After the Flood - Noah's Sacrifice - Noah's Sin - Noah's Descendants.

(GENESIS 8:15-9:28.)

RIGHTLY considered, the destruction of "all flesh" by the deluge was necessary for its real preservation.

Death was needful for its new life. The old world was buried in the flood, that a new order of things might

rise from its grave. For, manifestly, after the mixing up of the Sethite with the Cainite race, an entirely new

commencement required to be made if the purpose of God in grace was to be carried to its goal. Hence, also,

God once more pronounced upon Noah the blessing of fruitfulness which he had spoken to Adam, and

gave him dominion over creation, yet, as we shall see, with such modifications as the judgment that had just

passed, and the new state of things which had commenced, implied.

It deserves our notice that, even after the earth was quite dry, Noah awaited the express command of God

before leaving the ark. His first act after that was to build "an altar unto Jehovah," and there to offer "burnt-

offerings" "of every clean beast, and of every fowl." Nor was it merely in gratitude and homage to God, but

also in spiritual worship that he thus commenced his life anew, and consecrated earth unto Jehovah. In

bringing an animal sacrifice Noah followed the example of Abel; in calling upon the name of Jehovah he

once again and solemnly adopted the profession of the Sethites. But there was this difference between his

and any preceding sacrifice, that now for the first time we read of building an altar. While Paradise was still

on earth, men probably turned towards it as the place whence Jehovah held intercourse with man. But when

its site was swept away in the flood, God, as it were, took up His throne in heaven, and from thence revealed

Himself unto men and held intercourse with them. (See also Genesis 11:5, 7) And the truth, that our hearts

and prayers must rise upwards to Him who is in heaven, was symbolized by the altar on which the sacrifice

was laid. Scripture significantly adds, that "Jehovah smelled a sweet savor," or rather "a savor of rest," "of

satisfaction;" in other words, He accepted the sacrifice. "And Jehovah said in His heart," that is, He

resolved, "I will not again curse the ground for man's sake, for (or because) the imagination of man's heart is

evil from his youth." Both Luther and Calvin have remarked on the circumstance that men's universal

sinfulness, which formerly had been the cause of the judgment of the flood, should now be put forward as

the reason for not again cursing the ground. But in fact this only marks another difference between the state

of man before and after the flood. If we may so say, God now admitted the fact of universal sinfulness as

existing, and made it an element of His future government. He looked upon man as a miserable and wretched

sinner, with whom in His compassion and long-suffering He would bear, delaying His second and final

judgment till after He should have accomplished all that He had promised to do for the salvation of men.

Putting aside Israel, as God's special people, the period between Noah and Christ may be described, in the

words of St. Paul, as "the times of this ignorance" which "God winked at," (Acts 17:30) or as those when

"through the forbearance of God" sins were passed over. (Romans 3:25, see marginal rendering) Having

thus explained the fundamental terms on which the Lord would deal with the nations of the earth during the

period between the flood and the coming of the Savior, that is, during the Jewish dispensation, we proceed

to notice, in the words wh ich God addressed to Noah, some other points of difference between the former

and the new state of things. First of all, the gracious announcement that, while the earth remained, seed-time

and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night were not to cease, implies not only His

purpose to spare our earth, but also that man might henceforth reckon upon a regular succession of

seasons, and that he was to make this earth for the present his home, to till it, and to possess it. Hence it

was quite another matter when Noah became an "husbandman," from what it had been when Cain chose to

be "a tiller of the ground." Next, as already stated, God renewed the blessing of fruitfulness in much the

same terms in which He had spoken it originally to Adam, and once more conferred dominion over the lower

creation. But in this new grant there was this essential difference - that man's dominion would now be one of

force, and not, as formerly, of willing subjection. If God had at the first brought "every beast" and " every