Get in the Box (Gen 6:18)

The Flood

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¹⁸ So you’ll get into the box. וּבָאתָ֙ אֶל־הַתֵּבָ֔ה

The King James version writes here, “thou shalt come into the ark.” As I understand it, KJV English was deliberately a bit archaic already in its own day, and it certainly is for ours. Too bad! They at least had thou to use for “you” in the singular. Unless I start using y’all for the plural (as I do when I speak), I do not have any similar way to mark you as singular or plural unless I break the 4^th wall and tell you about it.

In this case, I did point out last time that the offer God made to Noah — the “covenant” in KJV language — was being made with him individually. Now he’s being told what to do — not as a stipulation of what he must do (to use Jeffrey Tigay’s language) in order to act in a way appropriate to his covenant relationship with God, but simply as a practical matter. (We ask again: Is this what the instruction not to eat the fruit of a certain tree was about in Genesis 2?)

Since this is by far the longest speech God has made in the Bible so far, let’s review what he’s said up to this point:

• I am going to destroy all flesh (v. 13).

• Build a box (v. 14).

• Here are the specs for the box (vv. 15–16).

• I am bringing the Flood to destroy all flesh (v. 17).

• But here is how you can save yourself (v. 18).

There’s something reminiscent here of the famous story in Tablet XI of the Gilgamesh epic, where Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh how the god Ea, sworn not to reveal that the Flood was coming, mused aloud about the plan (speaking to the wall of a reed hut) so that he could be overheard. In our case, the instigator of the plot is speaking directly to Noah with the necessary instructions — but he is not warning all of humanity of what is about to happen. The secrecy is implicit rather than explicit, but it is still there.