Genesis 6:5-14
The measurements
A world of violence, a decision, and a man given a set of dimensions and told to start.
People of the Bible
Noah
The man who built for a hundred years against a sky that had not changed.
The world Noah lives in is described as filled with violence, and the decision to end it is made. Noah is told to build, given measurements, and told what is coming. He builds. The account gives him no recorded speech during any of it, only the repeated note that he did what he was commanded. Then the water comes, the door is shut, and everything outside is gone. When the ground is dry he steps out, builds an altar, and receives a covenant with a sign hung in the clouds.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Noah
- 01
- 02
Genesis 7:1-16
The door shut
The creatures come, the family goes in, and the account states plainly who closed the door behind them.
- 03
Genesis 8:1-19
The waiting
The flood is fast and the drying is slow. A raven, then a dove, then a leaf, then bare ground.
- 04
Genesis 9:1-17
The bow in the cloud
A covenant is made with every living thing, and a weapon of war is hung in the sky as its sign.
- 05
Genesis 9:18-29
The vineyard
The account does not end on the altar. The man who survived the flood is undone by his own tent, and his sons respond in two different ways.
Why it matters
Noah is obedience without an audience. He is also the hinge of the early chapters: the human family is reduced to eight people and begins again, with a promise attached that the earth will not be unmade this way a second time. The chapter after the covenant records his failure, which is the Bible refusing to make him a legend.
5 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
