God's Covenant With Noah In The Scriptures

Of all God’s covenants with humans explicitly mentioned in the Scriptures, God’s covenant with Noah in Gen 6:18 has been the most disregarded by scholars. When it is not, just a passing comment is offered. As a result, God’s covenant with Noah has not been taken into account seriously when biblical covenants are defined or examined to find criteria to establish which characteristics bind the biblical covenants all together. The irony of this neglect is that Gen 6:18 has the first occurrence of bĕrît (“covenant”) in the Bible, and therefore, it is the pivot text for arguing on behalf of the unity of the covenants.

It is the interest of this study to pursue the nature of the covenant with Noah in relation to its continuity and discontinuity

It was with their progeny that they started to experience them. Their firstborn became the first felon by killing his brother Abel (Gen 4:8). Then Genesis 4 describes how Cain’s lineage went from bad to worse. In this way, the biblical account highlights that the sin was not restrained; it did not stop with Adam and Eve. On the contrary, it was passed on from generation to generation and spread out through the earth (“all flesh have corrupted,” Gen

17). This wordplay suggests that God will grant to humankind what they want. In other words, God will spoil them because they already decided to be spoiled. Thus, so to speak, God’s sentence cannot be seen as a punitive act. This idea is reflected in the following text: “Then hear in heaven and act and judge Your servants, condemning the wicked by bringing his way on his own head and justifying the righteous [ṣaddîq] by giving him according to his righteousness” (1Ki 8:32 NAU cf. Deut 25:1).

The principle of the lex talionis is also implied. By using the term kî (“because,” “for”), Gen 6:12 states openly that the cause why the earth has been spoiled is the human race. Humans are responsible for the corruption of the earth. That the earth does not spoil itself, it is also indicated by the passive voice (niphal). Having said this, it is obvious why the destruction of the earth was ultimately the cleansing of the human race (v. 13). Just as humankind spoiled the earth, God will spoil humankind. God, then, is upholding justice to the