The Promise (The Noahic Era)

The second word of promise came in the days of Noah. Because of disobeying God and heeding the deception of the serpent to eat the forbidden fruit, man knew of the good and now, also the evil. Banished from the Garden of Eden, mankind had grown and populated in this cursed world, but so had sin. The Lord said, “My spirit shall not always strive with man” (Genesis 6:3) for He “saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). What a sorry sight it must have been for the Lord to look upon the people He had created and to see the wickedness and the darkness that was in man’s heart! “It grieved him [God] at his heart” (Genesis 6:6).


Because He saw the great wickedness of man, because every thought of man was constant evil, the Lord said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them” (Genesis 6:7). At this point, a question immediately arises concerning the original promise. If God destroys all of man, how will the woman’s seed of Genesis 3:15 come to exist? Is hope for the One to come that will bruise the head of the serpent in jeopardy? Not so! Be assured that the answer can be found in the following verse, “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD” (Genesis 6:8).

Noah was a just man (Genesis 6:9), a perfect man (v.9), an obedient man (v.22), and a righteous man (Genesis 7:1). Like Enoch, Noah walked with God (Genesis 6:9). Hope can even be found in his name. By definition, the name Noah means [he] “shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed” (Genesis 5:29). According to the book of Hebrews, Noah was a man of faith and feared the Lord (Hebrews 11:7). Noah’s faith, in action, brought him to obedience to build the ark.

Noah was set apart from the rest of his generation. The Scripture states that Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord (Genesis 6:8). Because of Noah’s righteousness and faithfulness, God used him as an instrument of His will. God instructed Noah to build an ark in preparation for the flood that He was about to bring upon the world. The Lord gave him the exact details on how to construct the three-storied vessel including the material, dimensions, and cargo. Among the freight were to be seven clean males and females of every beast and fowl, also pairs of every unclean beast and fowl on earth, as well as his family. Noah did as God commanded him.


The judgment of God rained down for forty days and forty nights as God had declared. In essence, the ship was a type of Christ being that is was salvation from the judgment of God. By the mercy of the Lord, eight people were saved from the flood: Noah, Noah’s wife, Shem, Ham, Japheth (which were Noah’s sons), and their wives. Everything else on earth perished in the flood. “All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died” (Genesis 7:22).

After the rain stopped, the waters stayed on the earth for one hundred and fifty days and then began to recede until the land was dry. Noah built an altar an offered the clean beasts and fowls as burnt sacrifices to the Lord. “And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth” (Genesis 9:1) as He had blessed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It is here that the Lord made a covenant that everything living on the earth would never again be destroyed by a flood. God said, "I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth." (Genesis 9:13) So, the rainbow is a sign of the solemn promise God had made after the flood.

What about the promise of Genesis 3:15? What of the seed of promise? Did it wash away in the flood? What happened to the promise of the coming Messiah who would bring deliverance from the power of sin and the serpent? Did God change His plan seeing the continual evil hearts of man? Where is the theme of promise which is our an inner unified center and basic building block of the foundation to this method of Old Testament theology?

The continuity of the promise lies in the exegesis of Genesis 9:25-27. After Noah awoke from an alcohol-induced slumber, he learned that Ham, the father of Canaan, had saw Noah’s nakedness and informed his brothers, Shem and Japheth. While Shem and Japheth went into the tent backwards to cover their father’s nakedness, Ham did not. Therefore, we have this refrain:

“And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant” (Genesis 9:25-27).

The seed of prophecy did not drown in the flood. Nor was the promise abandoned in light of an unrighteous world. Each son of Noah is referenced in all three verses in the aforementioned refrain of Genesis 9:25-27. Because of what happened in the tent, verse 25 speaks of Canaan, the son of Ham, to be cursed as a “servant of servants” to his brothers. Shem and Canaan are both noted in verse 26. Whereas Shem obtains a blessing, Canaan is cursed to be his slave. And in verse 27, Shem, Canaan, and Japheth are all discussed in a composite of a blessing and a curse.


The inner unity is found in verse 27 where the Bible says “and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem.” Who is the he the Bible is referring to in this verse? “The word for ‘dwell’ is related to the later concept of Mosaic theology of the Shekinah glory of God wherein the presence of God over the tabernacle was evidenced by the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night.” A careful exegesis of verse 27 reveals that the Hebrew word for “dwell” is associated with the presence of the Lord, therefore giving Shem the special blessing of which the seed that was promised in Genesis 3:15 would be a derivative of his bloodline. God’s plan was never discarded, but extended through the blessing of Shem. Blessed be the Lord God of Shem.