God’s Word for You

2 Peter 2:5 Noah the eighth

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Saturday, July 16, 2022

5 and if God did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with eight in all, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly…;

The “if” implies a definite response: “then surely he will not spare these false teachers, either.”

Peter turns from the fall of Satan to the fall of the ancient world in the flood. This was a catastrophe unlike any other in the history of the world. Jesus also uses the flood as a picture or prelude to the end of the world. “They ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage,” he said, “until the day when Noah entered the ark, and then the flood came and destroyed them all” (Luke 17:27). In a matter of hours, most of the world’s people, animals and birds were dead, and after a few days, no creature at all apart from those who survived in Noah’s ark were still alive. After forty days and forty nights of rain, the storm itself was at an end, but the aftermath of the storm continued for many months (Genesis 7:11-12, 7:24). After ten months, the mountaintops were once again visible, jutting up out of the still-surging sea, and more than a year after Noah entered the ark (Genesis 8:13-14), Noah was given a very good sign: an olive branch. Since olives do not grow on mountaintops, this meant that life was returning to the plains and the valleys. He and his little family left the ark and began to live off the land once again—eight people beginning the population of the world where there had once been only two.

There is a little question about the translation here. Peter literally says that Noah was “the eighth,” although most translations say “with seven others” or something like that. Perhaps just saying “Noah, the eighth, was spared” would make us think of passages like “Enoch, the seventh from Adam” (Jude 1:14). In the sense of Jude’s verse, Noah would have been tenth (Genesis 5:1-29), but Peter doesn’t mean from Adam’s line. He means the eighth of eight people who were saved. The use of the ordinal number “eighth” is strange unless one knows the account of Genesis 7:7 and 7:13, in which the eight are enumerated: Shem, Ham, Japheth, their three wives, Noah’s wife, and Noah himself making “the eighth.” Peter emphasizes the same point with different words in 1 Peter 3:20. Without Peter’s numerals, we would not know that Shem, Ham and Japheth each only had one wife. This would make our ideas about the table of nations (Genesis 10:1-32) a different matter. But we know that the present races of mankind were produced from three couples: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

When Judgment Day comes, the division will only be in two groups: those who had faith in Christ, and those who did not. Jesus says: “The kingdom of heaven is like a net… When it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good fish into baskets but threw the bad fish away. This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous. They will throw the wicked into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 13:48-50). The difference, the only difference, is Christ in the hearts of the righteous. Circumcision will not matter. Race or family tree won’t matter.  Whether or not you died with the most toys won’t matter.  Whether you were a monk or a nun, or whether you were a quiet pauper or a wealthy braggart who just couldn’t keep your mouth shut won’t matter, either, but only Christ in the heart.  Where there is faith, there is forgiveness and salvation, righteousness and everlasting life. Give your children faith, and mind the state of your own immortal soul, and know that you have a place with God our Lord for all eternity. What is the opposite of “weeping and gnashing of teeth?” You will find out, by the grace of God, because you will share it with your Lord and your loved ones forever.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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