The orientation of the primeval history around creation and flood means that the story of primeval origins clearly distinguishes the present, experienced world of the audience from the world as God initially created and intended it. Thus, Gen 1–11 does not just present contemporary realities as an immutable, divinely-created order. Instead, these chapters depict present reality as the result of a complex process leading from 1) God’s creation of an initial “very good” order (Gen 1:1–2:3, also 2:4–25) that was then compromised by human actions (Gen 3:1–4:24) to 2) a flood destruction and partial revision of the initial creation order (Gen 6:5–9:17). This depiction starts with an account of God’s ideal creation in Gen 1:1–2:3 and the initial story of Yhwh’s creation of an initial human, the first animals, and the first woman as the human’s true counterpart and helper (Gen 2:4–24). These two texts, complexly related and distinguished in numerous respects, both explain some aspects of present reality (e.g., distinct components of the present cosmos [Gen 1], the strong bond of a young man to his wife [Gen 2:24]) and also present ideal “counterworlds” (German Gegenwelten) to the audience’s present, where, e.g., humans peacefully dominate animals (Gen 1:26, 28–30; 2:18–20) and survive on plant life (1:29–30; 2:8–9, 15–16).
Starting in Gen 3, however, human disobedience and violence disrupts this ideal picture, and subsequent narratives show other ways that humans act and God must react. In this way, the primeval narratives of Genesis explain non-ideal elements of human life—such as animosity with animals (Gen 3:14–15), hard labor for food (Gen 3:17–19, 23), and violence (Gen 4:8)—as the result of primeval events involving the first humans. Nevertheless, the stories of Adam and Eve in Eden and Cain and Abel are much more complex than the simple “crime and punishment” model that is often applied to them.3 These pre-flood stories depict the gradual emergence of the first humans from a state of childlike [and animal-like] lack of shame (Gen 2:25), gullibility, and naivete (Gen 3:1–6) into the hard work and hard choices of life outside the garden. This certainly involves human mistakes and misdeeds, partly instigated by other non-human powers—disobedience prompted in part by the snake Gen 3:1–6 and fratricide associated with sin lurking as a demon in Gen 4:7–8. Nevertheless, humans also gain important adult capabilities along the way, such as godlike “knowledge of good and evil” (3:7, 22), and God does not only respond to their actions with anger, but also with compassion (Gen 3:8–24; 4:9–15). We see this mix of divine responses also in the divine response to marriages between the sons of god and human daughters in Gen 6:1–2. There Yhwh imposes a 120-year lifespan limit to humanity (6:3), one that both a) allows the potentially immortal children produced by such marriages to live unusually long lives and yet b) reinforces the mortality of such divine-human offspring. Amidst all this, there is little to indicate that God will impose a world-destroying flood on all life. At most, there are subtle anticipations of the coming of diluvian destruction in the names for the last five primeval ancestors in Gen 5 and their age notices.
The following flood narrative echoes and reverses aspects of the Gen 1 and 2 creation stories. To start, Gen 6:5–6 echoes Gen 2 in describing God’s regret at having made (עשה) humans whose formation (יצר) is thoroughly evil (cf. יצר in 2:7) and then Gen 6:11–12 echoes and contrasts with Gen 1 in describing the corruption of the “very good” earth that was created at the outset (cf. Gen 1:31~6:13). God then goes on to destroy all of humanity except Noah (7:6–8:19) before promising not to bring another flood (8:20–9:17). The status of the flood as an uncreation of God’s initial creation is highlighted by parallels between God’s creation of the heavenly plate in Gen 1:6–8, God’s opening of its windows to create the flood in 7:11, and God’s closing of them in 8:2.
The text in Gen 9:18–11:9 then continues the meditation on human possibilities and limits seen in Gen 3:1–6:4. For example, much as the Eden story in Gen 2–3 presented a fundamentally ambivalent picture of human acquisition of wisdom (3:7, 22) and concomitant condemnation to hard labor (Gen 3:17–19, 23–24), the story of Noah combines a picture of him discovering comfort from that hard labor through farming grapes from the ground (Gen 5:29; 9:20–21a) and his accidental descent into a drunken nakedness reminiscent of nakedness in Eden (Gen 9:21b; cf. 2:25; 3:7) and subsequent imposition of a curse (ארר) on his grandson (Gen 9:21–25; cf. Gen 3:17–19). And, as partially indicated in the table below, various other aspects of the post-flood stories in Gen 9:20–11:9 resume themes of human division (e.g., Gen 4:1–26 // Gen 9:25–10:32) and threat to the divine-human boundary (e.g., Gen 3:22; 6:1–2 // 11:1–4) that were seen in the stories leading up to the flood:4
General (un)creation, three pairings of the nuclear family, divine-human boundary, peoples
Initial Divine Creation of Humans and the Biome that They Rule (Gen 1:1–2:3)
First Human Couple: End of Nakedness, Start of Farming, Reproduction (Gen 2–3)
Establishment of firm divine-human boundary (of mortality)
First Sibling Pair: Echoes of Eden (Gen 4:1–16)
Kenite Peoples (tents, pastroralists, metalurgists) (Gen 4:20–22)
Sethite Substitute for Abel—Calling on Yhwh’s Name (4:25–26)
Reinforcement of Divine-Human Boundary (Gen 6:1–4)
Divine Uncreation and Recreation of the Cosmos (6:5–9:17)
Parent-Children Pairing: Echoes of Eden—Farming, Nakedness, and Curse (Gen 9:20–27)
Population of Earth from Noah’s Sons (Gen 10)
Spatial Reinforcement of the Divine-Human Boundary (Gen 11:1–9)
(11:1–9 provides background to spread of earth’s population in Gen 10)
The flood and post-flood stories (Gen 6:5–11:9) thus unfold themes from the pre-flood section (Gen 1:1–6:4) in two main ways. First, they echo specific elements of Gen 2:1–6:4, describing the continuing development of human farming, unfolding of ethnic divisions, and featuring themes of nakedness, curse, and God’s concerns about preserving the divine-human boundary. Second, the flood narrative represents a temporary interruption in the emergence of the current world order, echoing elements of Gen 1–2 in the process of describing God’s undoing and revision of God’s initial creation work.
Major Themes in the History of Interpretation of Gen 1:1–6:4
The above-surveyed texts in Gen 1–11 have played such an important role in Jewish and Christian interpretation that adequate treatment of that history requires a book (or books) in itself. Therefore, this commentary does not provide a sustained treatment of this area. Nevertheless, I note below a few central foci in the history of interpretation of the texts in Gen 1–11 as a preface to this commentary’s diachronic exploration of their formation over time and synchronic reading of the distinct diachronic levels embedded in them.
I start by noting a marked contrast between the Hebrew Bible’s general lack of specific reference to stories in Gen 1–11 and the broad and deep reflection on these chapters from the Second Temple period onward. Aside from more general references to creation in a number of biblical texts, the main potential reflections of Gen 1–11 in other Hebrew Bible texts occur in a brief mention of “the garden of Yhwh” in Gen 13:10; Isa 51:3, reference to Noah in Ezek 14:14, 20 and Isa 54:9, use of genealogical information from Gen 1–5 in 1 Chr 1:1–4, and a likely reflection on the Gen 1:26–28 picture of God’s creation of humans to rule in Ps 8:5–9 (ET 8:4–8; cf. also Ps 136:8–9).5 In addition, as will be discussed more later, there may be some ways that the garden of Eden story of Gen 2:4–3:24 is responded to or otherwise appropriated in Psalm 82:7 and texts in Ezekiel on the expulsion of a proud figure from the garden