Essay on Genesis, Ch. 4 - 11
After the moral failure of the original Genesis-2 humans, Adam and Eve, they were expelled from the Garden of Eden. As stated in the fourth chapter of Genesis, the brothers Cain and Abel were born to Adam and Eve. Living now beyond the friendly confines of the Garden of Eden, along with the thronging masses of the Genesis-1 creation, Cain and Abel plied different trades, becoming either a farmer (Cain) or a herder (Abel).
Cain, a farmer, brought fruits of the soil as sacrifices; while Able, a herder, brought fat portions from the firstborn of his flock. The Lord approved of Abel’s meat sacrifices, but not of Cain’s grain sacrifices. One may only speculate that Cain’s attitude was insufficiently penitential. Disgruntled, Cain slew Abel, whose “blood cried out to the Lord from the ground.” Cain would henceforth become a restless wanderer with only God’s own “mark of Cain” preventing swift retribution in a violent world that aggressively recognized wrong-doing. God decreed that anyone killing Cain would suffer vengeance seven times over. Evidently, some elementary notions of justice had already come into existence by that time: After all, the disobedience of Adam and Eve had initiated an accumulation of moral knowledge based on perception, intuition and reflection. After Abel died without issue, and when Adam was 130 years old (Gen. 5:3), Adam and Eve had another son, Seth.
Cain found a marriage partner (evidently, from Genesis-1 stock) and sired Enoch. Several generations later, Lamech was born into a consistently violent world. Lamech commented that “if Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times” - - seeming to imply that he, Lamech, bore sin eleven times more deadly than Cain’s sin.
In this poisonous atmosphere, it seems to have become axiomatic that sacrifices should be made to the Lord. Cain and Abel must have been aware that their parents were driven out of the Garden of Eden for disobedience; hence, one assumes that the sacrifices of Cain and Abel were made as atonements for this sin. The level of sin and violence only increased from Cain’s time to Lamech’s time.
Genesis 4:26 concludes with the observation that, during this time of violence and need, “people began to call on the name of the Lord.” This search for divine help prefigured the future prophecy of Joel, who spoke of “The Day of the Lord” or “The Great Day of Judgment” (Joel 2:28-32). Cain lived shortly after 4000 B.C. Joel lived in the 800’s B.C. Thus, Joel’s proclamation occurred millennia after the times of Cain and Lamech. Joel’s writing includes the passage “I (the LORD) will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions … and everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved … and in Jerusalem there will be deliverance.”
The generations from Adam and Eve to Noah and his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth are mentioned in the fifth chapter of Genesis. There were the ten strongly overlapping generations from Adam to Noah. Among these antediluvian patriarchs, Adam is generation #1; while Noah is generation #10. Seven of these ten patriarchs lived to be at least 900 years old at the time of their deaths. Only the 10th generation (Noah) was born after the death of Adam, thereby becoming the only antediluvian patriarch whom Adam could not possibly have met. We will assume here that Adam was created in 4000 B.C., splitting an uncertainty interval from 5000 B.C. to 3000 B.C. (Click here for some background information on OT historical dating. All dates in these analyses are approximate guides for ordering events.)
Upon data-mining chapters five through nine of Genesis, one infers that, from the creation of Adam to the death of Noah, there elapsed about two thousand years, extending from about 4000 B.C. to about 2000 B.C. These two thousand years can be divided in at least two ways: First, from the creation of Adam to the Flood there were 1650 years, allowing for Noah’s outliving of the Flood by 350 years (Gen. 9:28). Hence, the Flood occurred in 2350 B.C., and Noah died 350 years later. Second, from the creation of Adam to the birth of Noah there were 1050 years, allowing for Noah’s 950 years of lifetime (Gen. 9:29) ending in about 2000 B.C. Hence, Noah was born in 2950 B.C. and died 950 years later. In the fifth chapter of Genesis, after Noah was 500 years old, he became the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Hence, his sons were born after 2450 B.C. and before the Flood in 2350 B.C. Finally, we note that the patriarch Abram (later re-named Abraham) was born fairly close to the time that Noah died. We assume here that Abram was born in 2000 B.C.
Upon observing how great the wickedness of the human race had become (except for Noah and his sons), in the sixth chapter of Genesis the Lord regretted having made the human race. The Lord then devised appropriate counter-measures, featuring the Flood and the Ark (Gen. 6:9 - 8:22). The Lord then resolved, “Never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.” These statements (Gen. 8:21 and 9:15) seem to indicate that non-aqueous punishment will be employed in case future behavior gets out of hand. For the present, however, God establishes a rainbow covenant with mankind (Gen. 9:13).
In the nineth chapter of Genesis, Noah’s three sons (Shem, Ham, and Japheth) were among those coming out of the Ark. Their progeny became “scattered over the whole earth” (Gen. 9:19). If the Flood is assumed to have been localized in or near the Middle East (e.g., the “Black Lake” destroying all impediments to becoming the “Black Sea”); then it would have naturally been expected that a mix of Noah’s sons and other, remotely-placed Flood survivors would have then repopulated the destroyed areas. On the other hand, if the Flood had been truly universal except for the survivors in the Ark, then repopulation would have been a problem. In that case, one would apply Origen’s “Principle of Absurdity,” namely, that whenever a Biblical passage implies something physically impossible, morally unacceptable, or religiously impious; then one reads that passage metaphorically or allegorically.
Ultimately, Shem became the head of the Semites, who lived in western Asia. (For some unknown linguistic reason, the expected name, “Shemites,“ was replaced by “Semites.”) Ham became the head of peoples who lived in Africa. Japheth became the head of peoples who lived in Europe and Northern Asia.
In Genesis 9:18-29 one reads the curious, lurid story of Noah, his sons (Shem, Ham, and Japheth), and Ham’s son, Canaan: After an evening of excessive wine-drinking by Noah, only Shem and Japheth “covered their father’s naked body.” One might hypothesize that, for an insufficient participation in the covering of Noah, Ham was punished vicariously: His son, Canaan, was cursed to become a slave of Shem and Japheth. Undoubtedly, other hypotheses are possible, but are not pursued here.
In the tenth chapter of Genesis, a “Table of the Nations” descended from Shem, Ham, and Japheth is presented. Canaan is now mentioned as the fourth son of Ham (Gen. 10:6). Another of Ham’s descendants, Nimrod, had a kingdom that was once centered on Uruk (Gen. 10:10) and that played a role in the Gilgamesh narrative.
In the eleventh chapter of Genesis, the narrative of the Tower of Babel is presented, followed by a more tightly focused line of descent from Shem to Terah and his son, Abram (among other family members).
The Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1-9) was one instance of a type of architecture known as a ziggurat, which is a monumental, stepped-pyramidal, terraced building that reaches up into the sky. Such a “skyscraper” was intended to be a bridge to the heavens and to the idol-gods such as Marduk of Babylonia. The Tower of Babel purported to show that humans could do anything, thereby “making a name for themselves,” but also establishing - - independently of the Greek tradition - - that “hubris breeds nemesis.” God destroyed this hubris by confusing the common language of the humans into many different, incompatible languages. Thus, over-confident people were scattered over the face of the earth.
By “a more tightly focused line of descent” (Gen. 11:10-32), we mean “omitting distant cousins.” Terah and Abram (among other family members) originally lived in Ur of the Chaldeans (southeast Mesopotamia). Without any divine intervention, Terah decided to move his family from Ur to Canaan. Here, “Canaan” refers to an area near the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, and not to a son of Ham. However, Terah went no further than northwest Mesopotamia, to the city named Harran. Here, “Harran” refers to a city, and not to Abram’s deceased brother, Haran. Abram will be featured in the next blog in this series.