SHEM

My brothers and I spent our time on the ark shoveling feces,

Feeding the animals from the stored fodder, and fixing leaks,

While our wives laundered our stained, dung reeking clothes.

At the beginning of our voyage we often cleaned up vomit

As the ark pitched, tossed, plunged and heaved on waves.

We had rigged a system of pipes and tubes to wash filth

Into the sentina, the bilge at the bottom of the boat.

A filter screened out the solids while a screw pump

Sent the liquids into the sea through the hull.

Another pump forced water in to wash the decks,

While we let gravity bring potable rainwater for drink

Through another pipe system with valves, tanks and taps

That siphoned water to each pair of animals in their stalls.

Despite the cacophony of animal calls: screaming peacocks,

Quacking ducks, honking geese, gobbling turkeys, croaking frogs,

Shrieking monkeys, bellowing moose, bugling elk, growling bears,

Braying donkeys, whinnying zebras, wailing koalas, barking deer,

Barking dogs, meowing cats, clucking chickens, peeping chicks,

Grunting pigs, lowing cows, bleating sheep, neighing horses,

Trumpeting elephants, laughing hyenas, snorting javelinas,

Howling wolves, roaring lions, squeaking rats, and a rooster

Crowing at all hours of the day and night, we felt a peace

Rest on the ark and a confidence that all would be well.

After the rains, on days when the seas were calm,

The animals would all be quiet while we waited,

In the eerie silence, with the beams creaking,

While we waited for something to happen;

And that was the hardest part, the waiting.

A year after entering the ark,

On the first day of the first month

Of Noah’s six hundredth and first year,

The water had evaporated from the earth.

By the twenty-seventh day of the second 

Month the earth was completely dry.

Praise be to the God of our salvation

Who alone had saved us from His wrath!

God had designed the ark, called Noah to

Build to His pattern, then filled the ark with

The chosen few, and steered the remnant

Through the rising waves to a safe harbor.

As if recreating a new creation out of chaos

Noah then removed the covering from the ark

And together we pushed our heads into the sun,

Gasping and breathing deeply the rain cleansed air.

You can imagine our joy when God called us to leave

The covenant ark along with all the birds and animals,

And every creeping thing that stowed away in the bilge.

Our exit from our temporary home was without fanfare,

But more triumphant than our entry, with thanksgiving,

And without the mocking crowds and ominous clouds.

Our wives laughed and danced on the springy meadow

While the animals skipped and gamboled off their prison,

Galloping off by families to spread and breed prolifically.

Then Noah built an altar of unhewn stone and sacrificed

Seven clean animals and seven clean birds as offerings

To the great Lord God Yahweh, the Existing One who is.

From the ark’s construction to the altar’s consecration,

With obedience and worship, through faith and works,

Noah faithfully fulfilled his abiding devotion to God.

Raising his hands in prayer,

Noah thanked God for his mercy,

Praised God for his majestic power,

And asked God for His forgiveness,

For his sins and the sins of his family.

Yahweh smelled the soothing aroma

Of burnt offerings appeasing his wrath,

The lifeblood offered in propitiation for sin;

And Yahweh said to Himself,

“I will never again curse the ground on account of man,

For every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood;

And I will never again destroy every living thing,

As I have done.

While the earth remains,

Seedtime and harvest,

And cold and heat,

And summer and winter,

And day and night

Shall not cease.”

Order was restored

To the creation

With a new rhythm

Of seasons, cycles, and signs

Of God’s faithful assurances,

And His promises of sustaining grace.

While the earth remains, until the very end,

We could be sure that day would follow night,

Confident that the sun would rise in the mornings,

Secure that the seasons would follow one another;

What we sowed in spring we could reap in autumn,

Storing summer’s bounty for the cold winter months;

Though a warm hearth could not keep away the chill

Of earth’s eventual end expecting His Last Judgment.

While the earth remains we could live out fearful lives

In faith, hope, and love, all in submission to God’s will,

Trusting in an unbroken covenant with day and night,

And grateful for God’s daily, providential provisions.

Noah, as mediator of mercy, covenant family head,

God’s elect representative, a priest to the creation,

Received God’s renewed blessings and mandate

To be fruitful and multiply, to increase in number,

To fill the earth, swarm, and populate the world,

Together with my brothers and I,

As heirs of God’s common grace

Tempering man’s common curse,

For an everlasting covenant of love.

Baptized by immersion in the flood, delivered by the ark’s wood,

This new start seemed a more sobering event than the first birth

That ushered in man with unalloyed goodness and universal awe.

Wiping out the human race would not eliminate sin and its curse,

Though it did reveal the limits of God’s long-suffering patience:

The power and pervasive extent of His severe judgment

And his mercy displayed in the promise to preserve earth,

To reverse Cain’s infertile curse that had sterilized the soil,

And restore humanity’s remnant with a covenant of grace.

Despite man’s inclination to evil from conception and birth,

God inaugurated a new plan to give man a second chance,

To choose whom to serve and to seek after His good grace.

This new dispensation was tinged by the Fall and the Flood

As a cloud tempers the noonday sun and earth’s shadow

Stains the moon with blood.

The fear of man perturbed the animals and dread came over

The beasts on the earth, the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea,

And all creeping things on the ground where man’s shadow fell.

The rule of man over creation was reluctantly restored;

Every moving thing with life was given into man’s hands,

Everything was given as meat to eat with the green plants,

And man the vegetarian became an omnivorous carnivore,

While carnivores took to hunt, stealthily stalking their prey.

Judicial authority over life and death was relegated to man;

Power was vested in the state to mete capital punishment

On premeditated murder, on mayhem and man-slaughter.

Concessions to kill for food and restrictions on taking life

Highlighted God’s gift value placed on redemptive blood,

On the salvific worth of an animal sacrificed as offering.

For the life of a creature is in the blood, vivifying blood

Manufactured in the marrow, red blood in white bone

Pumped from the heart, circulating through the body,

Borne on plasma, nourishing cells with earth and air,

Defending the body against diseases and sickness,

And clotting bleeding wounds with scabs and scars. 

Blood is the fire of the soul, the flame of life, burning

An atoning gift on the altar of guilt and repentance.

The blood of an animal exchanged for a human life,

The shed blood of a lamb or bull, a sacrifice of blood

As substitute for our sins and propitiation from wrath,

Keeps us in fellowship with the Creator author of life,

And saves us from dread death’s eternal separation

Through faith in God’s goodness and covenant love.

Flesh could be eaten but with the lifeblood drained,

And murder demanded justice and accountability.

Suicide and euthanasia were called to account

For erasing life to escape pain and suffering,

For assuming authority over one’s own life,

And for robbing God of His right over our life.

Abortion on demand was a vile abomination

Requiring justice for the voiceless innocents

Sacrificed on the altar bed of inconvenience;

As abhorrent to God as children immolated

To Moloch on the fiery pyre of vapid idolatry.

Even the animals had to give an accounting

And pay the death penalty for killing a man.

“Whoever sheds man’s blood,

By man his blood shall be shed,

For in the image of God He made man.”

The Lord’s words to Noah reminded me

Of the Lord’s covering Cain with justice,

Preserving him from lawless vengeance.

The Fall had not robbed man of dignity;

The image of God was still his birthright,

Requiring a death-right for robbing life.

Then God spoke to Noah

And to us, his sons, saying,

“Now behold, I Myself do establish

My covenant with you,

And with your descendants after you,

For all successive generations.

I establish My covenant with you;

And all flesh shall never again be cut off

By the water of the flood,

Neither shall there again be a flood to destroy the earth.”

Three times God promised not to wipe out life on earth with water,

His royal grant confirmed with a rainbow, that prismatic refraction

Of white light splitting seven component colors into a spectral arc

When the tail end of a rainstorm scatters the sun’s bright shafts.

Pointing heavenward, the weapon of God’s wrath was disarmed,

The warrior-bow unstrung, the quiver emptied of storm and rain,

The battle-bow relaxed, carried in a horizontal position of peace,

Proving God’s promise to never again cover the earth with flood.

When the covenant rainbow signed and sealed

God’s promise of providence across the sky,

Noah cried out in exaltation,

“Glorious bow of light out of darkness, remembrance of peace,

Remind us of Eden’s flowered garden and God’s grace to man;

Remember us with favor as we in our weakness bow before you.

Seed our hearts with the fruit of light and water, love and wrath.

Remind us that you dwell above the heavens,

And in the contrite heart.”

So God said to Noah,

“Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds,

I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant

Between God and all living creatures

Of every kind on the earth.

This is the sign of the covenant I have established

Between me and all life on the earth.”

Gazing at the rainbow above us gracing the clouds, we were filled

With the covenant surety of completeness, wholeness, and peace,

The assurance granted by God’s promise of creation preservation

As an anchor to the soul fixed on the hope of our Redeemer’s rock.

True hope was born out of this second creation and first salvation,

Even as false hopes crumbled like mountains, eroded like stones,

Washed away by torrents like dirt, blown away by winds like dust.

Following the Flood,

Noah became a farmer, a man of the soil,

The first to plant a vineyard and cultivate grapes to ferment wine.

Now Noah suffered survivor’s guilt and numbed his pain with drink;

One day he lay in his tent inebriated, unconscious, and uncovered

For all the world to see.

Ham, our youngest brother, hot-headed and hasty, saw him naked

And came to tell us so that we could laugh at our father’s expense,

A righteous man exposed to ridicule and shame.

But Japheth and I shouldered a blanket

And walking backwards into the tent,

We draped it over our father’s body,

Averting our eyes

To avoid seeing his nakedness,

And so shield his shame.

When Noah awoke,

He was furious on discovering

Ham’s shameless disrespect

For his drunk and disabled father.

Unable to curse his son directly,

Since God had already blessed us with his covenant,

Noah lay the fury-curse on Canaan, Ham’s fourth son,

In consequence of exposing the shame of nakedness,

The shame that afflicted Adam and Eve after the Fall

When convicted of their sin, their nakedness exposed.

Condemning Canaan to become the lowest of slaves,

A servant of servants to his uncles,

And to my people a sworn foe

In the line and seed of Cain,

Noah cursed Ham’s son.

Noah also prophesied

A generational curse

Mixed with a blessing:

“Praise be to the Lord,

Blessed be the God of Shem!

May Canaan be the slave of Shem.

May God extend Japheth’s territory;

May Japheth live in the tents of Shem,

And may Canaan be the slave of Japheth.”

The generational curse rippled out from Noah;

Exposed in his stupor, inciting Ham’s indiscretion,

Crippling his grandson Canaan with heavy shackles,

And forcing into captivity and chaining in slavery millions.

Sibling rivalries evolved into family feuding and tribal wars,

Mushrooming into wholesale industries of human trafficking,

Earning sin’s taskmaster more wages from suffering and death.

Hidden in Noah’s curse was an invitation to turn to the living Lord,

An oracle to the nations descended from the three sons of Noah.

Framed by Canaan’s slavery to Shem and Japheth, a pearl grew,

A pearl of great treasure formed, a pearl of full covenant promise 

Proffering a welcome and an open door to receive rich blessings:

The blessing of forgiveness for the past and hope for the future,

The blessing of redemption for all peoples, whatever their state,

The blessing of fellowship, unity, and peace, dwelling in one tent.

Assured that the covenant keeping God would dwell in my tents

And bless the brotherhood who took shelter in my household,

I welcomed pilgrims arriving from all the nations, bearing gifts

Into the open door of my tent, laying them at my son’s cradle;

I sought the fatherhood that covered our covenant blessing,

The blessing God bestowed on my name: Shem, the Name.

My name was given for a chosen people set apart for God,

A people dedicated to the name of God, Yahweh His Name,

The Lord who promises presence, protection, and provision,

The Lord who saved a remnant from the flood of His wrath,

The Lord who receives sacrificial offerings on a stone altar,

Who gave me my name in remembrance of His holy Name.

In awed humility I fell prone, overwhelmed by God’s favor,

Blessed by the renown that God would give to my seed,

Through whom the Promised Seed would come to save,

To redeem mankind from the tribulations of the Fall,

And restore fellowship with our Heavenly Father —

Glory be to the coming Name above all Names!

Noah lived to nine hundred and fifty years old,

The last of the long-lived antediluvian patriarchs

And the first father of the postdiluvian race of men.

Noah’s remains had been buried with the ark’s remnants

On the heights of Mount Ararat, but it became the practice

To mummify the family patriarchs coiled and stuffed in an urn

And display them in a prominent position for ritual veneration.

Meanwhile along the Nile, Egypt’s pharaohs built pyramids

As monuments to their glory and palaces for the afterlife,

While the kings of the Levant built beehive tholos tombs,

And the Saka interred their kings in round kurgan mounds.

When we buried Noah, a white dove flew out of the grave

And fluttering above us whispered these words,

“The resurrection is real.”

REFERENCES:

https://www.wikiart.org/en/gustave-dore/the-dove-sent-forth-from-the-ark-1866

Genesis 8-9

Isaiah 54:9

Jeremiah 31:35-37

Jeremiah 33:20-26

Scott Hahn, Kinship and Covenant

Peter J. Gentry and Stephen J. Wellum, Kingdom and Covenant

Bruce A. McDowell, Noah: A Righteous Man in a Wicked Age

Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologues: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview