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And when he came to the other side, to the country of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men met him, coming out of the tombs, so fierce that no one could pass that way. And behold, they cried out, “What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?” Now a herd of many pigs was feeding at some distance from them. And the demons begged him, saying, “If you cast us out, send us away into the herd of pigs.” And he said to them, “Go.” So they came out and went into the pigs, and behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the waters. The herdsmen fled, and going into the city they told everything, especially what had happened to the demon-possessed men. And behold, all the city came out to meet Jesus, and when they saw him, they begged him to leave their region. Matthew 8:28-34
And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day— just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. Jude 1:6-7
For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked (for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard); then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority. 2 Peter 2:4-10
So, then God took any Angels that indulged in sexual relationships with the daughters of Man and chained them up until Judgment. But the damage had been done. Man had become corrupted and full of evil and disobedience to God, as we see such beginning to happen in our time.
Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms
Now can you picture this? There is Noah and his family suddenly building this giant boat. People surely thought he was nuts. He must have spent a good while working on this thing. Even gathering enough gopher wood would take time. (By the way, no one knows what gopher wood was, only it came from some unidentified tree.) Scripture never tells us how long Noah worked on the Ark, but one can assume it was awhile. Knowing how people can be they probably traveled for miles just to laugh at this fool. And what could Noah tell them. “Hey, God told me to do this. God said:
For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die. (Genesis 6:17)
That probably just brought more division and laughter. “A Flood? What’s a flood?” Remember, it hadn’t rained yet, never been a thunder storm.. Up until now the earth was still watered by morning dew, underground springs and little streams, hardly any kind of threat to anyone and there certainly was nothing big enough to float the Queen Mary Noah was putting together. Besides people had grown so wicked they probably didn’t even recognize God anymore, so who cared what God said.
Who did this Noah guy think he was anyway? If there was a God why would this God talk to Noah and promise to protect his family? How was he any different than anyone else?
But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you. And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female. Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground, according to its kind, two of every sort shall come in to you to keep them alive. Also take with you every sort of food that is eaten, and store it up. It shall serve as food for you and for them.” Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him. (Genesis 6:18-22)
Something to be noted is it says “Of the birds”. The Hebrew word “`owph” (pronounced ōfe) means not only birds, but fowl, flying
Now as to the question whether all the animals would fit in the ark. This is a common objection people raise. How could two of every animal in the world fit in a boat, after all, there exist 1,082,300 species. Ah, so how big was this boat? if you ask people saying all animals wouldn’t fit that question, they probably shrug their shoulders. They don’t know the size, nor can they say how many animals were coming aboard.
It was a big boat. Depending on which scale of cubit you wish to use, and the standard scale was 18 inches at the smaller end and 22 inches at the larger. The Ark would have had a capacity of over 1,300,000 to over 1,500,000 cubic feet of space. Those cubic feet are a bit hard to grasp in the head, so think of it this way. The Ark had the same capacity as 565 train stock cars.
Now we need to guess at how many animals we are talking about hauling in our 565 railroad cars. Using today’s number of species, which we said was 1,082,300, we can immediately eliminate about 1,060,000, meaning all the fish in the sea and a number of other species, simply weren’t on the ark. Some arthropods probably were brought aboard and those that were really didn’t take up much space. There are 838,000 species of arthropods, the largest group by far. We think of them basically as bugs.Many bugs don’t breath through nostrils, but through tubes in their bodies. In Genesis 7:22 notes, “Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died.” All many arthropods would need to survive would be something that floated, like a fallen tree, the remains of a knocked down dwelling or a dead body, something they could crawl up upon out of the water.
Anyway, you subtract all the species that didn’t need be in the Ark, you are left with 21,100 species and 2 each equals 42,200. Round this up to 50,000 to include those clean species and calculate that the average one, (including dinosaurs) was the size of a sheep. You can transport 50,000 sheep in 208 train cars, only 26% of the Ark’s capacity. Plenty of room for all the animals and their feed and supplies, plus Noah and his family.
However, there were probably less than 50,000 creatures, far less. Over and over God told Noah to take birds according to their kind, creeping things according to their kind, beasts according to their kind. You wouldn’t be talking species, you would be talking about kind. To give an example of what this probably means is Noah would not need to take a Doberman Pincher, Collie, Labrador Retriever, Chihuahua, and other dogs. He probably only needed a male and female wolf because all our modern dogs come from the Wolf’s DNA through gene mutation, cross-breeding, natural selection, etc. This means Noah might have been dealing with less than 50,000 creatures.
But God had demanded this and Noah had the faith to follow God.
And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. (Hebrews 11: 6-7)
Then the Lord said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation. Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate, 3 and seven pairs of the birds of the heavens also, male and female, to keep their offspring alive on the face of all the earth. For in seven days I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living thing[c] that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.” And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him. Genesis 7:1-5
It doesn’t say, but I don’t believe Noah had to go out and play Frank “Bring ‘Em Back Alive”Buck. I think God brought all the animals for the Ark to where Noah was for him to lead onto the boat.
Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth. And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood. Of clean animals, and of animals that are not clean, and of birds, and of everything that creeps on the ground, two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah, as God had commanded Noah. And after seven days the waters of the flood came upon the earth. Genesis 7:6-10
Okay here, Noah was six hundred years of age when the flood water came. Noah and his wife and their three son’s and daughter-in-laws entered the ark just in time to escape the water. So we have to ask, just when did Noah begat Jepheth, Shem and Ham (and I still say Ham was an odd name to give a good Jewish boy, but maybe Ham wasn’t all that good). These three boys had to be old enough to have wives by the time the Ark was set afloat. Noah was six hundred years old and all we have been told so far is that Noah had three sons after he was 500 years old in Genesis 5:32. Now we know about a hundred years had passed between have any children and clambering aboard his boat. Do we know anything else?
These are the generations of Shem. When Shem was 100 years old, he fathered Arpachshad two years after the flood. And Shem lived after he fathered Arpachshad 500 years and had other sons and daughters. Genesis 11:10-11.
We see that Noah was 502 years old when Shem was born according to Genesis 11:10-11 Since Noah began having children at age 500, Shem was not the firstborn. If he wasn’t, who was?
Well, process of elimination. In Genesis 9:24 we read
When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him.
So Ham was the youngest of the boys. How do we know? We get the answer from the context of the verses surrounding 9:14
Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned backward, and they did not see their father's nakedness. Genesis 9:20-23
This says that Ham was the youngest.
Since we now know Noah was 502 when Shem was born and Ham was born after that as the youngest, and we know that Noah began having children at age 500, this only leaves Jepheth as the first born.
But there are other questions besides the ages of Noah’son. First, Noah was considered a righteous man, yet one of the first things we learn after he and his family survive the great flood is that he planted a vineyard and got drunk on the wine he produced. This was not a good choice of behavior.
In Ephesians 5:18 we are warned: “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the spirit.” Of course here we quote a New Testament verse, something written long after Noah, yet what is wrong in the eyes of God is wrong always.
The Jewish Rabbis in their midmash tried to excuse Noah’s behavior. They argue that Noah was ignorant of the intoxication of wine not having any experience with fermentation. Maybe, but Noah was not born yesterday. he lived for 500 years during the evil that the world had become and probably in that time there were some drinking parties.
So Noah stripped down and fell asleep in his tent. What was the big deal that Ham stumbled upon his nakedness?
Adam and Eve were ashamed of being naked and be seen by a family member even way back that was a shameful act. Ham also acted shamefully. He should have simply covered his father and kept quite about it, but instead he decided to make it a display. He went out and told his brothers and probably expected they would go see what he had seen.
Instead they respected their dad and walked in backward so as not to see him and covered his body.
When Noah awoke and found out how his youngest son made sport of him he declared a curse, not on Ham but on Canaan.
Why Canaan?
Because God can see the future as well as the present. He can also look into the heart of man and he must have seen that Canaan would contain the same features of disrespect and carnal nature of his father, Ham. He would see who generated from Canaan, Amorites, Jebusites, Sidonistes and others who would war against Israel. In this curse was the seed that sent Abraham and the Jews to possess the land of Canaan.
In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. And rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights. On the very same day Noah and his sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth, and Noah's wife and the three wives of his sons with them entered the ark, they and every beast, according to its kind, and all the livestock according to their kinds, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, according to its kind, and every bird, according to its kind, every winged creature. They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh in which there was the breath of life. And those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him. And the Lord shut him in.
The flood continued forty days on the earth. The waters increased and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. The waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits[d] deep. And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind. Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. They were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed on the earth 150 days. Genesis 7:11-24
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