Noah was the first man who could have no direct contact to the first man (Adam) and was the first man to be born into a world where death is already present. Mortality is a received part of the human condition. Adam and Eve thought that they were going to live in the Garden of Eden forever and therefore thought it was okay to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree given their assumed protection in the Garden of Eden. Just as Adam and Eve thought they had protection forever, humans after Adam and Eve did as well, only this time it was in the form of immortality. The humans acted crazy when they found out that they weren’t immortal, just as Adam and Eve did when they thought the Garden of Eden was going to be theirs for a long time. The troubles also start because of population growth. Once God made Eve, that is when the problems started happening, just as once the population started expanding, it became harder to control what was going on. This then leads to sinning. There was also the problem of choosing wives based only on looks alone. Just as the fruit on the tree looked tempting, people became focused only on finding wives who were good looking as well. Due to the thoughts about protection from death, population growth, and selfishness, the sins seen in Genesis chapter 3 were able to continue throughout the story of Noah and the Ark. Noah was saved because of his remaining virtue, something that wasn’t found in many of the chapters read in Genesis. The story of Noah and the Ark continues the story of God being merciful to man. God was merciful to Adam and Eve by allowing them to continue living on Earth. God was merciful to Noah and his family by allowing them to escape the flood. It just shows that although mankind will make mistakes, God will continue to be merciful towards certain people just as he was to Adam and Eve and Noah and his family.
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karlieliang 
Great post! I think you could add a part where you compare the humans to God because he made them in his image. You could say how God is good and shares, but humans are selfish and take.
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Great post! I think you could add a section where you compare God to the humans He made in His image. You could say how God is good and shares, but humans are selfish and take.
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I agree with what you said. I didn’t think about how as the population expanded, sin became more frequent, and that choosing wives based on looks had an impact on sin and temptation. It is interesting though how God can be merciful, but still choose to almost wipe humans out completely.
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To play Devil’s advocate, how do we justify a merciful God when he essentially hits the refresh button on all of humanity? Similarly, I am sure most of the humans had some redeeming qualities, yet the were still wiped from the face of the Earth. Where do we draw the line of what can be seen as “merciful”, and how do we ensure we are the “certain people” to which God shows mercy?
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Nice reflection! I thought your comments about population growth relating to sin were very interesting. One question that I have: you brought up at the end how God is merciful towards certain people…do you think that God is only merciful towards some and not towards others? If so, how does he choose?
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I like the part where you compare the looks of the women with the looks of the fruit and how they were tempting but maybe add how those things are apart of an overarching theme of greed. Also, did Adam and Eve think that they were protected when they ate the fruit because God had made it clear that they would lose almost everything if they ate it?
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