Noah & Abraham (part 1 of 2)

By faith Noah, when he was warned about things not yet seen, with reverent regard constructed an ark for the deliverance of his family.  Through faith he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. – Hebrews 11:7  (NET)

Such an interesting character, this Noah fellow.  The story of him and his ark is one that people have loved to tell.  It is a fascinating tale of the Creator God’s judgment upon wickedness through the flooding of the world, along with the miraculous preservation of the pairs of animals, as the animals, along with Noah and his family, rested safely in the ark.  Here in the epistle to the Hebrews, as indicated by our text, the reader comes to learn something quite interesting about Noah.  It is learned that “he was warned about things not yet seen.” 

Essentially, in this, though these “things not yet seen” was an alert concerning a coming event that was ultimately a negative event, a promise about something to come was shared with Noah.  Having received this warning, Noah, “with reverent regard constructed an ark for the deliverance of his family.”  So Noah, though he could not look out and see what his God had promised, as the writer of the Hebrews letter indicates (thus sharing the common perception of the Noah story in that day), responded in faith to the promise by building an ark for the purpose of delivering his family.  We can also hear the author speaking according to the over-arching exile and exodus motif that seems to pervade the understanding of those that would compose Scripture, as an exile of judgment (flood) was at hand, but the Creator God provides an exodus (deliverance via the ark). 

According to this writer, what was the result of this response of faith from Noah?  Reflecting what can be understood to be a then-prevalent interpretation of the Noah tradition, the reader is informed that “he,” that being Noah, “condemned the world,” but more importantly for our purposes here, through this response of faith to what was understood to be the unseen promise of his God, Noah “became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.”

Because Scripture must be read with the entire narrative in mind, and because a purported recipient of the epistle to the Hebrews would hear the text with a mind shaped by the story of Israel (as should be the case for any that confess Jesus as Lord), this statement about Noah would (and should) immediately call someone to mind.  Of whom is the hearer/reader reminded?  Naturally, the reader quickly realizes that this statement about Noah make him sound a lot like Abraham. 

That said, if one was to look into the fourth chapter of Romans, and thus see a first century reckoning (through the lens of the Christ-event) of how the story of Abraham was then perceived (not necessarily using Romans as a vehicle for the interpretation of Hebrews), what is it that could be found there in regards to Abraham?  One would read “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness” (4:3b).  With this, of course, the Apostle Paul is quoting from the fifteenth chapter of the book of Genesis, which would function to call to mind the entirety of that chapter, and indeed the entire Abraham story, as said chapter plays a crucial role in that story. 

Before one can look to that particular portion of Genesis, however, there is a need to know why this is said of Abraham.  In chapter of twelve of Genesis, the Creator God is reported to have spoken to the man that was then named Abram, saying “Go out from your country, your relatives, and your father’s household to the land that I will show you.  Then I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great, so that you will exemplify divine blessing” (12:1b-2).  Here, and though the story of Noah chronologically and Scripturally precedes the story of Abraham, because knowledge of the story of Noah is contingent on knowledge of the story of Abraham, and because the story of Noah, for the covenant people of God, can be interpreted through the story of Abraham, one could safely pause and say that Noah, in the salvation that God offered to him, most assuredly exemplified divine blessing.