Violence in the Earth
your friendly reminder that Noah’s story isn’t the original flood narrative (and why that’s a good thing)
The proliferation of Pride flags during June always makes me think of the story of Noah.
I don’t normally think that deeply about rainbows, yk? Which is a shame because they’re literally SO. COOL. I saw my first diesel rainbow at work this week (which is a sentence I never would have imagined saying 5 weeks ago) and I’m still waiting to see a moonbow.
Like, who knew that droplets could break daylight into color? And that at daylight’s core, the components are… beauty?
Noah’s rainbow is weird though.
God destroys the Earth and drops prisms from the sky as though to say, “Whoops, my bad; that wasn’t actually such a good idea 😅. Don’t worry tho Imma never do it again 🌈”
Like… God. 🙈
Just because you “won’t do it again” doesn’t justify you doing it in the first place?! If you know humans will always have evil in their hearts and it bothered you enough to wipe out all life except a remnant, then wtf are you doing, letting the remnant repopulate the planet now?
Enter the rainbow.
I think this is how we’re supposed to take the Noah story 👆.
—
See, the story of Noah in the Bible is a fanfic.
(Yes, like Paradise Lost is a fanfic. Aka a new story that uses established imagery, characters, and plotlines and does literary ninjustu on them to shine new light.)
The OG flood stories from Sumer, Babylon, and Assyria have some key details:
the gods are furiously trying to annihilate humanity bc they’re annoying
one human character (with or without the help of a rogue god) initiates a plan to outwit, outmatch, and outbuild the gods trying to wipe them out
the enmity between gods and men amps up after the waters recede
Most people read Noah’s story and have to wrestle with the big question, “why is God an asshole?” But it turns out, the whole point of the fanfic is to use the flood narrative’s tropes to prove how different the character of Israel’s God is.
Noah’s flood story !flips¡ the key details:
God decides to protect his creation from the violence of humans and IS SAD ABOUT IT
GOD initiates a plan to save a human character AND his family
God resolves to FOREVER FIND another solution to human violence once the waters recede
Let’s zone in on that last one for a second. Because that’s where translators put the rainbow 🌈but it’s not actually there…
But if you take the story out of context, it reads like this... 👆
—
The word isn’t rainbow..
God says, “I will put my bow in the clouds…”
BOW.
As in archers’ TOOL of VIOLENCE.
And which direction does the bow point?
(Yes, I concede that God’s tool of violence spells roygbiv and so maybe the translators aren’t evil for doing the math for you.)
It’s not at humans…
It’s not at evil spirits…
It’s not at animals parading off two-by-two…
God puts himself at the end of a loaded 🌈bow.
The prismatic arc of light the ancient Israelites considered God’s implement of archery?
That sign we attribute to God’s promise?
Is a picture that God himself has committed to take on, suffer, and carry ALL of the violence of humanity.
He doesn’t disdain, dominate, or destroy humans!
Noah’s God is about saving humans!
Turning rainbows into the picture of peace between God and man!
I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. This is the ponder-piece.
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… which makes rainbows the ultimate symbol of peace between man and man! masters and slaves! Jews and Gentiles! tea drinkers and coffee drinkers!
I love seeing rainbows everywhere 🥰
And I think it’s no surprise that the full shape of a rainbow (as I’ve seen from airplanes and accidental diesel mist) is a circle.
If you didn’t know, a circle is a symbol of unity and infinity.
Because violence doesn’t EVER belong in the good world God made for his images to co-inhabit.
God wants to be united in relationship to people, period! Also known as FOREVER!
And you can’t have relationship if one party is trying to disdain, dominate, or destroy the other ☹️
—
Listen, I really couldn’t care less if the flood “actually happened” or not.
If it did, the ancient Israelites weren’t the first to write about it. Not a big deal; stories help humans make sense of the world.
At the end of the day, I’d rather live in the kind of world that the Bible stories tell us God is making.
And yeah, it is still Pride month, so I do think that Noah’s story has something to tell us about how God wants to relate to his creation…
… it’s not with violence.
The God of the Bible works very hard to rescue humans from violence with kindness.
Even the humans perpetrating violence.
Pray with me?
God, I am made in your Image and I need help embodying this picture 🌈 of kindness. Let your goodness be seen, heard, and felt by all who encounter me - in person, through my words, and even through the memes I share on the Internet.
–Beth