Before the Flood

AM Psalm 16, 17 • PM Psalm 22
Gen. 6:1-8 • Heb. 3:12-19 • John 2:1-12

Today’s Old Testament reading is from right before the Noah’s ark story. The events leading to the flood are confusing and upsetting for several reasons. The first reason is that sons of God are mentioned, which is confusing enough because as Christians, we believe that Jesus is God’s only begotten son. On top of that, these sons have children with human women and produce giants known as nephilim, “the heroes that were of old, the warriors of renown.” Nephilim are only described briefly one other time in the Hebrew bible in Numbers, but they seem to be a key to the degradation of the earth before the flood.

I asked a friend whether he knew any background, and he pointed me to the Book of Enoch, an apocalyptic Hebrew text which was not included in the Bible. In this book, the reasons for God’s sorrow for making humans are elaborated, and surprisingly, the sorrow does not seem to hinge upon human behavior, but angelic disobedience. According to Enoch, some of God’s angels, the Watchers, decided to come down to earth to teach humans the things that only heavenly beings should know (such as divination and metalworking). What was worse, though, was that these Watchers decided to breed with human women. The giants they produced began greedily consuming all the humans’ acquisitions, then consuming humans, and then consuming each other.

With this extra story to chew on, I began to understand the flood in a new way. Perhaps this is not a story of a capricious God who decides he dislikes his creation, nor a story of horrible evil people who can never do right. The Watchers who had seemed so wise and powerful had led the people astray just like the serpent had led Adam and Eve astray. The world now had other beings upon it who were more powerful than people, beings that were their own relatives, but more ruthless and more gluttonous. Most of the people did not see another way, but, as the last words of the assigned reading say, “Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord.”

This resonated with me deeply. Sometimes, even now, we screw up so badly, whether intentionally or unintentionally, that we have to leave the majority of what we have come to know behind. We can’t delude ourselves into thinking that we will train the nephilim out of cannibalism, or that we will become cunning enough to deal with the temptations of the Watchers. Instead, we have to trust God, who as we say in Eucharistic Prayer C, calls us again and again to return.

Written by Haley Hixson

11:00 service, Education for Ministry Co-Mentor, and dishwasher on Wednesday community meals.