened, what we can know with certainty is that this is the moment in history when Mankind began its downward spiral, stemming from profaning the Name of YHVH Elohim. ♦