At the Crossroads 7

We now conclude our presentation of God’s Covenant with Noah with this note.

God’s Covenant with Noah views human life and human history within the context of the later part of Iraelitic history: after the exile. By this time, (539 BCE going to the 4th Century Before the Common Era), Israel has had accumulated so many experiences of being a nation, and of itself relating to other nations. It understood the meaning, and the consequences, of worshipping only its own liberating, just and compassionate God. It discovered its own capacity for corruption in greed, injustice and lust for power, when it allowed itself to be influenced by the gods and idols of Canaan and other peoples. It knew of destructions, not only as resulting from natural calamities but also from human-made wars and conquests. When it looked back to its own history and human experience, Israel realized the unceasing interplay of life and death, of being a nation and being an exile; of being restored to its own homeland only to experience the prolongation of its own captivity under another superpower. Israel has reached a point of crisis of meaning and direction: What do these all mean, and where are all these leading to?

The first covenant, God’s Covenant with Noah, set in Gen 1-11, gave a partial answer to this quest for meaning and direction. The answer, a theological reflection really, was set within the framework of primeval history. It sought to answer the questions: how did all these begin and why? We have here a beautifully structured primordial history with the Noah-flood story at its center: (1a) Gen 1-3: Creation, Fall and Promise of Redemption; (2a) Gen 4-5: The First Generation: Cain and Abel; Sin; Interplay of Good and Evil; Seth continuing the tradition of the Good vacated by the death of Abel; (c ) Gen 6-9: The Noah-flood story; (1b) Gen 6-9: Fall Continues, New Creation takes place, New Promise of Redemption (blessings) given; and (2b) Gen 10-11: Sin; Continuing generations of the interplay of Good and Evil, reaching other nations and peoples, from Earth to Heaven, all of the universe.

The scientific answer to these fundamental questions about human life and human history were clothed in ancient myths, such as the two flood stories in the Noah story and the symbolic-mythic tower of Babel. At its roots, the biblical authors are talking of the radical fragility of human enterprise apart from God’s initiative. They are talking of the destructiveness of individual egoism and collective national exercise of power apart from God’s creative generosity. They are talking of Sin as “shedding of innocent blood of a fellow human being (Gen 4,7), who is created in the image of God (Gen 5,6). They are talking of a new over-arching universal covenant, filled with the blessings of love, freedom, justice, peace and integrity of creation. These original blessings are indeed also our final destiny. But for today, as it was yesterday and will be tomorrow, we continue to struggle against Sin lurking to devour us from within us and from outside of us! – Fr. Ben Alforque, MSC