God remembers Noah…and you | Genesis 7-8

Introduction

What is the most defining point of your life story?

Is it the beginning, where your identity seems to be established?

Is it the end, where your life’s race is complete?

For many, their life centers on one moment in the middle where everything changed.

In this episode, at the very heart of one of the most familiar stories in the Bible, we find a single, easily overlooked line: “God remembered Noah.” It is easy to miss it, but if you understand how the story is written, you understand that it is the central point in the whole story. This is where the story turns around. Everything before builds toward it, and everything after points back to it.

Today, we are not simply retelling the flood story—you’ve heard it before. We are going deeper. We will uncover the literary structure of the text itself, a carefully crafted design that ancient readers would have recognized immediately, but that most modern readers completely miss.

Why does that matter? Because the central point of Noah’s story is also the central point of yours. If you have ever struggled with waiting for God to act; if you have ever wondered whether God is truly active in your life; if you have ever felt like God was keeping his distance from you—“Where is God?”—then this episode is for you.

Structure of the flood story

The story of Noah is one of the most well-known stories in the Bible. Even those who pay very little attention to the Bible have often heard this story. It has become an artistic motif for baby blankets and wallpaper borders in the nursery. Because of its wide familiarity, I will break from my normal custom of reading the entire Bible passage and focus instead on the structure of the flood story, as a way to deepen our understanding and find its meaning for our life today.

When I use the term “structure,” you might substitute the word “outline,” but I think structure means more than that. In our literary culture, different types of literary forms will have different expectations concerning structure. When I was in High School, we were taught the basic structure of a theme to persuade: first an introduction, then thesis statement, supporting points, answers to opposing points, the repeated thesis, and finally the conclusion. I have used this basic format repeatedly throughout my life and also frequently seen it in academic writing. Other types of writing, novels, short stories, blog posts, or e-mail messages, will also have their expected forms. Biblical writing is no different, except that the forms come from an ancient culture and do not match our contemporary expectations. In order to understand the story of the flood, we need to understand its structure, which would have been so common and obvious to the first readers, but may seem strange and unusual to us.

The story of Noah and the flood uses a chiastic structure. I have talked about this form several times before, since it is so prevalent in Biblical writing, but I must emphasize it again. The term “chiastic” comes from the Greek letter Chi, which looks like our English letter X. When you look at a written letter X, you can see that the main point of the letter is at the middle, where the two diagonal lines cross. Similarly, in a narrative or poem written in chiastic structure, the most important point is right in the middle. Notice how different this is from our modern expectation of finding the main point at the beginning or the end. Modern readers can easily miss the main point when reading the chiastic structures in the Bible. In this structure, other supporting points are arranged before and after the central point in a matching fashion. For example, if you had three supporting points, you would state them before the main central point, then restate them again afterwards. Those restated points, however, would be arranged in the opposite order. In our three-point example, we would have points A, B, and C, the all-important central point, then points, C, B, and A. Restated points might be a simple repetition, or they might be restated with a slight difference, or even the exact opposite. The intent was to provide similarity and contrast to encourage the reader or listener to meditate on the meaning personally or to discuss it deeply with others. 

When we look at our current story of the flood, in the first section before the midpoint, we read that “the LORD shut him in.” At the comparative point in the second section we read, “Noah opened a window.” There are obvious comparisons here between the LORD who shuts and Noah who opens. Noah opened a window, what did the LORD shut? Presumably the door. This encourages us to ask, what are the implications, if any, from these differences?

The flood story of Noah is the longest clearly chiastic structure in the Bible, although some suggest other long examples with less assurance. This literary structure encompasses all of chapters 7 and 8, and portions of chapters 6 and 9. 

To illustrate this structure in a way that we might understand, assume for a minute that you decided to take a trip downtown. Along the way you see things that are so familiar to you, a grocery store, a pharmacy, and a park. When you reach the city center, you suddenly remember that you have forgotten something at home that you need, so you turn around. You go back home, passing all the familiar sights, but in reverse order, the park, the pharmacy, and the grocery store. This is the effect of reading a chiastic structure in the Bible.

In the story of the flood, the central point of the story is found in chapter 8 verse 1, “God remembered Noah.” Leading to that point, we see God’s promise to Noah, Noah entering the ark, the beginning of the flood, and the triumph of the waters. Afterward that central point, the story is about the receding waters, the drying of the earth, leaving the ark, and God’s renewed covenant with Noah and his descendants. 

Let me read a portion from the middle of the flood story, including the central point, so that you can hear the effect of the chiastic structure when you are listening for it. I will begin reading with Genesis 7, verse 16.

Then the LORD shut him in.

 For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. … Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. … Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.

The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.

​ But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, and … the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters continued to recede until … the tops of the mountains became visible.

After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark
Genesis 7:16 - 8:6

Were you able to hear the X-shaped structure of the narrative as I read it? I hope so. I realize that it may be easier to understand this structure in visual form. That is why I have created a chart of this structure which you can find on the website biblewisdomtoday.com. I have included a link to that blog post in the description for this episode.

What implications should we draw from the author’s use of chiastic structure in this story?

One of the most obvious implications is that this is an intentional, artistic composition. It certainly is not a fragmented collection of stories. Possibly Moses or someone else collected existing stories together, but they did not simply put them together without making deliberate artistic choices to highlight the theological impact of the story. Through this structure, the author helps the reader feel the destruction of the human-corrupted world, the return of the waters of chaos like it was before creation, then God’s deliverance from the chaotic waters and a path forward for human survival and civilization.

Another implication is that we should read this story, not just as a tale of destruction, but also a story of salvation. The intensifying pictures of judgment in the first half mirror the expanding scenes of salvation in the second half, showing that God’s salvation is the ultimate end of the story. The theological center of the flood story is not judgment, but God’s saving intervention. God’s judgment is real, but His faithfulness governs the entire storyline.

Let’s take a deeper look at that central point, “God remembered Noah.”

The Central Point: God Remembered Noah

When you first read this, you might think that God was up in heaven minding his own business, until one day he had this thought flash through his mind, “Oh my goodness! I left Noah in that boat bobbing around on the floodwaters. I better help him out!” This is certainly the way you and I experience remembering, but that is almost the opposite of the way God remembers. This expression “God remembered” is an idiomatic phrase in Hebrew that does not mean that God had forgotten Noah, but that He is about to act decisively on Noah’s behalf, because of his promises. The action that God took is described specifically as we read the rest of the sentence.

But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded.
 Genesis 8:1

God sent a wind. This reminds us of the spirit-wind of God that had hovered over the waters at creation. Now God’s spirit inaugurates his renewed creation.

This idea of God remembering his people occurs frequently throughout the Old Testament. This is the first occurrence. A brief tour of other times that God remembers can help us understand that God never forgets his promises.

·         In Genesis 19, God resolves to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for their wickedness. When He reveals his plan to Abraham, Abraham pleads with him to spare his nephew, Lot, who lived there. God promises to do so. Then we read in Genesis 19:29, “So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham, and he brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived.

·         Later, when the children of Israel were slaves in Egypt, “God heard their groaning, and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and Jacob” (Exodus 2:24).

·         Again, in the opening chapter of First Samuel, we read about Hannah, a barren woman, who pleads with God for a son. Through the priest, God promises Hannah that he will grant her request. Then we read that her husband made love to Hannah, “and the LORD remembered her.”

This chiastic structure of the flood story isn’t just a literary curiosity; it helps us interpret the meaning of the story for our own life. The central point of Noah’s story is also the central point of your story. God remembers his people. This is a description of the faithfulness of God in human terms. Let’s look at several aspects of God’s faithfulness to us that we can see illustrated in this well-known story. 

First, we see that…

God remembers his people just as He promised

We see God’s first mention of his promise to Noah in Genesis 6:18. God has just told Noah that he is going to bring floodwaters on the earth and every creature that has the breath of life in it will perish, “but,” God says to Noah, “I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you.” The whole point of their entering the ark was to be saved from the flood. This was the covenant, or promise, that God made with Noah. Later, after God has restored the earth, he speaks to Noah about his covenant again. This time he makes a promise concerning the future. “Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood.” He also offers a token of his covenant that would remind Noah and his descendants of the everlasting nature of his covenant. That token was the rainbow, appearing in the clouds, to remind people that those clouds would never again bring floods to destroy all life. By placing references to God’s covenant with Noah near the beginning and the end of his narrative, the author frames the entire story within the security of God’s covenant promise.

The covenant promise of God is the basis for God’s faithfulness. It is the same in your life as it was in Noah’s we can count on God’s promises. What are some of the promises that God has made to his people today? Let me just read a few promises for you to meditate on.

·         “Never will I leave you;
 never will I forsake you.”
 Hebrews 13:5

·         And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.
 1 Corinthians 10:13

·         “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.
 What can mere mortals do to me?”
 Hebrews 13:6

·         And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
 Romans 8:28

·         And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.
 Philippians 4:19

The promises of God form the foundation of our faith. 

The second aspect of God’s faithfulness that we see in this story is that…

God remembers his people even while they wait

Waiting is a real part of walking with God, and we easily see that in Noah’s story.

Near the beginning of the story in Genesis 7, we read that the LORD said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your family…Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth…And Noah and his sons and his wife and his son’s wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood…And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth” (Gen. 7:1-10).

Near the end of the narrative, as the earth had begun to dry, Noah sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground, but it returned to him because there was still water everywhere. Noah waited seven more days and sent the dove out a second time. This time it came back with a freshly plucked olive leaf, showing that the water had receded. Noah waited seven more days and sent the dove out a third time, but it did not return.

Notice that the author uses the expression “seven days” twice in both the first half and the second half of the story to emphasize this aspect of waiting. The story’s structure validates the experience of Noah and all God’s people in every generation. Much of our life with God can feel like the time in-between; after we have obeyed but before we see God’s work. 

It is difficult to wait. The Psalmist knew this when he wrote in Psalm 27,

I am still confident of this: 
 I will see the goodness of the LORD 
 in the land of the living. 
 14 Wait for the LORD; 
 be strong and take heart 
 and wait for the LORD. (Psalm 27:13-14)

He encourages us twice with the words “wait for the LORD,” but between he acknowledges how hard that is, “be strong and take heart.” Waiting is not wasted time. That is when our faith is actually formed.

The third characteristic of God’s faithfulness illustrated in the flood story is that 

God remembers his people with intentional strength

In other words, God knows what he is doing, and he does it well. This is in sharp contrast to the tales of the flood which circulated in the stories of ancient Mesopotamia.[1] Those gods started the flood but became alarmed when it got out of control. In the Gilgamesh Epic, for example, we can read that 

“The gods were frightened by the flood,
 and retreated, ascending to the heaven of Anu [the supreme sky god].
 The gods were cowering like dogs, crouching by the outer wall.”

Later, the goddess Ishtar cries out like a woman in childbirth, “How could I command this evil in the assembly of the gods?”

In another passage from the Atrahasis Epic, we read that “the [great] gods sat weeping, their lips were parched, taking on fever.”

The Biblical record knows nothing about a weak, terrified god. Throughout the story we read that God was totally in charge. In Genesis 7:1 God commanded, “Go into the ark,” and in 8:15 he instructed, “Come out of the ark.” In between we read the “the LORD shut [Noah] in” (7:16) and God “sent a wind over the earth” (8:1). These are active verbs expressing God’s faithfulness and control. Throughout, God remained sovereign over the chaos, not subject to it. This is a story about order, not chaos, and the symmetrical structure highlights that order. The flood waters rose up but were then matched by the floodwaters receding. The flood was not random destruction, but under God’s precise control

This should be tremendously comforting for you and me. God’s work in your life and mine is not reluctant or improvised but beautifully planned out by God who loves you. Even when your life feels overwhelming, it is securely contained within the larger plan of God. Your life-story is not spiraling randomly downward, rather it is held within God’s purposeful, powerful hands.

A fourth attribute of God’s faithfulness is that…

God remembers his people through both the ups and downs of life

In Genesis 7:24 we read “the waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.” The British commentator, Gordon Wenham translates this, “The waters triumphed over the earth for a hundred and fifty days.[2] This is a description of military victory. The waters triumphed. Those chaotic waters that had controlled the earth before God brought order to this world now came rushing back in, returning the land to its to its precreation state.

Then we read,

But God remembered Noah …and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. … At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down.
 Genesis 8:1-3

Now God begins reestablishing order and life. God sent a wind on the earth, just as He had done at the opening of creation and later would do again at the Red Sea. Wind blows the seas back to their shorelines; rivers return to their banks.  Once again the waters separate from the earth and dry land appears. Once more birds and animals and creeping things are set free on the earth to be fruitful and multiply

To summarize, all through the rising waters, God remembered Noah; and all through the receding waters, God remembered Noah. The same is true for you and me. We will go through seasons when danger and trouble are rising like a flood. God remembers us in those difficult times. We will go through other seasons when the floods subside, the earth dries out, and things get back to normal. God remembers us then, too. 

The central point of Noah’s story is also the central point of your story. God remembers you. This simple phrase carries a complete theology of the faithfulness of God.

·         God remembers his people just as He promised

·         God remembers his people even while they wait

·         God remembers his people with intentional strength, and

·         God remembers his people through both the ups and downs of life

The Psalmist affirms this truth in Psalm 136, verse 22

He remembered us in our low estate
 His love endures forever.
 Psalms 136:23

Final Comments

Never forget that God remembers you.

That is the truth we take away from our lesson today. 

Next time we will conclude the story of Noah with a focus on the new covenant God made with his faithful servant and what became of him in the renewed creation. The story of Noah does not end the way you and I would expect, and we will have plenty to unpack as we open Genesis 9 in our next episode.

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[1] OpenAI. (n.d.). Divine Fear in Epics. ChatGPT. https://chatgpt.com/c/69ea5386-71bc-832b-94ff-151d58698210

[2]  Wenham, Gordon.