Genesis 7-9

Yesterday, I ended up reading the pages of Genesis 7-9. I've been finding out that my reading ability has been enhanced from asking myself questions and actively focusing on the passages. I'm a lot more relaxed than before because I used to feel some reading anxiety from wanting to just get it down really fast and have the information flowing through my head right away. I guess I've been developing some better patience- a pretty, female friend once told me that I have a lot of patience and that I'm pretty straight-forward. I guess those are the qualities that she either wanted me to keep developing in or just felt I was well-matched up for it.

These chapters basically talked about how God kept a remnant of all living animals of the ground by commanding Noah to build an ark that would house a male and female pair of each living creature that lived on the land. God then decided to keep a covenant with Noah because of his faithfulness. It seems like from Genesis 6:5 and the verses 7, 12-13, God was really upset about mankind imagining evil things and making the world still a violent place, despite the people there having a long life. God would then shorten the lifespan to about 120 years as our maximum life. Yes, I did read about a woman who reached the age of 122 years, but still I think the Bible means to be around that approximate age.

One of my friends ended up blaming the people of back then for screwing it up for us. From having a discussion with him, discussing the verse Genesis 8:21, I told him that we are all capable of imagining bad things and then told him that he was falling short in the glory of God daily. He agreed and then asked, "Don't we all?" Yes, we do! It seems like the people of the world back then hasn't been changed that much to how people are today.

God ended up blessing Noah and his sons in Genesis 9:1 and told them to multiply the earth. Following closely with the view of the Bible, we would all be the descendants of Noah's family. I was told by speculation that the gene pool was very pure back then and among Noah's three sons and wives, their primary descendants would be able to intermarry and successfully produce healthy offspring. These days, it would be nearly impossible because the DNA from close relatives would mess it up and create unwanted mutations, if there's any offspring to go along with it. That's why it's illegal for siblings and first cousins to marry each other now.

One of my buddies told me that he likes to think of himself more as a descendant of Adam, rather than Noah. It would technically apply to us as well because Noah came from Adam's genealogy, too which can be found from reading Genesis 5.

Genesis 8 ended up confusing me a little from Verse 2. I'm not sure what rain from heaven and the fountains of the deep really means. Anyhow, the Bible was clear about mentioning that the raining and the flood had stopped and the ark would eventually reach dry ground. Noah would send out his birds to be scouts of finding out if there's dry land. What was crazy is that after the rain of forty days and forty nights, Noah's family and the animals would go on to live in the ark for a total of a whole year, which is found in Genesis 8:13.  To finish it all off for today because I'm busy and there's always another day to visit this section again, Genesis 9:16 talks about how God blessed us with a rainbow in the cloud that would show an everlasting covenant among God and all living creatures on the earth. It looks like God is sending a message that He loves everything that He created; despite the circumstances that we can go through sometimes.

The whole forty days and forty nights thing with the flood rings a bell in how Jesus spent those days fasting in a desert! Man, that's crazy because of all that heat and huge chance of being mentally aggravated from just constantly starving. Maybe, Jesus had a servant to fetch him water and some form of shade. Also the flood for some reason seems to represent some type of baptism to my head, it's like once we're baptized in the Lord's name, we don't have to ever go through it again and can know that we've been saved from eternal damnation and continue to practice the Lord's ways despite falling in sin on at least a blue moon or something like that. Yeah, it's if we can catch ourselves being like that. God promised that he would never make another flood to wipe up everything living on the ground ever again, which could be a huge point for believers and is found in Genesis 9:15.