Patient God, Patient Man

In these last few weeks, we've been exploring the Bible's account of a world gone mad, so consumed with evil as to break the heart of God. And in the midst of that world, when all sorts of boundaries were starting to get crossed, there was something God said: “My spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be one hundred and twenty years” (Genesis 6:3). Now, one way to understand that is that God is emphasizing a cap on the human lifespan: any given human being has, at most, 120 years to live.¹ But another way to read it, and what used to be the more popular way, is as setting a collective lifespan for that generation of humanity. In a world littered with evil, God would effectively assign humanity an expiration date, “the span of 120 years.”²

Of course, he wouldn't have to wait. The moment he saw that the human heart was evil, he could have sent us a judgment without so much as a second's delay. But if there's one thing that's surprisingly true of the God of the Bible, it's that he's incredibly, awesomely patient, even in the face of our greatest horrors. That's just who God is, “the One Who Is Patient.”³ One early Christian marveled how “long has he... allowed the deserving as well as the undeserving to enjoy the benefits of the seasons, the services of the elements, and the gifts of all creation. He endures ungrateful peoples who worship the trifles fashioned by their skill..., who persecute his name and his children, and who – in their lewdness, their greed, their godlessness and depravity – grow worse from day to day. By his patience, he hopes to draw them to himself.”⁴ Now, the man who said that got it from his Bible, where he read in one of Peter's letters: “the Lord is... patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9); and in the prophets: “As I live, declares the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live” (Ezekiel 33:11).

That's the God we're meeting in this story in Genesis: a God who's bending over backwards to offer mercy, to give people every conceivable chance to turn around. “Thus the Lord gave space for repentance because he wanted more to forgive than to punish.”⁵ That's always why God is kind and gentle and forbearing toward us: “God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance” (Romans 2:5). “Nothing, after all, so gladdens him as our conversion and our reverting from evil to virtue.”⁶ And so “for the time being, he suffers men to stray and to fail in duty even to himself while he remains just, gentle, and patient.”⁷ “It is not, in fact, day by day that God vents his wrath, despite sins being committed.”⁸ Really, God “punishes very few sins in this world,”⁹ said Saint Augustine, who added beautifully that “the reason many things are kept for the judgment while some are judged here and now is in order that those whose cases are deferred may fear and be converted. For God loves saving, not condemning, and therefore he is patient with bad people in order to make good people out of bad people.”¹⁰

For all the generations since Adam, then, God “showed his forbearance, for each generation was insolent before him.”¹¹ But especially, as the Apostle Peter tells us, “God's patience waited in the days of Noah while the ark was being built” (1 Peter 3:20). How long was that? Genesis will tell us “Noah was a son of six hundred years when the flood of waters came on the earth” (Genesis 7:6), so when did he tell Noah to build the ark? Many readers figured God made his decree “in the 480th year of Noah's life” that “their days were determined at 120 years until the time of the waters of the flood,”¹² but others said in Noah's five hundredth year.¹³ The interesting thing is, up to that time, Noah was a bachelor, a celibate. Only “after Noah was five hundred years old” did he “father Shem and Ham and Japheth” (Genesis 5:32), being around 503 when Shem was born (Genesis 11:10). So when God tells him the ark will hold “you and your sons and your wife and your sons' wives” (Genesis 6:18), Noah doesn't have those yet; now he knows he needs to get them!¹⁴

Either way, both logistically and from this reading, the ark must have “taken a hundred years to build.”¹⁵ Thus God “purposely delayed, granting a reprieve for repentance” to the people of Noah's era.¹⁶ God “provided them with such a lengthy period of time in his wish that they might come to their senses.”¹⁷ And so Scripture sums up this whole century of Noah's life in the words: “According to all that God commanded him, so he did” (Genesis 6:22). The New Testament adds that Noah “constructed the ark... by faith,” believing what God had revealed to him, and was “moved by fear,” or better put, by caution or by reverence (Hebrews 11:7).

Now, here we find a big difference between the Bible's story and the pagan stories of the flood, which we began to compare last week. In the pagan stories, their stand-in for Noah, Atra-hasis, wants to know first how he can clear this big boat-building project with his city, its elders, and the general crowd.¹⁸ So his god Ea, who warns him secretly about the flood another god named Enlil has planned, gives Atra-hasis a very cleverly worded reply that has a double and even a triple meaning.¹⁹ Each and every phrase can be taken in different ways which add up to very different messages.²⁰ In one message, Atra-hasis warns his people that Enlil has rejected humanity, so the land will soon be uninhabitable because Enlil will send darkness and heavy rain, a harvest of death.²¹ But this warning is veiled in riddles and rare words; few would assume that's what he means.²² Because what he seems to say is much more positive: that Enlil is banishing Atra-hasis alone due to some divine drama, so he'll go live with Ea in the deep, hence his need of a boat; but Ea will shower the land with blessings of free food: birds and fish, cakes at dawn, all the wheat that's fit to eat.²³

As a result of this divinely endorsed trickery that's seemingly meant more to exploit than to save,²⁴ Atra-hasis gets the people of his city to show up promptly “at the first flood of daylight” to get to work on his boat, each group bringing a different supply to contribute or tool to wield.²⁵ No wonder that in the pagan tradition, building the boat takes not a century but is done within the week.²⁶

Again, what we read in the Bible is a very different story. Unlike Ea, God offers no cruel deceit, and Genesis says nothing about who helps Noah build the ark. Presumably his family, as they grow, and some have guessed that he could “employ other craftsmen” who only cared whether they got paid “their salary for their work.”²⁷ So imagine for a moment you're Noah's neighbor. He's always been a different sort, maybe not quite right in the head, you think. Then one day, he starts investing all his money into wood, reeds, bitumen, other supplies.²⁸ He traces out a giant rectangle on the ground, longer than a football field. And on it he starts to build something. Now, human nature says you're going to get curious, aren't you? And as years go by and word starts to travel, he might become a bit of a tourist attraction, the big thing you just have to go see for yourself, like one of those giant balls of twine in Kansas or Minnesota.

Early Christians remarked that Noah worked day by day “so that the very sight of the ark may also provide them in turn with an adequate reminder, and that no one would be unaware of the magnitude of the punishment due to be inflicted,” as evidenced by the size of this huge ark.²⁹ “Noah, pressing on with the work of the ark for a hundred years, showed by the daily performance of the work what was to happen to the world,”³⁰ for like the New Testament tells us, in building the ark, Noah implicitly “condemned the world” (Hebrews 11:7).

Later in the Old Testament, God sometimes asked his prophets to be really weird people: Isaiah “walked naked and barefoot for three years as a sign” (Isaiah 20:3), Hosea got into a dysfunctional marriage (Hosea 1:2-3; 3:1-3), Jeremiah wore a yoke like a cow (Jeremiah 27:2), and poor Ezekiel played with a toy model of Jerusalem in danger (Ezekiel 4:1-3), ate bread cooked over a manure fire (Ezekiel 4:9-17), and shaved his head and then chased his loose hair through the town streets, hacking at it with a sword (Ezekiel 5:1-2). The goal was to goad people into asking, “What are you doing?” (Ezekiel 12:9). Acting so questionably as to actually be questioned created an open invitation to give an answer, like Peter says: “Always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15). That's how it was for Noah: the reason why the ark was so big and time-consuming was “so that, on seeing the novelty of the construction..., people should ask the reason and..., hearing and learning the reason for it, people might desist from evildoing.”³¹

In time, though, maybe Noah figured coaxing the crowd's curiosity wasn't cutting it. Ancient Jewish readers fairly took Noah to be a “prophet” (Tobit 4:12), so they came to imagine God had told Noah to “proclaim repentance to all the peoples,”³² and so Noah publicly “urged them to come to a better frame of mind and amend their ways.”³³ The New Testament characterized Noah as “a herald,” i.e., a preacher, “of righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5), so early Christians agreed with their Jewish neighbors that “Noah proclaimed repentance,”³⁴ and as “the building of the ark went on for a hundred years,”³⁵ Noah “announced to them the flood during that one hundred years.”³⁶ The secrecy of Atra-hasis just wouldn't do. Noah got the word out plainly!

Maybe his message was short, sweet, pithy: “Come, God calls you to repentance,”³⁷ or “Repent, for a flood of waters will come upon you.”³⁸ Or maybe it was wordy: one writer put together a sermon for Noah, addressing “men sated with faithlessness, smitten with a great madness,” urging them to “stand in awe of the exceedingly great, fearless, heavenly Creator, imperishable God,” and to “entreat him... for life, cities, and the whole world..., for the time will come when the whole immense world of men perishing by waters will wail with a dread refrain... unless you propitiate God and repent as from now and... be guarded in holy life.”³⁹

Just imagine what might have been. Noah's bearing witness to the work of God, and I think it's safe to say his wife and kids believed him. But what if his brothers and sisters had, or his cousin, or his next-door neighbor? God later declares: “If a wicked person turns away from all his sins... and does what is just and right, he shall surely live; he shall not die” (Ezekiel 18:21). Anybody who believes Noah's preaching and changes his or her life can have a place aboard the ark and can voyage to the new world. “If they repent during this time, they will be saved from the wrath that is about to come upon them.”⁴⁰

But what if Noah's preaching had gone over as well as Jonah's in Nineveh? “If at any time I declare concerning a nation... that I will destroy it, and if that nation... turns from its evil,” God says, “I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it” (Jeremiah 18:7-8). If that's so for a nation, how much more a world? The whole point of Noah's preaching was “so that all may be saved,” not just a few.⁴¹ If the sight of the ark or the words of Noah sufficed to turn the world's hearts, that world “would not have failed to experience the loving-kindness of God.”⁴² For “if they had heard and repented, the flood would not have been sent.”⁴³ In fact, early Christians saw it was always God's preferred wish here that “he would not have to bring the flood upon them.”⁴⁴ And as for Noah, I dare say he'd have been happy 'wasting' a century of work if that spelled the salvation of the world.

But that's not how things played out, is it? This was, after all, “the world of the ungodly” (2 Peter 2:5). “They were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage” all century long, “and they were unaware,” in that they were unbelieving (Matthew 24:38-39). “For a hundred years while the ark was building and the wood was being wrought and the righteous man was calling aloud, there was no one who believed.”⁴⁵ “When they heard him, they sneered at him, each one, calling him demented, a man gone mad.”⁴⁶ “They all mocked and ridiculed him, treated him like an idiot, and abused him,”⁴⁷ “the eccentric building a contraption apparently as senseless as it was large.”⁴⁸ They “undoubtedly ridiculed it as the utmost stupidity,” a refuge of fools, cheats, losers.⁴⁹

Far worse than taunting and mocking Noah, though, is that they mocked the God in whose name Noah spoke. “Fools reviled him: 'Where is the flood?'”⁵⁰ For “all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation,” they scoffed (2 Peter 3:4). As the years went by and everything seemed normal, it seemed ridiculous that they'd be brought to account. Such stories appeared like fantasies of an overheated mind. They didn't see that “the Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness” (2 Peter 3:9).

In the face of such resistance, one Jewish writer imagined that Noah would've shaken the dust from his feet and left them to their own devices, that “he feared that they would murder him, and, with his wife and sons and his sons' wives, he quitted the country.”⁵¹ But that's not the Noah I see in Genesis – not least because once you start building an ark, it's not exactly easy to relocate it! No, while Noah understood the proverb that “whoever corrects a scoffer gets himself abuse, and he who reproves a wicked man incurs injury” (Proverbs 9:7), Noah also learned the gospel precept that “this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly” (1 Peter 2:19). James tells us: “as an example of suffering and patience, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord” (James 5:10). Noah was one of those. Maybe, as the decades distanced him from the fading memory of God's voice, he was himself tempted to doubt and surrender.⁵² But in faith, “for one hundred years he subdued his debating within his heart” and pressed on.⁵³ Noah persevered through that long and lonely century, no matter how many frustrating, humiliating, bruising days gave way to dark nights of crying with the psalmist, “How long, O God, is the foe to scoff?” (Psalm 74:10).

But even if Noah resisted doubting God's voice, was he ever tempted to doubt himself? Was he tormented by how little he had to show for it all? Noah “toiled to warn men year after year, and without any success except with his sons and their families.”⁵⁴ One hundred years of annual reports with a zero in the conversions column. Whatever 'church growth' strategies he employed, whatever 'missional restructuring' he tried, it did nothing. His discipleship groups couldn't manage to multiply. By the standards that get used in many churches today, and certainly some of the rhetoric I hear at our conferences, Noah was a fruitless failure, a pastor whose church is stuck at himself and seven others, and whose century of ministry gets as far as a treadmill.

And yet, at the end of that century on the treadmill, God has a word for Noah that might by that point come as a surprise: “I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation” (Genesis 7:1). You see, “the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance,” on the quantifiable things and the observable habits, “but the LORD looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). God isn't measuring how many disciples Noah can claim credit for. God isn't timing how fast Noah's church is growing – or not growing. What matters isn't what comes of the work; what matters is that Noah is doing as God asked. Noah's is a faithful 'unfruitfulness' – a long, long, long faithful 'unfruitfulness.' And apparently, such a faithful 'unfruitfulness' is of greater glory in the eyes of God than so much of our flash and flurry of today. In the face of his statistical bankruptcy, some have recognized Noah as “the greatest prophet” in the entire Old Testament, apparent fruitlessness and all.⁵⁵

Now God speaks to Noah one last time before things get serious. For the first time, God gives Noah a concrete timeline: “In seven more days, I will cause rain on the earth forty days and forty nights” (Genesis 7:4). Noah obediently leads his seven followers aboard the ark (Genesis 7:5-7), followed by all those “clean beasts and unclean beasts and birds and everything that creeps on the ground” (Genesis 7:8). Without coercion, without stampede, “two by two they went to Noah into the ark” in an orderly and civilized fashion (Genesis 7:9).

This sounded a final boarding call for the human race. God “delayed yet seven more days for them, even after Noah and every creature had entered the ark, leaving the gate of the ark open to them.”⁵⁶ Noah, like God, waits in patience. Maybe Noah preached from the hatch of the ark, reminding them of just seven days left, “so that they might be stricken with the urgency of the situation,”⁵⁷ so that, “anxious in their fear of the imminent flood,” they might “beg for their forgiveness” and “renounce impiety and injustice.”⁵⁸ Noah could've borrowed words from Paul and others, asking them: “Do you presume on the riches of God's kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” (Romans 2:4). “We should feel shame and stand in fear of God's patience, that it not turn into our judgment!”⁵⁹ “But because of your hard and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day when God's righteous judgment will be revealed” (Romans 2:5), a day that's now falling upon us. “Behold, now is the favorable time! Behold, now is the day of salvation!” (2 Corinthians 6:2). If a man or woman runs through the open door this week, leaving behind old ways and believing God's way of salvation, they'll be just as saved at the eleventh hour as the sons of Noah (Matthew 20:9-10). In fact, if the people as a whole were to turn to God right there and then, their repentance can in a day wipe out “an offense that lasted as many years as there were from the creation of the world,”⁶⁰ and so “could... have avoided experiencing the deluge.”⁶¹ What a depth of forgiveness was offered!

But the last hours and minutes are trickling by, and no one is running for the open door. What do you think Noah felt? Even in the pagan stories, while the workers feasted on beef and mutton and beer and ale,⁶² and while Atra-hasis' family on the ark feasted joyfully in ignorance of what was really going on, Atra-hasis grieved deeply: “He could not sit, he could not take his place, for his heart was broken, he was retching gall,” literally throwing up thinking of the devastation to come.⁶³ Do you think Noah had nightmares on the sixth night, dreaming of darkness and choking and gurgling and silence? After all, “neither the brothers nor the sisters of Noah were saved.”⁶⁴ Was Noah, like Christ, “grieved at their hardness of heart” (Mark 3:5)? Did Noah, like Paul, feel “great sorrow and unceasing anguish” for his kinsmen who were being lost (Romans 9:2)? Ancient readers of Genesis imagined Noah might have wondered to himself “how much will I lament, how much will I weep in my wooden house, how many tears will I mingle with the waves?”⁶⁵

And though it grieves God's heart too, the countdown reaches its end. “None of my words will be delayed any longer, but the word that I speak will be performed” (Ezekiel 12:28). Judgment day is here. But the door is still open, and that makes the ark no safer than the ground. In early pagan tellings of the story, Atra-hasis just seals it himself from inside.⁶⁶ But that won't do: the outer gap between frame and door will leak. And so the later tale from Babylon has Atra-hasis make a deal with one of his lead engineers, Puzur-Enlil: as Atra-hasis seals the hatch from inside, Puzur-Enlil will do the same from outside, in return for which Atra-hasis will give him the palace with all its possessions.⁶⁷ Puzur-Enlil doesn't see how Atra-hasis' double-tongued words also mean “the palace for as long as its existence” – which won't be long now.⁶⁸ Puzur-Enlil is tricked into dying in Enlil's flood.⁶⁹

How different the Bible is! There's no Puzur-Enlil who has to be duped into sacrificing his life for Noah. Here there's a divine solution: once everyone is inside who's going to be, “the LORD shut him in” (Genesis 7:16). In these short words, we realize that Noah can build, Noah can stock, Noah can recruit, Noah can enter, but only God can make the ark completely safe.⁷⁰ God must be in control, or else there is no salvation.

With the door sealed, “the waters of the flood came upon the earth” (Genesis 7:10). And I have to imagine that as the deep surged up and the rains cascaded down, those outside realized their mistake. As Noah's faith turned to sight, their unbelief also turned to sight. In their bitter desperation, “beseeching Noah to open the ark's door for them,” maybe they tried to pry their way in with all their might.⁷¹ But it had been omnipotently sealed. “In that day you will cry out..., but the LORD will not answer you in that day,” said the prophet (1 Samuel 8:18). Divine patience being fulfilled, the Son of God said that “the flood came and destroyed them all” (Luke 17:27).

As for us, “since the Lord is patient, he wants everyone called through his Son to be saved.”⁷² Until the harvest at the end of the age, good and evil “grow together” in the world by God's patient permission (Matthew 13:30). “Be patient, therefore..., until the coming of the Lord” (James 5:7), “patiently enduring evil” in hopes God will grant your friends and family, neighbors and strangers, “repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 2:24-25), out of which you proclaim his excellent salvation (1 Peter 2:9), “waiting for and hastening the coming Day of God” (2 Peter 3:12). God's patience is “postponing to the end of time... his judgment upon the living and the dead,”⁷³ and he “still postpones it for this reason, that he may first fill up the total number of the elect.”⁷⁴ But the minutes have their limit, after which Paul says “sudden destruction will come upon them... and they will not escape” (1 Thessalonians 5:3). For “just as it was in the days of Noah..., so will be the coming of the Son of Man,” says our Lord (Luke 17:26; Matthew 24:39). And yet if we heed the gospel of our Spiritual Noah, if we will accept his summons and give thanks for the awe-inspiring patience of God, then we may know that the Apostle's words hold true for us: “God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:9). Thanks be to God for his saving patience! Amen.

1  Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.75, in Loeb Classical Library 242:35; see also Johnson T.K. Lim, Grace in the Midst of Judgment: Grappling with Genesis 1-11 (De Gruyter, 2002), 167; James McKeown, Genesis (Eerdmans, 2008), 50; John Day, From Creation to Babel: Studies in Genesis 1-11 (Bloomsbury, 2013), 91-92; Iain W. Provan, Discovering Genesis: Content, Interpretation, Reception (Eerdmans, 2016), 111; Jaap Doedens, The Sons of God in Genesis 6:1-4: Analysis and History of Exegesis (Brill, 2019), 49-53; Brian Neil Peterson, Genesis: A Pentecostal Commentary (Brill, 2022), 74.

2  Targum Neofiti Genesis 6:3, in Aramaic Bible 1A:72; see also Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic), 2001; Sven Fockner, “Reopening the Discussion: Another Contextual Look at the Sons of God,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 32/4 (2008): 451; Mark J. Boda, A Severe Mercy: Sin and Its Remedy in the Old Testament (Eisenbrauns, 2009), 21; Tremper Longman III and John H. Walton, The Lost World of the Flood: Mythology, History, and the Deluge Debate (IVP Academic, 2018), 124-125.  Joseph E. Coleson, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 195, gives credit to both positions as “not mutually exclusive.”  Helge S. Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading (Brill, 2011), 306-307, suggests that the individual-lifespan position is better supported by the Hebrew text as we have it today, while the Greek Septuagint translation from the third century BC endorses the collective-deadline position.

3  Barnabas 3.6, in Loeb Classical Library 25:19.

4  Tertullian of Carthage, On Patience 2.2-3, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 40:195.

5  Ambrose of Milan, On Noah 13 §42, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 140:54.

6  John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 25.9, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:130.

7  Lactantius, Divine Institutes 2.17.3, in Translated Texts for Historians 40:165.

8  Didymus the Blind, Commentary on Genesis 6:13, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 132:158.

9  Augustine of Hippo, Letter 153.4, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century II/2:392.

10  Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 18.2, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century III/1:374.

11  m. Pirkei Avot 5.2, in Shaye J.D. Cohen, Robert Goldberg, and Hayim Lapin, eds., The Oxford Annotated Mishnah (Oxford University Press, 2022), 2:740; cf. Carol M. Kaminski, Was Noah Good? Finding Favour in the Flood Narrative (Bloomsbury, 2014), 83.

12  Qumran Pesher on Genesis: 4Q252 1.1-3, in Donald W. Parry and Emanuel Tov, The Dead Sea Scrolls Reader (Brill, 2004), 2:170.  See also in Florentino Garcia Martinez and Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (Brill, 1999), 501.

13  Sextus Julius Africanus, Chronographiae frg. 23, in Martin Wallraff, Iulius Africanus Chronographiae: The Extant Fragments (De Gruyter, 2007), 52; Aphrahat, Demonstrations 7.8, in Moran 'Eth'o 23:167; John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 25.7-8, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:128-129.

14  Cave of Treasures 14.2-17, in Richard Bauckham, James R. Davila, and Alexander Panayotov, eds., Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures (Eerdmans, 2013), 1:550-551; cf. Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 6:3, in Luther's Works 2:25.

15  Origen of Alexandria, Against Celsus 4.41, in Henry Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum (Cambridge University Press, 1953), 217.

16  Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 2.8, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 61:100.

17  John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 25.9, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:130.

18  Gilgamesh XI.35, in Sophus Helle, Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic (Yale University Press, 2021), 101; cf. in Andrew R. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition, and Cuneiform Texts (Oxford University Press, 2003), 1:705.

19  Martin Worthington, Ea's Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story (Routledge, 2019), 234.

20  Martin Worthington, Ea's Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story (Routledge, 2019), 159-233, 336-337.

21  Gilgamesh XI.39-47, in Martin Worthington, Ea's Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story (Routledge, 2019), 235-236.  See also Sophus Helle, Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic (Yale University Press, 2021), 101.

22  Martin Worthington, Ea's Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story (Routledge, 2019), 313.

23  Gilgamesh XI.39-47, in Martin Worthington, Ea's Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story (Routledge, 2019), 234-235; cf. Atrahasis C₁ i 42'-50', in Nathan Wasserman, The Flood: The Akkadian Sources: A New Edition, Commentary, and a Literary Discussion (Peeters, 2020), 32.  See also Andrew R. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition, and Cuneiform Texts (Oxford University Press, 2003), 1:705-705, and Sophus Helle, Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic (Yale University Press, 2021), 101.

24  Martin Worthington, Ea's Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story (Routledge, 2019), 337-339.

25  Gilgamesh XI.48-56, in Sophus Helle, Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic (Yale University Press, 2021), 101-102, and in Andrew R. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition, and Cuneiform Texts (Oxford University Press, 2003), 1:707; and compare Atrahasis C₂ ii 10'-14', in Nathan Wasserman, The Flood: The Akkadian Sources (Peeters, 2020), 32.

26  Gilgamesh XI.57-70, in Sophus Helle, Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic (Yale University Press, 2021), 102, and in Andrew R. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition, and Cuneiform Texts (Oxford University Press, 2003), 1:707.

27  Augustine of Hippo, Questions on the Heptateuch 1.5, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century I/14:17.

28  Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 137.

29  John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 25.4, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:126.

30  Bede, Commentary on the Seven Catholic Epistles, 1 Peter 3:20, in Cistercian Studies Series 82:104.

31  Didymus the Blind, Commentary on Genesis 6:13 and 7:6, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 132:157, 170.

32  Sibylline Oracles 1.128-129, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1:338.

33  Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.74, in Loeb Classical Library 242:35.

34  Clement of Rome, 1 Clement 7.6, in Loeb Classical Library 24:47.

35  Augustine of Hippo, The City of God 15.27, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century I/7:177.

36  Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 6.9.1, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 91:138.

37  Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus 3.19, in Robert M. Grant, Theophilus of Antioch: Ad Autolycum (Clarendon Press, 1970), 125.

38  Apocalypse of Paul 50, in J. K. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament (Clarendon Press, 1993), 643.

39  Sibylline Oracles 1.150-170, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1:338-339.

40  Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 6.4, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 91:136.

41  Sibylline Oracles 1.129, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1:338.

42  Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 2.8, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 61:100.

43  Didymus the Blind, Commentary on Genesis 7:6, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 132:170.

44  Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 6.8.1, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 91:138.

45  John Chrysostom, Homilies on 1 Thessalonians 8.2, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers I/13:357.

46  Sibylline Oracles 1.171-172, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1:339.

47  John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 23.5, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:91.

48  Martin Sicker, Reading Genesis Politically: An Introduction to Mosaic Political Philosophy (Praeger, 2002), 86.

49  Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 6:3, in Luther's Works 2:28.

50  Ephrem the Syrian, Hymns on Faith 56.2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 130:285.

51  Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.74, in Loeb Classical Library 242:35.

52  Martin Sicker, Reading Genesis Politically: An Introduction to Mosaic Political Philosophy (Praeger, 2002), 94.

53  Ephrem the Syrian, Hymns on Faith 56.2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 130:285.

54  James B. Jordan, Primeval Saints: Studies in the Patriarchs of Genesis (Canon Press, 2001), 46.

55  Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 6:3, in Luther's Works 2:26.

56  Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 6.10.2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 91:140.

57  John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 25.8, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:130.

58  Ambrose of Milan, On Noah 13 §42, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 140:54.

59  Ignatius of Antioch, Ephesians 11.1, in Loeb Classical Library 24:231.

60  Ambrose of Milan, On Noah 13 §42, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 140:54.

61  John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 25.9, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:131.

62  Gilgamesh XI.71-75, in Sophus Helle, Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic (Yale University Press, 2021), 102, and in Andrew R. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition, and Cuneiform Texts (Oxford University Press, 2003), 1:707.

63  Atrahasis III.ii.43-46, in Benjamin R. Foster, Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature (CDL Press, 2005), 248.

64  Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 6:3, in Luther's Works 2:24.

65  Sibylline Oracles 1.190-191, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1:339.

66  Atrahasis III.ii.51-52, in Benjamin R. Foster, Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature (CDL Press, 2005), 249.

67  Gilgamesh XI.94-96, in Sophus Helle, Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic (Yale University Press, 2021), 103, and in Andrew R. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition, and Cuneiform Texts (Oxford University Press, 2003), 1:709.

68  Martin Worthington, Ea's Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story (Routledge, 2019), 362.

69  Martin Worthington, Ea's Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story (Routledge, 2019), 359.

70  John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 25.12, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:132.

71  Cave of Treasures 18.12, in Richard Bauckham, James R. Davila, and Alexander Panayotov, eds., Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures (Eerdmans, 2013), 1:554.

72  Hermas, Shepherd, Parables 8.11.1, in Loeb Classical Library 25:385.

73  Lactantius, Divine Institutes 2.17.1-2, in Translated Texts for Historians 40:165.

74  Bede, Commentary on the Seven Catholic Epistles, 2 Peter 3:9, in Cistercian Studies Series 82:149-150.