And expired all flesh which moves over the earth – among birds, among livestock, among beasts, and among every swarm of insect over the earth, and all of the men. All which drew the breath of life in its nostrils, from all that which was on dry ground, died. And it snuffed out all standing over the face of the ground – from man, to livestock, to creeping thing, even unto birds of the sky. They were snuffed from the earth, and only Noah remained, and those who were with him in the ark.

Genesis 7:21-23 (my interpretation)

In my last post, I detailed how a chiasm in Genesis 7 suggested linkage between the Tower of Babel and the Great Flood.

In this post, there is nothing as revelatory, but there is, however, some interesting parallels to other parts of Scripture as we move on from the worst part of the Flood, and the death that came with it.

The first parallel is where God lumps man together with all “flesh” (basar), for He called them “just flesh” in Genesis 6:3. [Begin Rant: That is the passage about the nephilim, and I can’t stress this enough – we cannot read about the ‘nephilim‘ and think them anything other than “flesh”. People sometimes like to imagine them as half-bred angels or even space aliens – but the text calls them “flesh.” Sometimes, you just have to rely on what the Bible says. End Rant]. Now, in Genesis 7:21, God not only fulfilled what He said – ‘that His Spirit would not walk with man forever‘ (vs. 6:3) – the Scripture records man with the lowest possible terminology. A prime example is that in the text, “all of the men” is mentioned only after swarms of tiny gnats and worms. The spiritual interpretation here would be that by the time of the Flood God considered men lower than worms. Yikes!

The next parallel is determined from the phrase “all which drew breath in its nostrils” – which is an obvious callback to Eden, specifically when יָהוֶה breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being (Genesis 2:7). The interpretation is that the breath of life was designed for something else; it wasn’t supposed to be this way. Selah.

The last parallel I want to write about is a curious one, both in the chosen terminology and the order which the words appear. It’s almost a reverse mirror image of the first few lines, but this time, instead of man appearing after worms, “man” precedes the “the birds of sky“, and the birds are mentioned last. The reason? I think it’s the choice of verb!

I opined a while back that there was some connection to the birds of the sky and sons of God – and if I may shamelessly toot my own shofar, I think I’m on to something. In the first few lines, the verb “yig’wa” (from the verb gavah, meaning to breathe out, expire) is used, but in the last lines, the verb yimach is used (from the verb machah, meaning to rub out or erase. I chose ‘snuff out’ just because I can. I’m diabolical like that.) Now, when you think of any creature “expiring” – that is to say, breathing its last breath – what do you imagine? You probably envision a scene of sorrow, like a loved one bedside in the hospital, or a child weeping over a pet gone to pet heaven. Now, let’s envision “snuffing out” a creature – quite the opposite, yes? We’re not imagining house PETS anymore, now we’re thinking about house PESTS! Now we’re imagining mouse traps and bug zappers.

And so it is with these verses. In the first few lines, we almost regret what happened, with the birds and cattle being a sort of collateral damage, as God mentioned their breath before all others. The latter is the snuffing out, a bit of extermination – and who was first on the execution block? Man.

While we might say that these last verses appear to be a practical order of what creatures were first to die (based on how the Flood would affect them), spiritually speaking, I believe it underlines how evil that generation was.

If you need any more convincing, I would advise you to think about the use of the noun yekoom ( literally “standing”, but figuratively means “remaining”). There are only three places yekoom is used – the first two are with the Noah story (7:4 and 7:23, – with 7:23 being a reiteration of 7:4), but the last is with the tragedy of Dothan and Abiram (Deuteronomy 11:6), when the earth swallowed them for challenging Moses – they and all which stood (yekoom) with them.