Robert Alter's translation of Genesis: Noah, chapter 6

The Noah story has symmetry; it's elements echo and reverse elements from the opening of Genesis. There is also a symmetry within the tale itself.

We begin with the Lord looking down on the earth and grieving over his creation: "And the Lord regretted having made the human on the earth and was grieved to the heart"(v.6). However, there was one man who was an exception, Noah. Using a focusing triplet of increasingly descriptive phrases, the narrator describes Noah as follows: he was "a righteous man, he was blameless in his time, Noah walked with God"(v.9).

Noah seems to contradict God's perception that the earth "was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its ways on the earth." Of course, to argue too finely, while "the earth was corrupt before God," Noah who walks with God can't be before God?

In an off-beat way, what follows echoes the creation.There is a symmetry between the beginning of the present story and the opening of the text. In many cases, elements are reversed. Instead of a God-made garden to 'house' man, man himself fashions his house, building an ark. We begin with one man who begets many and now we are moving back down to one man, and his immediate family. The outward impulse marking the book heretofore, driven by the imperative to fill the earth and conquer it as well as man's fall, is now reversed with Noah gathering the world and retreating into the ark. God fashions and presents the animals to Adam. Now, the animals come to Noah, one by one, and he keeps, or preserves them. There is chaos at the beginning and in the Noah story chaos returns.

There is a reverse symmetry in the language used. At the end of Genesis 1, "God saw all that He had done, and, look, it was very good"(v.1:31). Then in Genesis 6, before presenting Noah with his intention, God "saw the earth and, look, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted tis ways on the earth"(v.12). As Alter points out, in the phrase the "waters multiplied" (v.7:17), "the very verb of proliferation employed in the Creation story for living creatures is [used for]...the instrument of their destruction"(n.17,p.33)

Within the Noah story itself, there is symmetry. This is most explicit in the numbering of days. God calls Noah to move into the ark and give him seven days (another symmetry between the Noah story and the creation story) to do so. In the seven day period God created, Noah gathers and packs that creation. Then "the rain was over the earth for forty days"(v.7:12). Then follows a "one hundred and fifty days" where "the waters surged over the earth"(v.7:24). 150 days itself is composed of a symmetry of biblically significant numbers, 70 (7x10), 10, 70(7x10). Then, after this period of 150 days of surging waters, "the ark came to rest"(v.8:4). Then, mirroring the forty days previous when "the rain was over the earth," the ark stays at rest, until "at the end of forty days, ...Noah opened the window of the ark he had made"(v.8:6). Finally, upon opening the window, Noah releases a dove who then returns having found "no resting place for its foot"(v 8:9). After seven days, Noah release the dove again and it returns with an olive leaf, convincing Noah that the "waters had abated"(v.8:12). Then there is another seven days, another release of the dove. The dove doesn't return. There is not a seven day period within the preceeding Noah story to anchor or answer this seven days. At the risk of presuming, it would appear to have it's anchor or partner in the seven days of the initial creation.

I also note that the forty days of flood begin when "the wellsprings of the great deep burst/ and the casements of the heavens were opened"(v7:11). The forty days when the ark rests end with "Noah open[ing] the window of the ark"(v8:6).