May the mumbling commence!
The aftermath of the flood
continues. Read from Peterson’s The Message:
In the six-hundred-first year of Noah’s life, on the
first day of the first month, the flood
dried up. Noah opened the hatch of the ship and saw dry
ground. By the twenty-seventh day of the second
month, the Earth was completely dry.
God spoke to
Noah: “Leave the ship, you and your wife and your sons and your sons’ wives. And take all the animals with you, the whole menagerie of
birds and mammals and crawling creatures, all that brimming prodigality of
life, so they can reproduce and flourish on the Earth.”
Noah disembarked
with his sons and wife and his sons’ wives. Then all the animals, crawling creatures, birds – every
creature on the face of the Earth – left the ship family by family.
Noah built an
altar to God. He selected clean animals and birds from
every species and offered them as burnt offerings on the altar. God smelled the sweet fragrance and thought to himself, “I’ll never
again curse the ground because of people. I know they have this bent toward evil from an early age,
but I’ll
never again kill off everything living as I’ve just done.
For as long as
Earth lasts,
planting
and harvest, cold and heat,
Summer
and winter, day and night,
will
never stop.” (Genesis 8:13-22)
Now read the same passage from the
NIV translation:
By the first day of the first month of Noah's six hundred
and first year, the water
had dried up
from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark
and saw that
the surface of the ground was dry.
By the
twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry.
Then God said to Noah, "Come out of the ark, you and
your wife and your sons and their wives. Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you –
the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground – so
they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number upon
it."
So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and
his sons' wives. All the animals and all the creatures that move along the
ground and all the birds – everything that moves on the earth – came out of the
ark, one kind after another.
Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean
birds, he sacrificed
burnt
offerings on it. The Lord smelled
the pleasing aroma and said in his heart:
"Never
again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is
evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.
As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease." (Genesis 8:13-22)
Though there are differences in
phrasing, there is only one significant difference that I see in this
passage. Generally, I like the updated
phrasing of Peterson’s work. The one
instance of difference that I see is what did Noah open on the first day of his
six hundred and first year? Was it a
hatch as Peterson implies? OR was Noah
removing a covering from the ark as the NIV implies? A vast majority of the translations have the
removing of the covering, so that’s the translation that I’m most comfortable
with.
We can learn from Noah in this
instance. Even after being in the ark in
close quarters with his family and all those animals for over a year, Noah
still waited for the Word of the Lord before coming out of the ark. Perhaps he was frightened and was waiting for
a sign from God. Perhaps that’s why Noah
offered a sacrifice to the Lord. Perhaps
that’s why the Lord decided to lift the curse from the ground and to never
destroy all life ever again.
Enough mumbling for now…
Peace Out
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