Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. (Genesis 6:14)
Thanks to a host of well-meaning Christian movie critics, I find my enthusiasm for seeing the movie “Noah” severely waning. Thanks for all the spoilers! It goes without saying that any Bible movie coming out of Hollywood will fall woefully short on accuracy. Face it; these people are script writers that deal in fantasy, not theologians or Bible scholars who are intimate with the Word of God. Not to mention that God chose not to provide us with every detail that took place within this 121-year period of history. The Flood account takes up only four short chapters in the Bible. There is not enough material there to make a 2-hour and 18-minute movie, so Hollywood has to fill in the blanks according to their own imaginations – that being Director and Co-writer, Darren Aronofsky, an atheist, and staring actor, Russell Crowe who is no friend of Christians.
I would hope that thoughtful Christians would take that into consideration. It’s a movie. It is designed to entertain and to make money for the producers and for the theaters on the sale of popcorn and soda. Certainly Christians (or anyone else for that matter) should not take it as a serious portrayal of a biblical narrative. That said, it does get some things right. The Ark is of the correct biblical dimensions. The Flood is global. The Flood is God’s judgment for man’s sin. The Flood is not just the result of rain, but also resulted from the bursting of the “fountains of the deep.” Of course, the movie gets more things wrong than it gets things right. One glaring problem that I found from viewing movie trailers is that the Ark is of a crude construction. It looks like a huge log cabin that could hardly withstand the tsunami-like waves associated with the Great Flood. This image of the Ark stems from evolutionary thinking that assumes ancient man was technologically inept, but that is hardly the picture the Bible presents of pre-flood man: “Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ … Tubalcain, an instructer of every artificer in brass and iron” (Genesis 4:21-22). Not long after Noah and his family came out of the Ark, the Tower of Babel was built (Genesis 11), and after the division of languages, the Egyptians started building their pyramids. It seems implausible to me that Noah would have built anything less than a sturdy, seaworthy vessel, and besides, he had 120 years to work on it. The spoilers also point out that the movie Ark has several doors, while the biblical Ark has only one (Genesis 6:16).
The spoilers point out many other problems with the film. For instance, creation is a result of the big bang. Life emerges out of the waters. The movie implies that Adam and Eve come from apes. Noah seems to care more about animals and the planet than he does about humans including his own family. The sin of mankind is their abuse of the environment and mankind is portrayed as blight upon the earth. The Creator (Who is never referred to as “God”) is impersonal and vindictive. It is implied that God instructs Noah to kill his own granddaughters (born on the Ark, which has no biblical basis), and when he is unable to do so, Noah regards himself as a failure. More could be said concerning the failure of this movie to present a true rendition of the biblical text, however the critics, above all else, decry the film’s purposeful distortion of Scripture. For the low information viewer, the question remains, who was Noah? What was Noah really like?
To answer those questions, one must go to the source, the Bible. Noah is of the godly line of Seth, Adam’s third son named in the Bible (Genesis 4:25). There very well could have been others, but one must remember that one of the purposes of the biblical genealogies is to point to Christ. Noah’s father was Lamech, and his grandfather was Methuselah, whose name means something like “when he dies, judgment.” Methuselah holds the record for longevity; he lived to be 969 years old, and he died the year that the Flood came.
Noah was around 480 years old when God selected him to build the Ark. At that time, “the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years” (Genesis 6:3, emphasis added). So Noah was given 120 years to build the Ark. During that time, he preached to the people trying to get them to repent of their sin. Peter speaking of the people of that time “Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water” (1 Peter 3:20, emphasis added). “For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly” (2 Peter 2:4-5, emphasis added). When Noah and his family (Mrs. Noah, Noah’s three sons and his three daughters-in-law) entered the Ark, Noah was 600 years old (Genesis 7:11).
The reason God brought the Flood was not for ecological reasons as the Gaia-worshiping makers of the “Noah” movie suggest. Second Peter 2:5 (above) talks about God not sparing “the angels that sinned,” and then closely follows with a description of Noah as “a preacher of righteousness.” It must be understood that the angels who rebelled against God along with Lucifer (Satan), are excluded from God’s plan of salvation. So Noah’s preaching was not to fallen angels (demons), but rather to humans who had been enticed to sin by these angels. These people would have been eligible for salvation had they repented. But the mention of the angels is interesting. Some scholars believe that these angels in some form or another mated with humans and created a race of super-humans. This is concluded from the first four verses of Genesis 6. “And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, 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 which they chose … There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. (Genesis 6:1-2, emphasis added). The Hebrew word for “sons of God” in verses 2 and 4 is bene ĕlôhı̂ym and it is always used when referring to angels in the Old Testament. The Hebrew word translated “giants” here is nephı̂ylim and it means “fallen ones.” Of course, there are those who will say that angels do not have sex and others who will suggest that angels (except for God’s angels) cannot take human form. I will not go to war over that, but whatever took place was sufficient to corrupt mankind to the point that God was willing to destroy His entire creation with the exception of those who made it on the Ark. “And GOD 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. And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart … 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.” (Genesis 6:5-6, 11-12, emphasis added). Imagine the degradation and depravity to which mankind had sunk that the great loving heart of God could be so grieved as to destroy His beautiful creation! This had nothing to do with littering the planet.
“But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD” (Genesis 6:8). In Noah and his family was the human race preserved. Noah was given instruction for building the Ark. It was to be 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high (Genesis 6:15). Using an 18-inch cubit, that made the Ark 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high. The Ark was the length of one and one-half football fields and of sufficient capacity to hold 522 railroad cattle cars. The Ark was to have three floors (stories or decks, Genesis 6:16) and “rooms” (Hebrew qênim meaning “nests”) for the animals (Genesis 6:14). The Ark also required a ventilation and lighting system which the Bible describes as a “window” (Genesis 6:16). God instructed Noah to bring enough food for his family and for all of the animals (Genesis 6:20) enough to last them for a year (Genesis 7:14). In order to carry out God’s instructions, Noah had to be an engineer, architect/designer, ship builder, zoologist and other duties as assigned. Noah was no dummy!
The rains came, the crust of the earth broke open allowing superheated, subterranean water to spew into the atmosphere (Genesis 7:11), and the whole earth was covered in water more than 22 feet above the tallest hills/mountains (Genesis 7:20). “And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark” (Genesis 7:21-23, emphasis added). The all-inclusive description of the death wrought by the Flood precludes a small local event as some have suggested.
After 371 days the waters subsided, and Noah was instructed to come out of the Ark (Genesis 8:15-16). Noah released all of the animals, and the first thing he did was to offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving to God (Genesis 8:20-21). God promised never again to destroy the earth with water, and He promised to maintain nature in a stable state (Genesis 8:21); but God was under no delusion that man would remain faithful, “for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (v. 21). To Noah and his family and thereby to us, God reestablished man’s Dominion Mandate: “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth … And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein.” (Genesis 9:1, 7). He also gave to man the authority to render justice. “And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man” (Genesis 9:5-6, emphasis added).
This is the true story of Noah. Now, feel free to go enjoy the false story of Noah, just remember that it is just a movie and not the true account. The real historical account is in the Bible. Read it, and know it before you go see “Noah” the movie.
Ernie's Musings 