After God created the heaven and the earth and then man, the crown of His achievements, “…God saw every thing He had made, and, behold, it was very good.”(Genesis 1:31). There was no corruption in the creation of God, but a curse would come forth from man’s transgression of God’s law. For after Adam ate from the forbidden fruit, not only did death enter Adam, but the rest of creation as well. God did not curse Adam directly, but instead cursed the ground from which Adam was formed. And unto Adam God said, “…cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee;…in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread…” (Genesis 3:17-19). Now that sin was in the world God’s initial creation became altered, or corrupted. No longer did Adam and Eve have access to the Garden of Eden, for through their transgression Paradise was lost.
A few generations after the Fall of Man, things started to decline in the world. For after men began to multiply on the face of the earth, “…The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth…but Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.” (Genesis 6:5-8). The Bible goes on to say that Noah was a just man who was perfect in his generations, and that Noah walked with God. The only other antediluvian patriarch to walk with God was Enoch, whom the Lord translated so that he might not see death. Like Enoch, the Lord would also save Noah from The Flood so that he too would not perish, but be delivered from the waters that were colder than ice.
After looking upon the earth, God saw that the whole world was corrupt and filled with violence. “And God said unto Noah, the end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold, I will destroy them with the earth.” (Genesis 6:13). The Lord would go on to instruct Noah to build a ship or Ark that would be large enough to house animals of all kinds. There would be compartments in the Ark as well as lower, second, and third stories. According to the measurements given in the Bile the Ark would have been about 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high. The Lord also instructed Noah to bring in every clean beast by sevens, male and female, and every unclean beast by two, male and female. So Noah did all that the Lord commanded him. Then Noah and his wife, along with his three sons and their wives, entered the Ark because of the flood waters.
As the Bible says: it rained upon the earth forty days and forty nights. And the waters prevailed, and increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters. And all whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was on the dry land, died. (Genesis 7:12,18,22). After 150 days, “God remembered Noah…and the waters subsided” until the Ark rested on the mountains of Ararat. Now the Bible is clear that the ark did not come to rest on Mount Ararat, but upon the mountains of Ararat. (Genesis 8:4). This means that the Ark could have rested on other smaller mountains in the area surrounding Mount Ararat. It is believed by this author that Noah’s Ark was indeed discovered in 1977, near the borders of Turkey and Armenia, by the late archaeologist Ron Wyatt. Many at the time and still today are skeptical about Ron’s claims. However, the Turkish government was well enough convinced, for in June 1987 the Turkish authorities established Noah’s Ark National Park, and built a visitors center overlooking the site where the Ark has rested.
Now after the Flood, God made a covenant with Noah and of all the generations that would come after him. Mankind would never again be destroyed by water. So God blessed Noah and his three sons, and said to them, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.” (Genesis 9:1). In addition to this covenant, God also gave Noah a set of seven laws that he and all believers after him should follow. These seven laws of Noah are also known as the Noahide Laws. In the New Testament James the Just would echo the Noahide Laws when making his address known as the Apostolic Decree as recorded in Acts 15:20, that would be taught to all Gentiles that wished to become Christians. To this day the Apostiolic Decree is still observed by Eastern Orthodoxy and includes certain food restrictions.
Returning to the genealogy of Noah, we see that Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and sons were also born to them after the Flood. Initially, seventy-two descendants would stem from Noah’s three sons. Out of the seventy-two different tribes, fourteen are of Japheth, thirty-one are of Ham, and twenty-seven are of Shem. “Now the whole earth was one language and one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and dwelt there.” (Genesis 11:1-2). Since both the Tigris and Euphrates rivers originate in the location close to where the Ark rested, then the family of man could have well followed the rivers as they journeyed and ended up in the land of Shinar. The land of Shinar is the general location of Mesopotamia, and the plain of Shinar is believe to be the site of where the Tower of Babel once stood.
Now in direct defiance of God, the people decided not to spread out into all the earth, and instead decided to build a tower, whose top they wished would reach unto heaven. It would seem that they wanted to make a name for themselves. “But the lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built…” and the Lord said, “come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all he earth, and they ceased building the city. Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth.” (Genesis 11:5-9). And just as God scattered the sons of men and confused their language at the tower of Babel, so on the day of Pentecost would the Lord Jesus Christ send the Holy Spirit causing His disciples to speak in tongues that other nationalities could understand. Thus the day of Pentecost was the opposite of Babel.
Now the dispersion of the peoples or nations happened a few generations after the Flood, in the days of Peleg; “for in his day was the earth divided.” (Genesis 10:25). Some are of the school of thought which teaches that Genesis 10:25 refers to a geological separating of the continents. However, all continental splitting would of happened at the time of the Flood. As it is written in Genesis 7:11 when the flood waters fell from the sky, “all the fountains of the great deep,” were broken up as well. So this underground and oceanic movement of water during the great Flood would have been enough to separate the continental plates. For if the continents would have split during the days of Peleg, it would have been so cataclysmic that it very well could have resulted in another universal flood. So, what the Bible describes as the division of the earth in the days of Peleg, mjust refer to a linguistic separation that occurred shortly after God confounded the languages at Babel.
In conclusion, we see that both the great Flood and the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel were judgments God sent unto the inhabitants of the earth who rebelled against Holy God. In His mercy the Lord promised that He would never again destroy the earth with a flood (Genesis 9:15). However, the final judgment of God will be with fire. For Christ Himself spoke of a great tribulation that would try the people of the earth prior to His second advent. The Lord said that in the last days iniquity would abound and even compared the end times with the conditions of the people at the time of the Flood. For Christ said, “…as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man.” (Luke 17:26).
References:
Fr. Seraphim Rose. Genesis, Creation, and Early Man. (Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2011).
Hodge, B. Tower of Babel. (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2012).
Rehwinkel, A.M. The Flood. (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1951).
Wyatt, R. Discovered: Noah’s Ark. (Nashville, Tennessee: World Bible Society, 1989).
Nelson. The Holy Bible, New King James Version. (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1984).
Zondervan. The Holy Bible, King James Version. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2009).