Noah’s father Lamech had great expectations of him, giving him a name which means rest, hoping that he would ‘comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed’, 5. 29. However, things were to prove otherwise, and it was not comfort but irritation that he must have brought to them, and certainly no rest from toil. Perhaps the hope was that he would invent ways of alleviating hard physical work, adding agricultural innovations to the inventions already introduced in the areas of music and metalwork. The irony was that he did bring in something completely new, but it was an ark to save his immediate family from God’s judgment, not something to spare the remainder of mankind from His curse.
In Noah’s day ‘the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose’, 6. 2. Self-will among those born into the godly line of Seth caused men to please themselves, and lose anything that they had that was distinctive for God. Although they produced mighty men, and men of renown, 6. 4, ‘God 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’, v. 5.
Complete degradation had set in, so God said, ‘My spirit shall not always strive with man’, v. 3. He was grieved, and determined that He would ‘destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them’, vv. 6-7.
However, amidst all this, ‘Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD’, v. 8; cf. Eph. 2. 8. This grace of God controlled his life, for ‘Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God’, v. 9; see also 1 Cor. 15. 10. However, Noah not only lived righteously, but he preached righteousness, 2 Pet. 2. 5. Notwithstanding, only his own immediate family took any notice of him and, as many since have sadly found, his own brothers and sisters ignored his sincere testimony.
