FATHERHOOD (2)
[p. 390] FATHERHOOD (2)
Genesis 5: 21 - 24; Genesis 6: 9 - 12; Hebrews 11: 7
JT Enoch and Noah comprise the second feature of our subject. Later, God willing, we shall look at Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, thus covering the book of Genesis, having considered Adam and Seth in our first reading. In Adam we saw, amongst other things, the effect of the word of God as received into the heart and working out in an expression of life; he called his wife’s name “Eve, because she is the mother of all living”. Then a calamity entered his house in the murder of one of his sons by the other, but he recognised what God did to meet that calamity, so that he called the name of this third son Seth, meaning appointed. He evidently had light as to the idea of appointment, a great element in the administrative ordering of God.
In meeting a catastrophe God brings in this thought of appointment, fully seen in the Lord Jesus who was appointed, as it says, “All power has been given me in heaven and upon earth” (Matthew 28: 18). There is practical importance in a father discerning an adverse current in his house, feeling it as a disaster, seeing what God does to meet it, and naming what God does, so that it is understood. Then it says, “And to Seth, to him also was born a son; and he called his name Enosh”, meaning weak, mortal; implying that Seth had light that, however long a man might live according to nature, ultimately he would die. This, under God, would make way for eternal life. We have the promise of eternal life in the Scriptures, God meeting the condition that is discerned by faith on that principle. Eternal life meets the mortal condition in which we are.
God did not allow Adam to partake of the tree of life as he was. Had he done so he would have lived eternally in a lost state, hostile to God; but God prevented this and affected man by His word, so that he was brought [p. 391] to the thought of appointment. The Lord Jesus says to His Father of Himself, “thou hast given him authority over all flesh, that as to all that thou hast given to him, he should give them life eternal” (John 17: 2). It is a matter of sovereignty, and counsel, and in that connection we have people calling on the name of the Lord, an important development in the testimony of God. People name Him, they “call on the name of Jehovah”, the name of Jehovah involving His power, bringing in life, and that is what enters into the whole of Genesis 5 — the life line set up in Adam. So that we have in Enoch one who did not see death. The Lord said to Martha, “Every one who lives and believes on me shall never die” (John 11: 26). Enoch represents that side — eternal life. His fatherhood, therefore, becomes very interesting; a son is born to him and then it says, “Enoch walked with God”. We need fatherhood in the light of purpose; the power effectuating the purpose of God is thus realised in the believer; it is not merely light, it is realised. Enoch did not see death. That is a testimony that enters very strikingly into the present time, and the possibility of not seeing death ought to stimulate our hearts. It is a very great hope within us.
HB Why should the walking with God follow on the begetting of Methuselah?
JT It shows how the work of God affected Enoch. It was important that Methuselah should have the testimony that his father walked with God. He was to continue on to the end of the dispensation, the flood came as he died; it was a great matter that he should have the light of a man walking with God. It is a family matter, and speaks to all young people as to whether they are moving in the light of their parents. We were saying this morning that baptised families are in principle in fellowship. The idea of begetting in this chapter is a feature carried down on the principle of exercise and experience, and if in the present dispensation [p. 392] one leaves the circle of fellowship he is in principle an apostate. Hebrews 10: 26 thus views those who “sin wilfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth”.
SWP What would be suggested in the period of sixty-five years before he begot Methuselah? “Enoch lived sixty-five years, and begot Methuselah”.
JT We were speaking of the period preceding the birth of these sons in our first reading. Adam lived a hundred and thirty years and begot Seth, and Seth lived a hundred and five years and begot Enosh. Enosh lived ninety years and begot Cainan, Cainan lived seventy years and begot Mahalaleel, Mahalaleel lived sixty-five years and begot Jared, Jared lived a hundred and sixty-two years and begot Enoch, and Enoch lived sixty-five years and begot Methuselah. There must be something in the age of the father and what experience he has. Evidently a father gains nothing by having married very young. The suggestion would be maturity in manhood.
JWB Is this to be seen with Paul before Timothy is mentioned?
JT I should think so. I think the full thought of manhood spiritually was in Paul, and Timothy was his child, his beloved child. He met him first immediately after the departure of Barnabas; that separation between himself and Barnabas which must have been a very bitter experience, and that would qualify the apostle Paul all the more as a father. It is he that brings in the thought, “not many fathers” (1 Corinthians 4: 15); but at any rate he was one, who had begotten the Corinthians through the gospel, and also Timotheus.
RWS Is marriage and the begetting of children designed of God to produce spiritual fatherhood?
JT That is what is intended in it. Look at the great men of faith: how long Abraham had to wait for Isaac, and how long Isaac had to wait for Jacob. Then the subsequent history in Jacob’s family all points to the same thing, that God makes us wait for things if we are to be really according to His mind. We must value them. A family should not be looked upon as a hardship, but as a gift from God; God would not have it any other way. If what He gives becomes in the believer’s mind a hardship, it is no testimony to God. We have to challenge our own hearts if it is so.
ASB Would the Psalms help us in that? Psalm 128: 3, in relation to the man that fears Jehovah, says, “Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine in the inner part of thy house; thy children like olive-plants round about thy table”.
JT Yes. Surely God is the Author of the family. Of Him “every family in the heavens and on earth is named” (Ephesians 3: 15). J.N.D.’s note to this passage says, ‘There is a distinct connection between the words for Father and family’. If it is objectionable to parents to have a family, there is no testimony to God in it. Joseph says as to his two boys, “They are my sons, whom God has given me here” (Genesis 48: 9); and Jacob says of his family, “The children that God has graciously given thy servant” (Genesis 33: 5).
WW The features of the assembly should be practically worked out in the household.
JT Quite so, because the assembly is the house of God.
CAM The expression walking with God would involve the acquisition of feelings that God Himself would have in connection with fatherhood. There is another expression used by God to Abraham, “walk before my face” (Genesis 17: 1). Would this be a great thing?
JT I think when God said to Abraham, “walk before my face”, He meant him to understand how thoroughly He found pleasure in him. But walking with God as Enoch did is the inauguration of a principle [p. 394] in one who had learned from others. It is clear that Enoch represents a believer who learns from others. He is “the seventh from Adam”. If I am a parent I ought to be ready to learn from others. I think that is why God gives us so much about the family in the Scriptures. When Enoch walked with Him we may be sure that God would let in light as time went on, as to His own feelings and affections as a Father; so that, without calling Himself Father, the thought was there, and Enoch might well get inklings of the divine fatherhood. When we come to Abraham the truth is out, and God sees to it that he gets a name that qualifies him to be a father. Abraham is named father before he has any children. Evidently he is qualified to have them; they would be no burden to him. He looked after them, even Ishmael and the sons of Keturah, but he took particular care of the one God gave him in a special way.
JWD Should we not seek to understand the feelings of the heart of God in fatherhood? The kind of children that would be given to us might reflect that idea. Sovereignty in relation to the personality of the child, linking on with how we understand fatherhood, and how we are prepared to work it out, do you not think?
JT You begin with the thought that the child is a gift. Eve’s first thought about Cain was that she had “acquired a man with Jehovah”. She did not yet have a man, but she called him a man, and it is rather suggestive that he is so called; the babe is potentially a man, so that is a question of God, and I have to view him from God’s standpoint. He becomes valuable from that standpoint; not that his birth is a mere natural incident, but something with which God has had to do. God has to do with the potato as it grows out of the earth; how much more with the children that grow up in a family! Heaven would impress us with their value,
as it says, “their angels in the heavens continually behold the face of my Father” (Matthew 18: 10); and the Lord took them into His arms and blessed them. These scriptures show how God looks at the matter of parents with a family, and particularly at fatherhood.
EGMcA The fathers in Colossians and Ephesians would have the features of Enoch; they would please God. Evidently Enoch means disciplined or devoted. We are to bring the children up in the discipline and admonition of the Lord, according to Ephesians 6: 4; and Colossians 3: 21 says, “Fathers, do not vex your children, to the end that they be not disheartened”.
JT Yes. Your thought is that Ephesians and Colossians afford teaching on this line, reflecting what God is, and how a father should care for his children, bringing them up in the discipline and admonition of the Lord. That is a very good line of thought for us, because there are not many real fathers even in the ordinary sense of the word, but how much less as to development in the assembly in the exercise of fatherhood among the saints!
JRH Enoch’s prophecy mentioned in the epistle of Jude shows that he had a definite judgment as to evil; he would have that as walking with God.
JT Noah also had to do with evil; the testimony took that turn under Noah. We have the secret of the evil in Genesis 6, but it was there previously; and although Enoch may not have had to suffer from it he certainly took account of it. So that Jude can quote him as speaking of it: “And Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied also as to these, saying, Behold, the Lord has come amidst his holy myriads”, verse 14. I suppose Enoch might say, ‘I am the only one walking with God, and I am trying to preserve my wife and Methuselah in the same path’, but he learned that there were holy myriads and that the Lord was coming [p. 396] with them.
EGMcA Would you say that Enoch who walked with God, and God took him, would be morally the father of the man that lived the longest on the earth?
JT There must be something in that. How exemplary he was! What Methuselah was we cannot definitely say; there is nothing said of him in this respect, only it is clear that he represents the side of God’s patience, for the flood was stayed until he died. There is ground for regarding him as some kind of a witness to God. I understand his name may arise from the fact that after his death the flood came. There must have been something for God in him.
AEH What would you say about a case like Jotham, the king of Judah, who turned out so well and yet had a bad father, a presumptuous father? The Spirit is careful to tell us that he did not do as his father did.
JT This was also true of Jeroboam’s son, and that son was required to die; God said he was the only one in the house of Jeroboam in which there was any good. That is God’s side, taking him away from the evil. It shows that God takes account of good wherever He sees it.
AEH I was thinking of the remark you made about learning from what we have seen. I suppose that Jotham would have seen his father presumptuously going into the house of Jehovah to burn incense, but he did not do it.
JT He learned negatively, you might say. In Enoch’s case we have a man who had great advantages in the persons with whom he was acquainted in the testimony of God. He was the seventh from Adam and lived with many of the seven. He evidently learned from others. Although he walked with God he would take account of the persons whom he knew, and I think we ought to follow that example. We are to consider our leaders, who have spoken to us the word of God and “[p. 397] considering the issue of their conversation, imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and to the ages to come” (Hebrews 13: 7). The principle of learning from others runs right through Scripture.
HB Would Philippians 4: 9 fit in? “What ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, these things do; and the God of peace shall be with you”.
JT That is a good Scripture to support what we are saying. Paul was a father and was to be followed.
JWD It says in Hebrews 11: 5, “By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death”. Do you think his intercourse with those that preceded him would turn on the question of life, and that the thought of faith in relation to translation might come into his heart?
JT Yes. However vague the learning might be, certainly he had the idea of the holy myriads that the Lord had. One is struck with the brevity of the account we have of the ancient world. It is all contained in these few chapters which we are considering, but we cannot imagine for a moment that the Spirit of God was not operating during all those antediluvian years. What times these men must have had in meeting one another! Adam lived nine hundred and thirty years, we are told; it would be easy to see how far down that went. And then Seth lived nine hundred and twelve years and Enosh lived nine hundred and five years; and so the length of years continues through Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, etc. How these lives overlapped or interlaced we cannot say, but we may assume that if God was working in them they would be drawn to each other and value each other. So that it was a learning time and it was a time of life, and I believe Enoch indicates the full culmination of it, in that, after Methuselah was born, he began to walk with God for three hundred years.
RA John says, “I write to you, fathers, because [p. 398] ye have known him that is from the beginning” (1 John 2: 13); and then the young men come in as overcomers.
JT We were remarking on that in our first reading; the fathers know “him that is from the beginning”. The principle of this chapter is that what is from the beginning runs through it, and Enoch evidently profited by it, because he was a learner; as his name signifies, he is a student through discipline.
JWD He must have had some understanding of the name ‘Eve’, in a world full of corruption and violence. Do you not think that by faith he sensed that another world must come into existence in connection with that name, meaning life? So that that was the light in which he walked with God, faith in that connection having opened up to him.
JT I think that is right. When we get to glory, to heaven, we shall be looking for these men. We must not restrict ourselves to the mere letter of Scripture, we must read it with understanding, knowing that it gives us suggestions. For example, what can we see in Enoch, the man of accumulated understanding and instruction? He would belong to a family by itself, a family of God that would be characterised by what is from the beginning, carried down in their knowledge and in their feelings and emphasising what part God had in it. So that here is a man who is said to be a learner, an instructed person who embodies the whole matter, being an exemplification of the antediluvian work of God. It comes under a family by itself. It will be most interesting to investigate these matters by and by. What a time we shall have moving about, seeing in all the families the history of Scripture! We were speaking this morning about what men do scientifically, recording their research, as instanced in a book called, Records of the Past. But in Enoch we shall see records of the past in a positive way. There is nothing said about Enoch having any warfare or any particular [p. 399] suffering, that side of the truth is not brought before us in connection with him. It is His own work in him that God likes so well, and so “he was not, for God took him”.
ASB Would it help us to see that the reference to Enoch in Hebrews 11 links on with that to which you have been calling attention? It says, “But without faith it is impossible to please him. For he that draws near to God must believe that he is”, verse 6.
JT That is the way to get at it. He had faith. It is by faith Enoch was translated. He had the testimony before his translation that he pleased God; meaning that God gave some witness to him that he pleased Him; and God is saying, What pleases Me I am taking! I am taking it to Myself, and all that is left is going into the flood. What good is the present world or its records? None whatever! It is what pleases God that is of value, and that is going to be taken up. With Noah another testimony comes in, to do with things that are going through. But Enoch, as we have said, is not a suffering man, he is not a working man even; he is not a man like Noah that does things, but he is a man who has faith and he pleases God, and God takes him.
PG There is nothing specific mentioned in the life of Enoch save that he walked with God.
JT Jude says he prophesied of the coming of the Lord. He would represent life; the life of God, in the antediluvian world. We have the expression, the “life of God”, in Ephesians 4: 18, that men were alienated from it. In Enoch’s time also they were alienated from it, but Enoch was not. He was in it. If you asked Enoch, he would say, ‘I walked with Him three hundred years. I know something about the life of God’.
JRH It must have been delightful to Adam to see the end of all his exercise, all the experience that he had with God, summed up in Enoch. The figures here would show that he died fifty-seven years before Enoch was taken.
JT [p. 400] That is what we should observe. There is an overlapping, and, we might say, an interlacing of the lives of these men. They were in touch with one another and they represented the life of God. Those in whom God wrought before the flood would, I believe, form a family by themselves.
RWS In this life line, would it appear from the constant allusion to sons and daughters that there is an extension in the antediluvian world of what Enoch represented?
JT We are entitled to assume that God gathered up much in those days. We hear very little until we come down to Noah, but we cannot say that there was only what is written, because all the sons and daughters of these families would get divine light. The names given of the heads of the families indicate light, the light of life, we may say.
JWB You referred to learning. In Kings and Chronicles we frequently find the phrase, “David his father”. Would David thus be the standard?
JT He is a sort of model for all that followed, which would enter into what we are speaking of. Adam is the beginning, and represents what was from the beginning, and Genesis 5 would show that it is the beginning of a moral line, not the creation line, although that is recognised too. So that we have Enoch brought into it. If you were to meet Enoch one day and converse with him, you would find that he had been walking with God all that day. Perhaps he met Adam or one of the others and got some light from their experience, for it is all cumulative, and it makes that period very interesting. I believe that Enoch represents something of what it will be like in heaven, — the product of that world, as it were, eternally seen there. All these men, doubtless, will be there. So that the fifth chapter is “from glory to glory”. One of the names, Mahalaleel, refers to glory; in fact each of the names I believe refers to some feature [p. 401] of that world. God has had Enoch with Him ever since — He took him.
AHB Does the name Enoch suggest a life of close, personal contact with God?
JT That is the way it works out; God’s discipline promotes holiness. We have the case of the house of Stephanas, whose members addicted themselves to the saints for service. The name Stephanas means crown, implying glory. Thus the point reached in Enoch morally was that of a crown.
RWS Would an Enoch today discern that God is taking assembly materials from what He has now in the families of the saints, and not going outside for it very much? Fatherhood would involve training in view of the assembly.
JT It is very interesting that they all begot sons and daughters. God has not said anything specific about these sons and daughters. With some of those antediluvian daughters it is doubtful whether or not they belonged to the life line; I do not believe they did. They were fair, but they evidently did not have veils, they did not conceal their beauty, but were open and brazen, so that they were seen by those fallen beings, spoken of as in the ancient world as “the sons of God”. The context shows plainly that they were agents of evil; and they “took themselves wives of all that they chose”. It is a very strong warning to sisters now as to exposing themselves openly, whereas the life line would imply that they veiled themselves.
RWS Genesis 6: 2 says, “the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and took themselves wives”.
JT Where did they see them? They must have gone where they could have been seen by these beings. They were not sheltered in their fathers’ houses in a godly way, nor did they cover themselves with a veil.
JWD It is something akin to your suggestion as [p. 402] to Mary Magdalene. She made room by her ways for the possession of evil spirits.
JT Seven demons were in her. How did they get there? By giving evil a place, the devil gets in. So that when the Lord came into contact with her they went out of her. They were not cast out according to Luke, they went out. She was so affected by the Lord that they simply had no room.
JWC Is there a difference between the idea of children being given to us, and the thought in this fifth chapter of those that are begotten?
JT It is just two sides of the same thing, this being a progenitive thought, the stamp of God on man, on the human race. The word, “Be fruitful and multiply”, was for the propagation of the race. The progenitive idea is stamped upon it. That is the principle that runs through this chapter and is maintained in life. We can assume that, if Enoch had such a sense of evil that he said, “the Lord has come amidst his holy myriads, to execute judgment” (Jude 14), he would do his best to preserve his children, and the fact that he began to walk with God when Methuselah was born is proof that he would be attentive to his family.
CAM You were connecting Noah with the number eight?
JT Yes. It is remarkable how much is connected with him in the New Testament. Then chapter 5 ends, “And Noah was five hundred years old, and Noah begot Shem, Ham, and Japheth”. It is a very good ending too. Then it says, “And it came to pass when mankind began to multiply on the earth, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and took themselves wives of all that they chose. And Jehovah said, My spirit shall not always plead with Man; for he indeed is flesh; but his days shall be a hundred and twenty years. In those days were the giants on the earth, and also afterwards,
[p. 403] when the sons of God had come in to the daughters of men, and they had borne children to them; these were the heroes, who of old were men of renown”. We can see the old world developing into the grossest kind of evil. They were not affected by the preaching of Noah; in the face of his testimony this awful evil developed. Noah and those like him were in a very great minority. Evil had become so developed that there were only eight saved, and there is not much said of any of them except Noah himself. This is most important in view of our times, we having come to the greatest development of evil that has ever been. How is it going to work out?
SWP These “men of renown” are the product of fatherhood on negative lines. Mr. Darby’s note says, ‘who had a peculiar and known name on the earth’. There is no link with heaven. Is that suggestive?
JT Quite so. “These were the heroes”. I suppose Greek mythology and the like might have been derived from this evil. It all shows the terrible descent of the race under these influences. But Enoch stands out as representing the cumulative instruction that could be gathered from his forefathers who had faith, and God liked him so well that He took him to Himself. It was not a crown for any great service that he rendered, but he pleased God.
JWD With regard to womanhood, there is a full grown development of wickedness in Revelation 12, but the woman there fled into the wilderness where she had a place prepared of God; thus womanhood is connected with God as over against this wickedness.
JT That is a good suggestion. How comforting it is that there should be “a place prepared of God” for her; and what glory is attached to her, “clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet”! We should follow that up a little more if we have opportunity because of the great lesson it is for us at the present time.
Now we come to Noah. God took account of him in [p. 404] the midst of all these elements. First we must observe what God thought of the existing conditions. There was “only evil continually” on the earth. “And Jehovah repented that he had made Man on the earth, and it grieved him in his heart. And Jehovah said, I will destroy Man, whom I have created, from the earth — from man to cattle, to creeping things, and to fowl of the heavens; for I repent that I have made them” (Genesis 6: 6, 7). Let us stop to think as we read this scripture of what a God is ours, what a feeling God He is! Fathers and mothers should thus learn to be feeling about the corruptness around, and the danger of their children coming under the power of it. “But Noah found favour in the eyes of Jehovah”. This is God’s judgment of him, God now has another man in whom He can rest. Then verse 9 says, “This is the history of Noah. Noah was a just man, perfect amongst his generations: Noah walked with God. And Noah begot three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth”. Here we have fatherhood in Noah. Notice the word generations; it refers in verse 9 to his own immediate circle of relations, sons and daughters, uncles and aunts, whoever they might be. In that setting he was perfect.
RWS Was this one hundred and twenty years within the antediluvian period?
JT I think so. I take it to be the period from the time that God made this pronouncement up to the flood.
RWS This would be the most wicked and difficult time of all, and would compare with our day.
JT That is what I was thinking, so that God judges the condition and brings Noah into it, depositing in him the testimony so that he may be constituted a preacher of righteousness.
AR Is Noah’s name, meaning repose, significant?
JT It must be, because his father said, “This one shall comfort us concerning our work and concerning the toil of our hands, because of the ground which Jehovah has cursed” (Genesis 5: 29). The current conditions are met, and then in the end of chapter 8 we have the sweet odour. In connection with Noah’s offering, Genesis 8: 21 says, “And Jehovah smelled the sweet odour. And Jehovah said in his heart, I will no more henceforth curse the ground on account of Man”. Sweet odour might also be rendered odour of rest.
CAM Would you say that the new order will be equal to this matter of eight? I was wondering whether it would be right to link it with the heavenly side of the truth, in connecting it with Enoch?
JT I think that is right. The eight is another order of things developing out of the first, and Noah is said in the New Testament to be one of eight, which number is said to be few; there are not many, but there are enough to make another world; God can go on, that is the point. He has a man that not only pleases Him and walks with Him, but he is a testimony among his generations, his relations and acquaintances. He is a man that God can use, he has courage and ability to do things according to His mind. It looks as if there will be a change when the church is taken up to heaven, as if God will have men able to do great things and to go through the terrible tribulations coming on the earth. We are hardly called upon to go through the fringe of what is coming; prophecy anticipates awful happenings. Men will need to be prepared of God to go through them, and I think Noah represents that.
GWW Why does Enoch say in Jude, “The Lord has come”?
JT It is a set matter. It is a prophetic way of speaking.
JRH Would it suggest too that he reached it in his own soul?
JT I think so. It would suggest that God was already operating against the wickedness spoken of.
JWW Is it instructive that God brings the father
thought forward, “thou, and thy sons, and thy wife”, in connection with going into the ark?
JT Yes. It was “for the saving of his house”. The Spirit of God says that he was moved with fear, because he was oracularly warned. He was a real man according to God, a man that God could use to carry out His mind amid great difficulties; to go through them successfully, so that being moved with fear he prepared an ark for the saving of his house. It is credited to him that he did it, and that is a great word for us as fathers, to see to it that our houses are protected.
AR It is said that by doing it he condemned the world. Jehovah had cursed the ground, but here is a man that is free from the evil and living in the light of another world.
JT Yes. So that God takes one man up to heaven, and the other one goes through the deluge, and you can see clearly that Noah must have been a sufferer at least on moral lines, because of building an ark when there was no water at all in sight.
JWD What will be the nature of the ark that the remnant will have? I was wondering whether it would come out in the third and fourth books of the Psalms, the power and glory of God anticipated by faith.
JT I am sure that God will begin to work in them very rapidly after the church has been removed, and the godly Jews will begin to revert back; they will surely look back on history, and the word ark has a great place in the history of the testimony. This is the first instance of its use; the next is in the last chapter of this book, where Joseph’s bones are said to be put into an ark (see Note to verse 26). The ark into which Moses was put is very interesting. Moses was “fair to God”. He was worth protecting, and that is what we have to see as to children. They are worth protecting. The final thought is the ark into which the testimony was put. It suggests what is infinite. I suppose that the [p. 407] Jewish remnant will begin to look into the Psalms and the prophets; thus they will learn values, what is worth carrying through. Great lessons may be learned from Noah. The ark illustrates his ability. The ark that held Joseph’s bones would be comparatively small. We know the measurements of the ark of the covenant. Noah’s ark was a large-sized ship, four hundred and fifty feet long, I should say. In divine things there are large thoughts and small thoughts. Large things usually involve less preciousness than small ones. The ark of the covenant is much greater morally than the ark of Noah. The fatherhood of Noah is seen in the ark built by him. What a time he must have had there, he and his wife and three daughters-in-law and three sons! The Spirit of God makes a great deal of the three sons, Shem is mentioned first here; it does not seem as if he were first historically, but God puts first what is morally first, and Shem, in view of Israel, is morally first.
JRH Would it instruct us to see that the ark helped Noah as to his fatherhood? I refer to the instructions as to the cells he was to make. These suggest opportunity for individual contact with God for each member of his house.
JT Quite so. Also there were first, second and third stories in the ark with the light at the top. They had before them all the time in the ark a great variety of life, it was there every day before their eyes, so that at any time Noah could instruct his family and call attention to this creature or that. Adam called that creature so and so, he might say; Adam meant to convey that that creature exhibited some particular feature of life. Another thing to note is that he is mentioned with his family as being in the ark before the animals began to go in, suggesting that the ark was more attractive to them with Noah and his family in it. We read, “And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was on the earth. And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood. Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowl, and of everything that creeps on the ground, there came two and two unto Noah into the ark, male and female, as God had commanded Noah. And it came to pass after seven days that the waters of the flood were on the earth”. Noah is seen there, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives. You will notice that Noah and his sons come first; the male side, the leading side, but they are all there and the animals come to them there. All these things are of great importance as to the working of life. What a man Noah was in his own circle, for he is viewed much in that connection; the man who prepared an ark for the saving of his house!
RWS It is all the more remarkable because apparently for one hundred and twenty years nobody came to him.
JT While he was building no doubt many came to jeer at him.
EGMcA Why would such a man as Ham be carried through, in connection with whose family there was a curse by Noah? And why should there be any unclean animals there?
JT God in His government can use all. In that connection we have a prophetic word from Noah in chapter 9, in relation to Canaan. We all know the history of the vineyard that Noah planted, and the conduct of his son. He is called the youngest son and it is evidently a prophetic announcement in verse 25: “and he said, Cursed be Canaan; Let him be a bondman of bondmen to his brethren. And he said, Blessed be Jehovah, the God of Shem, And let Canaan be his bondman. Let God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, And let Canaan be his bondman”. It is a prophetic word that covers the history of [p. 409] the Canaanites.
JRH It would show clearly too that the life line was continued through Shem.
JT That is the point; in spite of the failure, Noah is a man of God. He is not drunk as uttering the blessing; he is recovered, and he is able to convey the mind of God. Shem is blessed and Canaan is cursed. It is in view of Israel.
AR Do the three representatives go from there right on to Revelation?
JT This particular family is cursed. We have to find that family. It cannot be found by colour, you know, it is a spiritual matter. It refers to the seven nations of the land of Canaan.
AEH It would look as though even such an element as Canaan would be made to contribute to the great things of God. Shem’s name means renown, and Japheth’s means enlargement or expanding, and Canaan would contribute to that as a bondman.
JT God meets disaster with victory at all times. How wonderfully He comes in and meets it here, and triumphs in opening up His mind through Noah! The Canaanitish woman, Matthew 15, is a bright testimony to grace in the family of Ham, and there are many others. In Nimrod, a rebel, however, we have also one of the family of Ham. He represented the lawless elements of the world.
AR He is the head of Babylon. I suppose that is the idea that will go right down to the end.
JT Yes. Making use of the creatures of God for sport, as he did, is abominable to God.