Genesis 6:9: “These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a righteous man and perfect in his generation, Noah walked with God.

 

This verse really had me baffled and I am not saying I unlocked any new secrets here, but my journey to understand this verse led me to II Kings and the Book of Ezekiel to find some answers.

 

Here is what was throwing me.  The context tells us that God found evil on the earth and decided to destroy the entire earth with a flood. However, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. This brings us to verse 9 where it says: “These are the generations of Noah…”  The word generations is yaled which is the word used for children and would logically be the word you would use here because all that is mentioned in verse ten are his three children.   What is strange is that before mentioning the children it list three things about Noah.  He was a righteous man,  perfect in his generations, and he walked with God.  Then it picks up and list the three children.

 

I think we are dealing with a play on words here.  He had three physical children but the Talmud points out that it also mentions three attributes which were like children to him.   I remember I had a student who used to tell me about all his great plans and all the things he was going to accomplish.  Then he got married and he and his wife shared all these great plans and ambitions.  Then he had a baby daughter and he said to me: “You, know when I looked at that little baby girl all my dreams, and ambitions suddenly changed.  Suddenly, my student had a new focus. The focus moved from himself to a little child and that little child became the center of his world.  I believe that is why these three attributes are listed, they were the focus of his world, the focus of all his attention. This is another reason he found grace in the eyes of the Lord. This is one of the reasons as to why God spared him from His judgment.

 

Noah was a righteous man.  Ok, we understand that, he was a tzidike.  We have studied that word out.  He walked with God.  We have addressed that many times, But what is this  perfect in his generation?  Here the word perfect is tamim which has the idea of completion or consumption.  The word generation or as some translations say peers is the Hebrew word  dorath  which could be used for generation but is most often used for a circle. I guess you can say the life cycle is circular and therefore you get generations from a circle and boom you have something that sort of fits.  Certainly to say Noah was consumed or completed in a circle doesn’t make much sense. Or does it?  This is a continuous and unbroken circle.  Where else do we see this?  We see it with Elisha in II Kings when he wanted a double portion of  Elijah’s blessing and Elijah told him that was a hard thing to ask but if he Elisha saw him go to heaven he would get it.  What did Elisha see?  A chariot of fire. Yet the focus was on the circle of the wheels.  We have the wheels of Ezekiel, a vision which changed his entire life.  It is interesting that the Jews will read Ezekiel chapter one on the day of Pentecost.  They see this circular fire as harkening back to the fire that led the children of Israel to the promise land. We all know what happened in the upper room on the day of Pentecost.  The circle represents the passion of God.

 

Noah was delivered from the judgment of God because he was a righteous man, who completed the circle or passion of God and thus walked, (the halakah, the righteous walk) with God.

 

The point is this.  Salvation is through Jesus Christ alone and the finished work of the cross. That get’s us to heaven, but it does not get us into the passion of God.  Christians are hungry to experience the passion of God.  They will shout, they will sing, they will dance, they roll in the aisles wanting to feel and/or experience the passion of God. But when hard times come, they go off in their corner and shake.  When hard times came for Noah he lived his name, he rested, he went about his business preparing for the coming judgment.  You see Noah found the passion of God, not by singing and shouting, but by walking the halakah, the righteous walk.  Paul tells us in Philippians 2:12 that we are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. God is, after all, a holy God and if you want to experience His passion, you need to walk a holy (righteous) life.

Subscribe to our free Daily Hebrew Word Study for in-depth commentary using Biblical Hebrew!

* indicates required