Genesis 6 Without 1 Enoch: Worship and the World of Violence

Carey Griffel: Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and today we're getting back into Genesis six, and we're gonna talk about Genesis six, and we're gonna leave out the context of first Enoch. I know, I know. How dare I, right. But it's a good question to ask. How do we arrive at generally the same conclusion without using extra biblical material?

[00:00:44] What I'm gonna discuss today is going to flow perfectly, naturally through Scripture, but the focus will be slightly different than the normal explanation, even the normal explanation that is given by people like Dr. Heiser. It's gonna be in line with those ideas, but it will be shifted a little bit over.

[00:01:05] But more than that, I think a bigger question than arriving at a similar conclusion to what first Enoch brings us is the question of, what does this intra biblical approach help us see that might be obscured if we only or primarily go to the later extra biblical context?

[00:01:28] Yes, I say later, First Enoch being a solidly second temple writing. That doesn't mean it can't have an older core to it. Maybe it even has some stuff that really is from Enoch himself, but it is decidedly not all from Enoch himself. It is a second temple writing that Is situated in a genre that is comfortable in the second temple period.

[00:01:54] Now, it does help us to connect back into that Mesopotamian flood context, which is still part of what we'll talk about, but I think it really is possible to not look at those extra biblical sources and really just look at what the Bible says in its thematic narrative on its own. We do need to bring in that core supernatural context and how that lines up with all of these things.

[00:02:21] But with all of that being said, here's our core topic for today. Without reading first Enoch back into Genesis six, our question is, how and why do we get sexual boundary crossing that leads to violence and the flood? How does that happen? What is the through line that connects those things?

[00:02:47] In other words, how do we go from Sons of God and daughters of men in Genesis six, one through four, into Genesis six, five with the violence of the flood?

[00:02:59] My surprise spoiler is that it's not gonna be about genetics. Even though we have the procreation aspect here. It's not about DNA, but there's still a through line that we can follow through the logic of Scripture.

[00:03:15] Now, here's a reminder, when you do bring in that First Enoch and the Mesopotamian apkallu context into the play here, and we see Genesis six as partly a polemic against the Mesopotamian storylines. When you do that, the connection with the Sons of God or the Watchers into the violence that brings on the flood. The connection there is that the Sons of God are teaching mankind things that are going to lead to the increased depravity of mankind.

[00:03:50] The depravity of mankind is increased and it leads to a situation of intense and society-wide violence. So that's how it's usually parsed out when you bring out the Mesopotamian context, along with First Enoch, and you're trying to take this in a very serious ancient mindset context, where we're not going to import our modern ideas of DNA hybrids.

[00:04:17] There's a connection there between Genesis six, one through four and the follow on to the flood. That connection is not that the flood happened because of the spiritual beings, but the spiritual beings were affecting humanity to the point that humanity got so depraved and so violent that God decided to flood the world.

[00:04:41] That's the normal context that we have when we listen to the work of Dr. Heiser. And I'm not saying that that's wrong. Again, that is that second temple explanation of things because that's where First Enoch is coming from, and I believe that Genesis six has a Mesopotamian context.

[00:05:01] So I do think the original audience of Genesis is going to have that context of the Mesopotamian flood and the story of the apkallu that people would hear about from their Babylonian neighbors.

[00:05:15] But what if you don't take the dating of Genesis in that direction? What if you believe that Genesis is written by Moses or is part of the context from the Exodus? Well, in that case, then what you have in Genesis six, the Nephilim are connected directly to this so-called giant clans in the land. That is the story within the Torah itself.

[00:05:41] Even though the clans that are in the promised land that the people encounter, they're described as being tall and all of that kind of thing, right? So we have that giant context. But the point isn't that they're tall. The point isn't that they look strange. The point isn't that their bodies are different than the Israelite bodies.

[00:06:05] The point is that they have distorted themselves via false worship in participating in violent rebellion against Yahweh. The concern is not genetic. The concern is about focused and right worship, and that's what we're gonna talk about today.

[00:06:22] I know some of what I'm gonna say is probably going to irk some people who like diving into that Nephilim- giants connection in a way that is really more about that kind of monstrous or physical aspect of it. But I don't think that's the full context within Genesis six, no matter how you date the chapter.

[00:06:43] The giant connection that we talk about today is often about sensational ideas of monsters and things like that. And look, fair enough. I'm not saying again that we don't have some of that context here because that's how they're being described when they go into the land, they see the people. They're being described in monstrous ways, but I really think that we get sidetracked by that interesting monster- hybrid- cross idea, and we're missing out on the actual message of the text.

[00:07:19] I've explained this in a few different ways before, but I'm gonna tackle the same question a little bit differently today and hopefully this will help the conversation in those spaces where we have people who legitimately they don't wanna go to the book of First Enoch to understand Genesis six. Because again, first Enoch is a second temple text, and I don't think there's any reason we can't just use the canon of the Bible to understand what's going on here.

[00:07:51] And I'm gonna point out that even Dr. Heiser himself frequently told us that salvation and deliverance are always and only about allegiance or believing loyalty. That is the core message, and that's what I'm gonna be talking about today. And I think there's more we can bring out in this context than even he did in a particular way.

[00:08:16] I am not trying to create a new systematic theology here, and that's partly why I want to make this episode as well, because I've talked a little bit lately about the things in Genesis six that connect to worship. And I worry that when I do these kinds of conversations about worship that are connected to ethics, I do worry a little bit that that could be taken as developing a new systematic theology about that, a new way of looking at it in some sort of concrete order.

[00:08:52] And that is not what I'm trying to do here. But let's go back to Genesis six and First Enoch for just a second. It is okay that the context that is here develops over time to new ideas. Like we get to the details of what we have in First Enoch. Those aren't necessarily all inherent to Genesis.

[00:09:18] It's also okay that Genesis six is a context that is polemic against Mesopotamian ideas. But listen, being polemic against Mesopotamian literature and stories is not the message of the text. Genesis six is communicating something theologically and historically in its own non-modern way, and that's what we need to grasp. The message is not primarily about tall people and genetic lines. It's not about hybrids in a biological way, but it is about boundary- crossing procreation, and that is connected to things like formation of a people and who you're going to worship.

[00:10:07] If you were born into a certain tribe, you're born into a certain empire or kingdom, you are just handed a set of worship practices and ideas. You don't get to choose those. It's not like you had a whole bunch of temples on every corner that you would just decide to go to one and you're not participating in the others.

[00:10:30] While it would be true that there would be many altars and many deities and beings that you could worship in a pagan society, you're not really tied to one. This isn't a matter of like choosing your denomination today.

[00:10:47] What is going to be inherent in that situation is that you are tied to the things that your leaders and your patriarchs are going to be in line with. That's just presumed and because today our family structures aren't like that, we kind of don't understand it.

[00:11:07] Today we get to choose our party line. We get to choose our church that we go to. We even get to choose whether or not we participate and identify with what our family structure was like when we grew up. That's not the way the world was back in the day. If you did not align yourself with the patriarch of your family, you were gonna be kicked outta the family. You weren't gonna be part of them anymore. That was probably a really dangerous place for people to be because they didn't have a society or a community to back them up and to help them through the really difficult struggles of life.

[00:11:46] All right, so today I'm going to be suggesting that the message in the text of Genesis six is primarily a description on the beginnings of a matrix of ideas that are interconnected. The matrix of connections that we're gonna look at is A) false worship or influence. This is described in various ways. In the Bible, we tend to drift toward those passages that talk about idols and images, because that's very frequent, right? But it can also be about other things like name, glory, covenant relationship, and loyalty.

[00:12:28] The second thing that's connected here are the concepts of injustice, oppression, and violence. This includes things like financial and economic forces, giving mercy and provision to those who are less fortunate in this society, taking advantage of people like that.

[00:12:50] The third thing I'm going to bring up is violence and bloodshed. So this would be violence in the way that we think of it. In the ancient Near East, I don't think they're separating the ideas out of injustice and oppression with violence and bloodshed, or at least the Bible isn't. This could include war and further oppression of the people who are conquered.

[00:13:14] Now, the final piece that is going to help us see the connection in these first few verses of Genesis six is the idea of sexual immorality as a primary indicator of debauchery and depravity and oppression. This leads back up to that direct worship aspect, which is seen often in Scripture as women influencing men to worship their deities, because also, remember, adultery went only one way. Women weren't seen as being influenced by men and their deities because the man was the head of the household and thus the primary focus and instigator and example of what a family or tribe would worship and how a family or a tribe would behave and how they would enact justice.

[00:14:05] Okay, so to say that again, we have worship, injustice and oppression, violence and bloodshed, and sexual immorality. This is a package of ideas that many biblical authors will bring together, and we'll look at that today

[00:14:24] So once you get the concepts of worship and violence and immorality under the umbrella of corruption, then that's what we're seeing in the flood. That's why we need to have purification. That's why we connect dots between ritual impurity and moral impurity. At least we are connecting the dots. I'm not convinced that the ancient person would see these as distinct categories myself.

[00:14:54] To be clear, we ought to be very careful not to insert the whole matrix of ideas into every mention of every distinct part of it. My point is not to say that every instance of sexual immorality, sin, or corruption is or should be tied distinctly to technical worship of a false god or a particular being.

[00:15:19] Remember, I am not trying to get dogmatic and create a systematic theology here.

[00:15:25] I am saying that the biblical authors will connect these in narrative fashion. So today our intent is to look at Scripture's overall logic, which happens to be the logic of the ancient world at large. And the reason it's tough for us to do this is not because there's not enough information, but because the ancient logic and our logic are just not the same.

[00:15:51] Now, should they be the same? Should we have the same exact supernatural worldview as the ancient person? Maybe, maybe not. In my opinion, it's kind of pointless to try to shove down someone else's throat, a worldview that they don't already have, that they haven't grown up in, that they don't understand. And so if we're trying to force the issue, it's not gonna work well. But at minimum we can use this for understanding the Bible in its context.

[00:16:21] Now, I've had a recent episode where I talked about Genesis six with Noah and the Nephilim and corruption and violence and worship. I've already done that and in that episode, I had a progression. False worship and idolatry or covenant disloyalty, that leads to corruption and defilement, that leads to social breakdown and violence and injustice, and that's gonna lead to judgment. And judgment is often framed as purgation, purification, or erasure or destruction.

[00:17:00] Now, again, what I want to really be sure that I hammer home here, I am not trying to create a dogmatic, systematic theology here. I am not saying that everything goes into this pattern all the time. Or that you can't have things that are switched around or that every single verse or use is going to connect all of these things directly in the same way.

[00:17:25] I do think that the overall logic of the ancient world, and particularly the logic of Scripture, is going to give us these connections.

[00:17:34] We are going to go into the book of Ezekiel today to see that. The book of Ezekiel, puts worship abominations and filling the land with in the same context.

[00:17:48] Ezekiel eight verses 16 through 18 says, quote, " And he brought me to the inner courtyard of the house of Yahweh. And look, at the doorway of the temple of Yahweh between the portico and the altar, there were about 25 men with their backs to the temple of Yahweh and their faces toward the east. And they were bowing down toward the east before the sun. And he said to me, have you seen, son of man? Was it too small a thing for the house of Judah to do the detestable things that they did here for they filled up the land with violence and they provoked me to anger again. And look, they're putting the branch to their nose. And so I will act in rage and my eye will not take pity and I will not have compassion. And they will cry in my ear with a loud voice and I will not hear them." End quote.

[00:18:41] So the thing I want you to notice here is that worship disorder becomes a moral disorder, and moral disorder becomes violence, and that's why the response is judgment that cleans or even erases what's corrupt. There are connections here between what we do publicly and ritually, and the source of corruption, which is internal. And Scripture doesn't really make a distinction between the internal mental world and our outer behavior.

[00:19:13] This is why faith is not just a mental belief system. Why faith and salvation have to include what we do and not as some order of salvation thing where we separate out justification and sanctification and our behavior and inclusion into that process. The point is not the order of when and how these things happen, but the fact that they are connected.

[00:19:38] This is hardly the only place in Ezekiel eight where the Bible is pairing the sins in the same indictment, and it's not always in the same order.

[00:19:48] I can point you to the first part of Ezekiel 22 as well as the first part of Numbers 25, and you'll see the same kinds of connections only in different ways.

[00:20:00] So again, we shouldn't always and forever conflate these things every time we see them, but the fact that they are equated in Scripture should give us a few grounding points. Especially when we get back to the context of Genesis, because remember, Genesis is about beginnings, the beginnings of things.

[00:20:23] We wonder about Genesis six, one through five and how those things connect together. What does the activity between the Sons of God and the daughters of men have to do with the outpouring of violence? And no matter how you describe that situation between the sons and the daughters, whether it's the spiritual beings or whether it's mankind, or whether it's kings or whatever, none of those descriptions have an obvious correlation between what's going on between the Sons of God and the daughters of men and the outpouring of the flood because of violence.

[00:21:01] Those logical inferences ought to be seated within the ancient worldview itself. So while we do have the Mesopotamian context of the apkallu and the context of First Enoch to help with that, it's still not the only way to see the connections. You can see it within the context of Scripture itself. So if you have somebody who balks at external sources to interpret the Bible, well that's fine.

[00:21:27] We don't actually have to use them. It's still an argument that you can make internally to Scripture using only Scripture. Beginning with careful exegesis of the Hebrew term Sons of God, which in that form only connects to obvious spiritual beings. So that's our linguistic line right there.

[00:21:49] Then our historical line that we are gonna bring into exegesis is how that's only ever interpreted as a spiritual engagement early in history. And we also note the interconnection of the heavens and the earth, which is throughout Scripture, and that is just presumed in the ancient world. That is our historical line of thinking when we're thinking about the literal historical grammatical method of exegesis.

[00:22:17] It's literal because we have something that is really describing. It can be describing that in metaphorical ways, though. A literal exegesis does not and cannot discount the purpose of metaphor and narrative and story and things like typology and all of that stuff, right? So that's our literal aspect here, is that there is a literal pattern that goes on through history and Genesis is describing the beginning of that literal pattern.

[00:22:50] The grammatical aspect is to understand that the specific term, Sons of God, is connected to spiritual beings. It's not fair to take in different constructions of Hebrew and presume that those are talking about the same thing.

[00:23:09] So everything I'm saying is just the literal, historical, grammatical method of exegesis. So without a Mesopotamian or First Enoch context, I believe we can still connect what's going on with Genesis six to the spiritual beings and to worship, to false imaging, to wicked formation that leads to injustice, violence, wickedness, idolatry, sexual immorality, and all of that stuff.

[00:23:37] The flood did not happen simply because of spiritual beings doing things. The flood happened because of what people did and who people were. Who were they being formed as? Because they weren't being formed in the image of God as they should have been. They were being distorted, and the way that you are being distorted in Scripture is described through the lens of idolatry and covenant disloyalty.

[00:24:06] So while Genesis six, one through four is not a story of human interaction entirely, we have the human and the spiritual interaction. That means that it's not just spiritual interaction as if the spiritual Sons of God taking human wives is directly why the flood came. I know I keep saying that, but it's so essential to understand what's going on here.

[00:24:31] A lot of people who don't like the supernatural interpretation of Genesis six is because a lot of times we do divorce that context and we get humanity off the hook, and humanity is not off the hook here. Human violence in Scripture's supernatural- idolatry- worship logic is not done in isolation, but in conjunction with interaction with the spiritual realm and false worship and false imaging.

[00:25:02] Now, the reason why I think it's really hard to see is that we're so often going to mechanistic explanations, dogmatic statements and really concrete ideas instead of looking at the narrative and literary connections that Scripture is making. We miss it because we're not in that worldview. And so we're kind of putting our context into that ancient context because what else are we going to do? In order to not do that, we have to really fully engage with that original context.

[00:25:35] The Bible's world that it is presenting is multi-layered, but interconnected. Eden itself is a heaven and earth overlap space. We have God walking with the people, so we have divine presence. We have sacred space logic, but then the stories in the Bible treat spiritual realities as causally relevant to earthly history. We have the Deuteronomy 32 worldview. We have passages like Daniel 10. We have things all throughout the Psalms, and then you go into the prophets and they interpret political collapse as covenant and spiritual collapse, not just geopolitics.

[00:26:17] Ezekiel 22 will explicitly link bloodshed and idols into defilement. And so the rationale for the exile and the judgment in Ezekiel is that there's worship, but there's violence, and those two are directly related.

[00:26:35] So then you go back into Genesis, which says the earth was filled with violence. Ezekiel uses the same kind of saturated logic here and tells you what kind of deeper disorder produces that. And it's connected to false worship or synchronistic worship or improper worship. If the people are trying to worship Yahweh, but they're doing it in a wrong way, that's just as bad as idolatry because then if you're worshiping God in the wrong way, you're not being formed by him through your ritual. You're being formed into something that's not God because you're doing things that God doesn't will.

[00:27:15] So spiritual rebellion matters, but it expresses itself in social ways on earth, in humanity. Just like when we are supposed to be, God's imagers and we actually do and perform God's will and behave in ways that conform to what God is teaching us, then that also expresses itself in social ways.

[00:27:39] And I just think this is a really helpful way to look at how the Scripture is talking about it and how we can go off the rails in trying to emphasize only the spiritual context or only the human context of things.

[00:27:54] All right. Let me tie this a little bit into the later verses in Genesis six. And it gets really interesting when you look at different translations here as well. Let's read Genesis six verse seven. In the Lexham English Bible, it says, quote, "And Yahweh said, I will destroy humankind whom I created from upon the face of the earth, from humankind to animals, to creeping things and to the birds of heaven. For I regret that I have made them." End quote.

[00:28:29] Now the ESV says, quote, " So the Lord said, I will blot out man, whom I have created, from the face of the land. Man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. For I am sorry that I have made them." End quote.

[00:28:47] Okay. So the Lexham English Bible gives the verb destroy humankind. The ESV tells us that God will blot out man.

[00:28:57] Now, why does the Lexham English Bible give the context of destroy? Well, probably because it's the flood. That's literally what's being described in the story. People are being destroyed. But if we don't understand this blotting out language, we're gonna miss some of that imagery that the ancient person would have in their mind. The blotting out has a lot of connotation that comes along with it.

[00:29:25] A really tough question we have here is that if we have this progression of things, we have the spiritual beings. It's not just man who's destroyed. It's the animals and the creeping things and the birds. The fish aren't destroyed because they're already in the water. But if the problem is violence, then why are animals and creeping things and birds also being destroyed?

[00:29:50] This might not be a full answer, but one way you could think of it is in how things will flow down from influence. You have the spiritual beings who do their thing and influence humanity. Well then humanity is going to go on and be violent and destructive and not treat anything with justice. Our behavior is going to affect the animal world.

[00:30:18] And without trying to get too apologetic here, isn't it the case that when you treat an animal in a wrong way, that animal's behavior will be changed? If you treat them cruelly, that animal will then be more defensive and will learn cruel activity itself. People can actually force animals to engage in a way that is destructive. Like maybe that is how they would normally act when they're threatened, but people are putting them in that form.

[00:30:50] So again, not to give too much of an apologetics answer, but I think what we're seeing here is the interconnectedness of the world. And when mankind is supposed to be the image of God, and we live according to that image of God because we're being formed in the image of God in our behavior and all of that, then there are good outcomes for the world.

[00:31:14] When we are being deformed away from that image of God, the image doesn't go away, but we are being malformed, then that impacts the world itself. It impacts all of creation.

[00:31:27] Okay, so there's that. Now, if we can understand what the Bible means with this idea of corruption and violence, and again, how worship and sexuality fit into that, we can understand why the judgment is described as a blotting out. It's not just punishment. It's not just destruction as a form of punishment, but it's removal, it's erasure, it's a kind of unmaking or decreation, even though that de creation looks like people are just being killed and destroyed and removed from existence. This is covenant language here.

[00:32:08] Let's continue looking deeper into Genesis six. We're gonna look at verses 11 through 13. and this is probably going to influence a translation's determination of how to translate verse seven as well. All right, Lexham English Bible, Genesis six 11 through 13 says, quote, "And the earth was corrupted before God and the earth was filled with violence and God saw the earth and behold it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth. And God said to Noah, the end of all flesh has come before me, for the earth was filled with violence because of them. Now look, I'm going to destroy them along with the earth." End quote.

[00:32:56] Now, let's read those two verses in the ESV. Quote, " Now, the earth was corrupt in God's sight and the earth was filled with violence and God saw the earth and behold it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. And God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth." End quote.

[00:33:25] Couple of differences to point out here, the Lexham English Bible says the earth was corrupted, whereas the ESV says the earth was corrupt. So just an interesting difference in English verbiage there. In the Lexham English Bible, it says, the end of all flesh has come before me. In the ESV, it gives more credence to God's decision where it says, I have determined to make an end of all flesh. This is probably one of those places where people see a lot of Calvinistic leanings in the ESV. Surely it's God who decides to make an end of all flesh and that the end of the flesh isn't just happening because it just is happening. Right?

[00:34:12] Note, the text doesn't just say that people were sinning. It says the earth is filled with violence. It's like saturated. It's everywhere. It's not isolated. And I think that we tend to think of the flood as being a result of a conglomeration of sin, like we add up everybody's sins and it just is a whole lot of sin. Either that or everyone is only sinning and not doing any good whatsoever, or we think that the level of sin is just absolutely outrageous. Like before the flood, it was more than any kind of war that we have today.

[00:34:51] But what if we're missing a core aspect of this language? What if we're missing the logic of Scripture in the story of good and false worship and covenant loyalty?

[00:35:03] If that is the problem, then well, it's hard for us to understand how the world is not being destroyed now because people are surely not all covenantly loyal to God now. But again, we're gonna be dealing with the logic of Scripture in its context. That's what's important here to look at. The step of why that matters and how that plays out today's world and why we're not also being destroyed... well, that's a separate question that is going to bring in a whole lot of other material. Definitely worth thinking about, certainly. But I would mention the character of God and his patience and those kinds of things for that.

[00:35:46] Okay. So all flesh had corrupted its way. Or their way, depending on the translation. The language of way is moral and a behavioral vocabulary, the kind of life you choose to walk. It's not just that they exist in a corrupt environment. It actually assigns agency here. They corrupted their way. So it's not just biological. And again, we're connecting the corruption to violence.

[00:36:16] So if we look at the first verses that we've looked at here in Genesis six. We have a supernatural boundary disruption, human moral collapse, a world that is saturated with the violence that affects even animals. And this is universal across the whole land.

[00:36:35] Genesis is not just describing isolated bad choices, but a whole world order that is becoming ruined and filling everything. The land being filled with violence is a thing that we see frequently in Scripture. We see it in Leviticus, in Deuteronomy, in the prophets.

[00:36:53] In fact, let's look at a use of it in Leviticus 18, starting in verse 24, quote, "You must not make yourself unclean in any of these things because the nations whom I am driving out from your presence, were made unclean by all of these." End quote.

[00:37:14] I'm not gonna go ahead and read all of chapter 18 here, but if you look at the context of Leviticus 18, it is about sexual behavior. Continuing on in Leviticus 18, verse 25, quote, " So the land became unclean, and I have brought the punishment of its guilt upon it, and the land has vomited out its inhabitants. Neither the native nor the alien who's dwelling in your midst shall keep my statutes and my regulations, and you shall not practice any of these detestable things because the people of the land who were before you did all of these detestable things so the land became unclean so that the land will not vomit you out when you make it unclean just as it vomited out the nation that was before you. Indeed, anyone who does any of these detestable things, even those persons who do so shall be cut off from the midst of their people. Thus, you shall keep my obligation to not do any of the statutes regarding the detestable things that they did before you so that you'll not make yourselves unclean by them. I am Yahweh, your God." End quote.

[00:38:26] Leviticus is famous for its sacrificial system and that imagery, but what's mentioned is the problem in the land is sexual immorality and worship of Molech in both child sacrifice, which is blood and violence, and still, again, sexual immorality.

[00:38:44] Numbers 35 verses 33 and 34 say, quote, " So you will not pollute the land in which you are because blood pollutes the land and no atonement can be made for the land, for the blood that is poured out on it, except with the blood of the one who is poured it out. You will not defile the land on which you are living because I am living in the midst of it. I am Yahweh. I am living in the midst of the Israelites ." End quote.

[00:39:13] Deuteronomy nine verses four and five, quote, " You shall not say to yourself when Yahweh your God is driving them out before you saying, because of my righteousness, Yahweh brought me to take possession of this land. But because of the wickedness of these nations, Yahweh is driving them out before you. It is not because of your righteousness and because of the uprightness of your heart that you are coming to take possession of their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations, Yahweh your God is driving them before you. And in order to confirm the promise that Yahweh swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob." End quote.

[00:39:56] Deuteronomy 18, nine through 12, quote, " When you come to the land that Yahweh your God is giving to you, you must not learn to do like the detestable practices of those nations. One who makes his son or his daughter go through the fire, or one who practices divination, or an interpreter of signs, or an auger, or sorcerer, or one who casts magic spells, or one who consults a spirit of the dead, or spiritist, or one who inquires of the dead. For everyone doing these things is detestable to Yahweh, and because of these detestable things, Yahweh your God is driving them out from before you. You must be blameless before Yahweh your God, for these nations that you are about to dispossess listen to interpreters of signs and to diviners. But Yahweh your God has not allowed you to do the same." End quote.

[00:40:52] They're being driven out because they sacrifice their children, because they do divination and other occult worship practices, and those are related. Again, blood, violence, and worship and ritual practice.

[00:41:09] Deuteronomy 29, 24 through 28 says, quote, " And all the nations will say, why has Yahweh done such a thing to this land? What caused the fierceness of this great anger? And they will say it is because they abandoned the covenant of Yahweh, the God of their ancestors, which he made with them when he brought them out from the land of Egypt. And they went and served other gods and bowed down to them, gods whom they did not know them, and he had not allotted to them. So the anger of Yahweh was kindled against that land to bring upon it all the curses written in this scroll. And Yahweh uprooted them from the land in anger and in wrath, and in great fury. And he cast them into another land just as it is today." End quote.

[00:42:00] So there we have idolatry, covenant curses, land devastation, and exile. If you're following Yahweh God, then you are being formed in his image. You are living into the image of God versus being formed into the image of something else that is going to produce all of these bad things.

[00:42:23] Habakkuk chapter two, verse 17 quote, "For the violence of Lebanon will cover you and the destruction of wild animals will shatter them on account of the blood of humanity and the violence against the land against a city and all the inhabitants in it." End quote.

[00:42:42] So the conquest narrative where the people in the land are seen as a conglomerate who work against Yahweh, but that's not the only reason they're being vomited out of that land. We have two things that have been mentioned. We have their violence and their detestable practices that are about violence and worship and sexual immorality. But also we have the context of Yahweh's promises to the fathers. So it's not like Israel was natively any better than the Canaanites. It's not like Israel was a great follower of Yahweh to the point that they were always and continuously living into the image of God as they should. But the contrast is visible and it's very strong in these judgment texts.

[00:43:34] Even within all of this, we have exceptions. We always have exceptions. We have Rahab in the first part of the book of Joshua. We have kind of the weird story about the Gibeonites, right? They're not necessarily perfectly moral either. They tricked the Israelites. They pretended to be from far away, even though they weren't. But when they were found out, the Israelites still let them be because of the vow that they had made and the covenant they made. So it's really important to be covenantly faithful. When you make a vow that matters. But even so, the Gibeonites had a particular place within the society after that, and that place is connected to the altar and worship.

[00:44:20] Joshua nine, verse 27 says, quote, " And that day, Joshua made them wood cutters and water carriers for the congregation and for the altar of Yahweh to this day in the place that he should choose." End quote.

[00:44:37] So even within the wicked people, there were remnants who were preserved. Sometimes that did cause problems later, right. And that was functionally the problem because if they were allowed to stay, they didn't conform to the worship of Yahweh and the covenant of Yahweh, then those were the seeds that drew the people away.

[00:45:01] All right, so I'm not gonna be able to get into all of the notes I have for Ezekiel this week, but there is a whole lot of really interesting context in the timing of when Ezekiel is seeing the vision. He is critiquing the temple, but he's not in Jerusalem himself, but he's explaining to the people why this happened.

[00:45:21] He's like, look, even though you are still alive and we are in exile, there's a reason this happened. And that reason is because our leaders promoted false worship. They created a place where violence and oppression was okay, and even just par for the course. That's why we're in this position today. That's why we're exiled.

[00:45:46] Ezekiel goes on to show some hope and that things will be restored, but there has to be that judgment on the old order that was against Yahweh.

[00:45:56] And Ezekiel eight and nine is a really interesting context to bring into the flood story . And to kind of help you in your own study for that, let me go ahead and read a part of a commentary.

[00:46:10] This is from Greenberg in the Anchor Yale Bible. In relation to Ezekiel eight, verse 17. He says, quote, " At this point in previous scenes, God promised to show the prophet still more abominations. But here after the refrain, do you see, man, he unexpectedly lumps all the temple abominations as evils outweighed by an even more outrageous provocation, the lawlessness rampant in the land, which is an evocation of the flood story....

[00:46:45] "... This unexpected shift to denunciation of social wrongdoing is confirmed in the next episode, the scene of punishment. For in chapter nine verse nine, God affirms his ruthless verdict upon the people on the ground of their social wrongdoing in the very terms of our passage. Accordingly, the obscure expression at the end of the verse, reached the vine branch to their noses, is not connected with the temple abominations, which are superseded in verse 17, but with the social wrongdoing of verse 17 it's general sense, is goad me to fury. The specific sense is beyond us, but it is noteworthy that Jewish tradition regards the suffix of their nose as a euphemism for my nose. This suggests some provocative gesture. Sarna has interpreted the phrase as, they dispatch bans of toughs to execute their anger, which has the virtue of taking account of the context of social wrongdoing." End quote.

[00:47:53] I left out a few pieces in that quote so that we wouldn't get distracted by the Hebrew and the grammar and things. But here's the point, is that even though the temple abominations are the obvious point of what's going on in Ezekiel eight and nine, the real core part of the problem was the lawlessness and the violence.

[00:48:16] And even though Ezekiel is not quite quoting Genesis six, it's giving the patterns and the echoes and using the story from the primeval narrative to show current judgment. We see the same thing in the New Testament.

[00:48:32] In fact, this week in Bible Project Podcast's, latest episode about Jude, I think it was episode number three in that series called, Warnings from Ancient Rebellions. Tim Mackie shows the same instruction- warnings to the early church that Jude is giving. He's taking ancient stories. And bringing them into his current time to describe what's going on. Ezekiel seems to be doing the same kind of thing. So when Genesis says the land is filled with violence, it is reasonable to ask what deeper disorder produces that In the Bible's own logic.

[00:49:13] If you went forward into the book of Ezekiel to chapter 22, we have the context of Ezekiel, the son of man judging a bloody city, making known all of the detestable things. We have idols, we have blood. All of those, again, are wrapped up in this picture. Jerusalem is named a city of bloodshed and a city that makes idols. And both of those things are defiling.

[00:49:41] And so my suggestion here is that the idea of bloodshed amongst mankind is not just horizontal ethics, and that idolatry is not just vertical worship. They function together as covenant pollution that invites punishment and judgment. In the flood, we have the blotting out. We have the same kind of language in the prophets.

[00:50:06] Ezekiel 22 goes on to expand it from bloodshed into systemic social violence, shedding of blood, extortion, mistreating the orphan and the widow, also sexual immorality, uncovering the nakedness of a father, violating a woman, and so on.

[00:50:28] Like there's no way you can read the book of Ezekiel and come away with an idea that it is only about worship, or only about human ethics between humans. It is both, and they are layered upon each other.

[00:50:43] Okay, so let's bring that back up into my earlier conversation about connecting the Sons of God and the Daughters of Men incident into the violence of the flood. Again, what I'm not trying to do is insert a context that does not belong in Genesis six. I actively try to avoid inserting later ideas into earlier texts, and I'm not trying to insert the prophets into Genesis. But what I am trying to do is show the ancient logic of the interconnectedness of these things.

[00:51:18] And then you see the connection between the spiritual Sons of God and the outpouring of violence in humanity, and how that also connects to all of creation, including animals being violent and corrupting their way.

[00:51:34] And these things are just, they're not separate incidents, okay? One thing flows to the other, flows to the other because they have this connection, because in their minds, the world is affected by those who are in authority. They're affected by the patriarchs, they're affected by those leading the way into behavior and worship.

[00:51:58] In the prophets, it's always the leadership, the priests and so on and so forth who are firmly being judged and castigated. But everybody in the land is going to be affected by that because their actual worship and their ethics are going to be affected by the people at the top.

[00:52:20] I mean, in our modern day, if you look and pay attention closely. What our leaders are doing, what we are being presented by the media in, what we are all paying attention to on a societal level via news, influencers, leaders, commentators, and all of these people who end up framing the issues for us. All of that trickles down into real world effects amongst common people.

[00:52:49] If you don't have the instigation at the top, you're not gonna have the common people reacting to that. And I'm sorry, but you really don't think for yourself nearly as much as you think you do. That's just not how people work. We respond to others with the stuff that we're presented with. We allow others to frame the issues for us almost all the time.

[00:53:12] But in the ancient world, this was kind of institutionalized in the fact that you had tribal and family systems. And everything trickled down in that system just like it does today. It's not really any different, it's just that we have this emphasis on individuals and we think that we can choose. And indeed we can, because today we're faced with so many choices that we really can just pick and choose which part we're going to interact with.

[00:53:45] So maybe the question should be, Whose authority are you accepting? Who are you placing in authority over yourself? Who is in your circle of friends? Who is in your circle of commentators that you pay attention to?

[00:54:00] That is a thousand percent a technical looking worship question. It's about a whole spectrum of authority and influence that is related to what our leaders are going to present to us as our worship and ethics and behavior.

[00:54:16] But it still plays its part today, the authority and influence that is affecting us affects our drive and our personal desires. So if you don't want to have X, Y, Z desires, you probably shouldn't be around X, Y, Z influences. Now, I'm not saying you should put yourself into an echo chamber, but you don't need to listen to everyone, and you don't need to be influenced by everyone. What you listen to, what you expose yourself to. It's possible to find people with different perspectives who present in a way that isn't a net negative to you and affecting you in ways that you don't want to be affected by.

[00:55:01] Let me go ahead and read part of Ezekiel 22 to kind of drive this home. Starting in verse 23, quote, "And the Word of Yahweh came to me saying, son of man, say to her, you are a land not cleansed. It is not rained upon in the day of indignation. The conspiracy of its prophets in the midst of her is like a roaring lion that is tearing prey. They devour people and they take wealth and treasure. They make its widows numerous in the midst of her. Its priests treat my law violently and they profane my holy objects. They do not distinguish between the holy object and what is unholy or between the clean and the unclean. They do not teach the difference, and they hide their eyes from my sabbaths, and so I am profaned in the midst of them. It's officials are like wolves, tearing prey in its midst to pour out blood, to destroy people, to make dishonest gain, and for them its prophets plaster whitewash. They're seeding falseness and are practicing divination for them by lying, saying thus says the Lord Yahweh. And Yahweh has not spoken. They severely oppress the people of the land and they committed robbery and they mistreated the needy and the poor, and they oppressed the alien without justice. And so I sought for them somebody, one repairing the wall and standing in the breach before me on behalf of the land, not to destroy it, but I did not find anyone. And so I poured out my indignation on them with the fire of my wrath, I destroyed them. I returned their way upon their head, declares the Lord Yahweh." End quote.

[00:56:48] That is a rich passage full of a lot of detail. But the point I want to bring out here is the idea of the one repairing the wall, standing in the breach. That's mediation between God and man language. You've gotta have somebody who steps up for that, first of all, and you've gotta have somebody who's going to mediate. That means that the people have to accept the one who is trying to mediate for them, along with God accepting that person.

[00:57:17] The story of the flood, we have Noah who is saved, but he's not really being a mediator between the people. He's not affecting the people in any way. They're still acting wickedly and violently, and they're still going to get their destruction.

[00:57:32] Let's contrast this with what we see in Numbers 25. The story here is that we have a man from the Israelites who comes and brings a Midianite woman. The problem is not the intermarriage. The problem is that the Midianite woman is going to influence the worship, and that's the underlying context here. So Phineas son of Eliezer, son of Aaron, sees this. He stands up, he takes his spear and he goes and kills them. He does this because there was a plague, and his action stops the plague. He is the one standing in the breach.

[00:58:09] The narrative is linking sexual immorality and idolatrous worship as one entangled event. You look at the context of Numbers 25, the people began to whore with the daughters of Moab. They invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods. The people ate and bowed down to their gods. Israel yoked itself to Baal of Peor. Again, sex idolatry, fused in the text. The outcome is covenant judgment.

[00:58:38] All right, let's go ahead and land the plane here. What I'm saying is that when you look at the context of the first verses of Genesis six, there is inherently an underlying logic that is being presented. We're not trying to import later context into this Scripture. We're trying just to understand the ancient world's mindset, and that's what we have.

[00:59:04] There is a whole moral ecology that is in the mind of the ancient person. And when you participate in that, then you get all of the outcomes of it. And the judgment is completely just because it's not just an aspect of God saying, I don't like what you did. Or God being jealous in the form of the way a human is jealous and well, he just doesn't like when you pay attention to other gods.

[00:59:33] There's consequences to that. There's consequences when you're not following God, when you're not worshiping properly. The outcome is genuine disorder in all of these ways.

[00:59:45] And again, we should refrain from reductionism where we try to create a new systematic theology with this. That's not the point. But we should see the whole logic as to why the judgment is framed the way it is and why it is a just judgment and further why it is just for God to judge idolatry because of what it leads to.

[01:00:08] I can bring in the context of Psalm 82. It's a frequent question that people ask." If Psalm 82 is about spiritual beings and false worship, then why are they being judged for justice? Being judged for justice is a thing that people are part of, not spiritual beings."

[01:00:28] There is no human justice that happens without a spiritual side to it. Justice is tied to Yahweh. Injustice is tied to false deities and false worship and idolatry, and not being in covenant with God and all of these things.

[01:00:47] It's a complete picture, but again, it's hard to see because it is not that systematic. It's not the order of things that you just have one thing that leads to another, that leads to another in a neat little package, but that doesn't mean they're not interrelated.

[01:01:05] Okay. I know I've probably repeated myself over and over in this episode, but It's a big question for people who are not quite sure how or if they want to engage in the extra biblical literature. It's a big question as to how one thing leads to another in the flood narrative. But most importantly, it is a big question as to how that applies to our own lives. This isn't just about studying a quaint bit of history.

[01:01:35] That's why I'm going to end on Acts 4 verse 12, which says, quote, " And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that is given among people by which we must be saved." End quote.

[01:01:53] I hope you've seen how the problem that we have is not superficial. It's not just a bunch of bad choices and individual sins, but it is integrated into a corrupted moral ecology that intertwines a whole bunch of things that we think are a bit separate.

[01:02:13] The response in Genesis six and in the prophets is a judgment an erasure or a destruction because of that saturated dynamic.

[01:02:24] But there's hope to it. The hope is always allegiance and covenant relationship with God. And so I hope Acts four 12 will answer that in a stark way. Salvation isn't in human leaders, in systems that we build, in our self-repair, but in that One Name, the One who's appointed as God's Deliverer.

[01:02:49] And when you look at Jesus in that way, and you look at these stories in the way that you have alignment with God and people worshiping God and people being formed and living out that image of God's status. And on the other hand, you have people who are being deformed and those both have a consequence.

[01:03:09] The hard thing is it's not a consequence that is always obvious because the people in the church and the followers of Jesus are not perfect. And so again, if you try to bring this into a systematic reality, it's going to break down because followers of Jesus, the body of Christ on earth, people acting as imagers of God in real ways. But that's not always institutionally seen, is it? The history of the church is messy.

[01:03:40] The history of Christianity has a lot of really terrible pieces to it. And even within our modern churches today, we don't treat each other the way we should. We still have a long way to go, so it's not this systematic answer here. Just because you worship the right God does not mean then that you have perfect ethics and perfect behavior.

[01:04:05] That is not how it works. However, there is this logic that we see in the interconnectedness of these things in Scripture, and that is what the biblical authors are trying to point to.

[01:04:18] If you find yourself in a position where you are performing injustice, where you're not interacting in the world in the way that you should as an imager of God, the answer is not to turn to yourself. The answer is to turn to Christ. That's the answer. That's how we get salvation. Even though we are the body of Christ and we are the image of God and we are being conformed to the image of Christ, the church and the people are still not the source of salvation and deliverance.

[01:04:51] Our actions are still not the source of good worship and good right moral behavior. That source remains in God, fully in God, and those who point their lives towards Christ, actively engaging in that covenant relationship. You will see fruit of that, but it's not always gonna be the fruit that people want to see or that you want to see. It's gonna be messy and it's gonna be imperfect.

[01:05:20] So that's why I really wanna stress this idea that I'm not creating a systematic here. I'm not giving an apologetic as to why the church is this perfect entity in the world, because it's not. The church itself, the body of Christ as presented in humanity is not that way yet. But that's the hope of the eschaton. It's the hope of the consummation of time. And so even though we're not perfect , that doesn't mean we don't work to participate in that now and today.

[01:05:54] Alright, that is it for today. Next week I will get into more of this blotting out language. I thank you all for listening. I thank you for sharing the episodes, for supporting me in the various ways that you do , and a big shout out to those of you who support me financially, either through Patreon, PayPal, or through my biblical theology community. And I will be leaving links to that in the show notes as well. I wish you all a blessed week and we will see you later.