Genesis 6, 7, 8

You Don't Need a Deity to Know Which Way the Wind Blows

God does not like what his creation has done with the earth. Man is so wicked that God regrets creating him and decides to start fresh with a whole new group of people to disappoint him. By my count, this makes try number 3. Third time's the charm, Lord! Good luck! But here's a creation tip, God: next time, forgo the trees hung with sin fruit. Just a suggestion.

God's plan to re-create creation? Flood the earth, killing everything. Except the fish and sea mammals. They would keep on swimming. Maybe the ocean waters baptized them all thousands of years before the concept was invented, cleansing them of Original Sin. Makes as much sense as anything else.

But Noah, it turns out, pleases God. Noah is the only just person on the entire earth. Well, Noah and his wife. Uh, and his three sons. And, um, their wives. Hmm. Maybe if God looked around some more he could fine enough just people to commission a flotilla of arks. That way there would be enough room for all the frigging insects in the world.

God commands Noah to build a boat that's 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits tall. Doesn't sound that big until you realize that each cubit is approximately 18 inches. That makes Noah's ark an astounding 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet tall! Cartoons and coloring books about Noah always have the guy building the ship with his family as the community mocks their efforts as a waste of time. That doesn't actually happen. It's a good addition to the story, though. Adds drama and irony.

Here's a question: how long do you think it would take one man and his three sons to build such a monstrous boat? A few months? Years? A lifetime?

Nah, 7 days. I just hope Noah was in the arkbuilder's union, because that's a lot of overtime right there.

These Elephants Are Driving Me Crazy!

God, ever the control freak, instructs Noah to make a window in the ark--just one; wouldn't want to let the stink out--and a door on one side. "A door?" says Noah. "Great idea. I knew it was missing something."

Chapter 6 ends with God telling Noah to gather 2 of every animal, but chapter 7 begins with God telling Noah to gather 7 of each clean beast and fowl and 2 of each unclean beast. A conservative estimate sets the number of species on Earth today at 1.4 million. Because evolution is junk science and current species owe their lives to Noah, Noah must bring at least 2.8 million animals on the ark. Unless you go by the 7 of each clean beast and fowl, which pumps up the number a wee bit. When you factor in the food for Noah, his family, and the beasts--including beasts for the beasts that eat other beasts, which means that Noah would have had to gather more than 2 (or 7) of some animals just to feed to the other animals and his family--and that Noah's on the ark for a whole year, suddenly that huge boat isn't nearly big enough. The thing would have to be the goddamned Death Star.

Noah loads everyone up in his stinky too-small ark, closes the door and the one window, and tries to avoid the man-eating tigers while ignoring the thousands of drowning people who bang on the hull and plead for mercy. "Fuck 'em," Noah tells a giant panda, which is munching the first of 20 pounds of bamboo he'll eat every day for the next 365 days. "Should've been more just."

Noah's menagerie floats around the Earth for 7 months and finally runs aground only a few hundred miles north, on the tip of Mount Ararat in Turkey. Noah tells everyone not to move for 3 months lest the precariously balanced ark tip and all the pungent feces and urine spill out the window.

Noah watches the waters recede from atop the mountain for 3 more months, wishing all the while that he had brought Mindsweeper with him because he's sick of playing Travel Mastermind with his wife. He sends a raven out to find a hint of dry land, but the bird comes back empty-beaked. He releases a dove, which comes back with an olive leaf. "Christ," Noah says, "I'm in fucking Greece."

Finally, the land is dry, and the Lord allows everyone off the ark. Thankful that the Big Guy allowed him to gather and keep so many animals for so long , Noah kills and cooks some of them as burnt offerings to the Lord. Noah chooses a Tyrannosaurus Rex and an Australopithecus afarensis.

Pleased by the easy explanation the offering provides, God makes Noah a promise: "I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done."

Fortunately, there are still gobs of ways left for God to punish his creations. We'll be reading about those in future chapters.