Период второй. От потопа до Авраама

The extraordinary longevity of the patriarchs was necessary in the primitive history of mankind both for the speedy settlement of the earth and the dissemination of useful knowledge, and especially for preserving the purity of the original reverence for God and faith in the promise of the Redeemer given to the first people. The patriarch of each generation could pass on his knowledge over the course of entire centuries to the ancestors of other generations, who, in turn, could pass it on further over the course of new centuries. Thus, Adam could be a living witness of primitive legends until the birth of Lamech, and the latter’s father Methuselah - the longest living of people - lived almost until the flood and died six years before its onset 17. But, on the other hand, longevity could also serve as the most convenient means of multiplying and spreading evil in humanity. Given the extraordinary rarity of death cases, with its horrors, the conscience of people was deprived of one of the most terrible warnings; then, the community of evil people contributed to the increase of evil and vice, and the apparent remoteness of judgment or deliverance could embolden the most daring unbelief and blasphemy. And so, indeed, evil began to grow greatly in the world; but it reached its highest development as a result of the mixing of the descendants of Cain and Seth with each other, and precisely when, through the coarse attraction of sensuality, “the sons of God (descendants of Seth) saw the daughters of men (from the descendants of Cain) that they were beautiful, and took them as wives, whichever one chose.” At this time, the land was already significantly populated, but along with its settlement, the terrible evil of depravity and corruption spread. “And the Lord God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” This was evidently not the mere depravity of a corrupt nature, but the general reign of open and bold sin and rebellion against God. From the criminally voluptuous communication of the descendants of the Sifovs with the descendants of the Cainovs, a generation of “giants on earth” arose; using their strength, they introduced into human society the horrors of violence, lawlessness, predation, voluptuousness and general disbelief in the promise of future deliverance. When the generation of Seth lived isolated, there was still hope for the preservation of the true religion and the promise associated with it, and now this hope also perished, and the only outcome remained for the eradication of vice and unbelief on earth - to destroy all existing humanity. And so, at the sight of such a state of people, “the Lord repented that he had created man on earth, and was grieved in His heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy from the face of the earth man whom I have created, from man to beast, and to the creatures that creep, and to the birds of the air. for I repented that I made them.” As created simultaneously with man and for man, animals must constantly share the fate of man. But the waves of vice have not yet flooded all of humanity. Among him was a man who “found grace in the sight of the Lord God.” This was Noah, son of Lamech, “a righteous man and blameless in his generation”; he “walked with God,” like his ancestor Enoch. And so, when the earth “was corrupt before the face of God and filled with evil,” when “all flesh had perverted its way on the earth,” the Lord said to Noah: “The end of all flesh has come before Me, and I will destroy them from the face of the earth. Make yourself an ark. I will bring a flood of water on the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the spirit of life under the heavens; everything on earth will lose life. But I will establish My covenant with you, and you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives will go into the ark with you.” The revelation was terrible and, in view of the fact that the most daring disbelief reigned all around, it served as a strong test of faith. God appointed one hundred and twenty years for the human race to repent, and during this time Noah had to begin his extraordinary construction, which could only cause ridicule and threats among the people around him. But his faith was unshakable. Noah was not only the heir of righteousness and faith, but also its preacher on earth, and, “having received a revelation of what was not yet seen,” he began to build an ark for the salvation of his house, exposing with his preaching the whole world with its unbelief and lawlessness. The ark was built according to the exact instructions of God - from gopher wood, which is most suitable for cypress, and was tarred inside and out. The length of the ark was 300 cubits, width 50 cubits, and height 30 cubits 18. At the top there was a long hole made throughout the ark - a cubit wide, for light and air, and on the side there was a door. It was supposed to consist of three tiers, with many compartments in them. The latter were intended for animals, which Noah also had to take with him (seven pairs of clean ones and one unclean pair), as well as for life supplies. “And Noah did all that the Lord God commanded him.” Undoubtedly, during this magnificent building, Noah continued to “preach righteousness,” especially when this was caused by the presence of curious and mocking people of lawlessness who came to see his building. But the most eloquent and loud sermon was this very building. God's longsuffering still awaited the awakening of repentance even during the construction of the ark, but everything was in vain. Mocking the sermon and the dire warning, people became even more carefree and lawless. They “ate, and drank, and married, and were given in marriage, before Noah entered into the ark; and they did not think until the flood came and destroyed them all” (Matthew 24:38, 39). By the time the construction of the ark was completed, Noah was six hundred years old, and then, seeing no more hope for the repentance of sinful humanity, the Lord commanded Noah to enter the ark with his entire family and a certain number of animals. “For after seven days,” He said, “I will cause rain to fall on the earth for forty days and forty nights; And I will destroy everything that exists that I have made from the face of the earth.” Noah obeyed and entered the ark with his three sons Shem, Ham and Japheth, his wife and his sons' wives, taking all the chosen animals, and "the Lord shut the ark behind him." And so, when these seven days had passed, the last period given for repentance had passed, “the waters of the flood came to the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth (27) day of the month (i.e., according to our reckoning, if the civil Jewish year is meant here - around the beginning or half of November), all the sources of the great abyss burst open, and the windows of heaven were opened; and the rain fell on the earth for forty days and forty nights.” This is how God’s great punishment was accomplished for corrupted and drowned humanity. The water quickly flooded everything and rose higher and higher, covering even the highest mountains by fifteen cubits. “And all flesh that moved on the earth lost life, and birds, and cattle, and wild beasts, and every creeping thing that crawled on the earth, and all people. Everything that had the breath of the spirit of life in its nostrils on the dry land died. Every creature that was on the surface of the earth was destroyed; only Noah remained, and what was with him in the ark.” The water arrived within one hundred and fifty days or five months. The entire surface of the earth was covered with water, and only one Noah’s ark rushed across this vast sea, containing only the chosen seed for the development of new life on earth. “And God remembered Noah and all that were with him in the ark, and God caused the winds to pass over the earth, and the waters stood still.” The springs of the deep closed, the rain stopped, and the water began to subside. Exactly five months after the start of the flood, the ark stopped on the mountains of Ararat. On the first day of the tenth month, the tops of the mountains appeared, and after another forty days, Noah had already opened the window in the ark and released the first messenger - the raven, which, however, having flown out and apparently finding abundant food for itself in the corpses on the tops of the exposed mountains, did not give a clear message about the state of the earth, but vaguely flew and flew until the earth was drained of water. The dove then released, not finding a dry place, returned to the ark; released again after seven days, it returned with a fresh olive leaf in its mouth, and Noah thus “knew that the water had departed from the earth.” Released another seven days later, the dove never returned. Then Noah opened the roof of the ark and saw that the surface of the earth had dried up, and by the twenty-seventh day of the second month of the six hundred and first year of Noah’s life, i.e. exactly a year after the flood, and it was completely dry. Then the Lord commanded Noah to leave the ark and release the animals to reproduce on earth. Upon leaving the ark, Noah's first thought was to give thanks to the Lord for such a miraculous salvation; he built an altar to the Lord, took clean animals and birds and offered them as burnt offerings. Such piety of Noah was pleasing to the Lord and “He said in His heart: I will no longer curse the earth for man’s sake, because the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth, and I will no longer smite every living thing, as I have done.” Henceforth, throughout all the days of the earth, sowing and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will not cease.” Since Noah and his family were the new ancestors of humanity on earth, God repeated to him the blessing that had once been given to the first people. “And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth (and subdue it)” 19. All animals were brought into subjection to man, and in addition to plant foods, he was allowed to eat animal meat, but not their blood, because “their soul is in the blood of animals.” At the same time, a law was given against murder - on the basis that all people are brothers, and therefore every murder is fratricide, and that man was created in the image of God. The first murderer was expelled from human society, but his life was declared inviolable; it was now decreed that “whoever sheds the blood of a man, his blood shall be shed by the hand of a man.” This law established the right of civil authorities to punish murderers with death. Thus, three new regulations were added to the establishment of the Sabbath and marriage - on the abstinence of drinking blood, on the prohibition of murder, and on the right of civil power. These are the so-called “Noahic Laws,” of which the Jews numbered seven, adding to them a ruling against idolatry, blasphemy, debauchery and theft. Finally, at the conclusion of these separate decrees, God made a solemn covenant with Noah, i.e. one of those agreements by which He, out of love for people, assumed certain obligations on Himself, so that through them He could impose on man the obligations that would save him. By virtue of this covenant, He solemnly promised Noah that “no more shall all flesh be destroyed by the waters of a flood, neither shall there be any more flood to destroy the earth,” and the banner of this covenant was a rainbow appearing in the sky after the rain as a sign that this was not the rain of a flood, but a rain of blessing. There are some perplexities associated with the story of the flood, which sometimes force us to reinterpret its actual meaning. 1) Thus, some consider it impossible to understand here in the proper sense a global flood that covered the entire earth, and understand its universality only in the sense of the general destruction of people in those countries in which they had previously managed to settle. But such a limitation is not justified in any way, although it is not irreconcilable with direct biblical expressions, and, on the contrary, is refuted by the geological traces of the flood in the most remote parts of the earth's surface. Moreover, science knows of such revolutions on earth when entire continents were covered with water, such as the continent of Atlantis, now covered by the Atlantic Ocean. If such phenomena are possible due to natural revolutions, then the more understandable the global flood becomes in the full sense, as God’s terrible punishment for the destruction of life on a sinful earth. 2) If we assume the universality of the flood, then it would be unthinkable to collect all the breeds of animals in the room that Noah’s Ark represented. But it must be borne in mind that only such rocks could be taken into the ark that absolutely could not survive the flood and exist in the water even in the form of embryos and seeds, so that they could later be reborn from them from the heat of the sun; then, based on the current diversity of rocks, it is impossible to judge the antediluvian rocks, of which there were incomparably fewer; and, finally, many breeds were undoubtedly directly doomed to extermination, such as, for example, all those terrible antediluvian monsters (mammoths, mastodons, etc.), the remains of which are found in the layers of the earth and which now do not exist in reality. Thus, with the exception of all this, there will not be so much left that it will not fit into the ark, which in size and spaciousness cannot be equaled by even one of the current gigantic ships sailing the oceans. As for the general truth of the story of the flood, it finds striking confirmation in the universality of the traditions of various and most distant peoples. As is natural, the traditions of various peoples are filled in detail with legendary tales that have a local flavor, but their general meaning points to one general flood that destroyed all sinful humanity, with the exception of one pious family. We find such legends among the Greeks and the peoples of East and West Asia, we even find them among the natives of America and on the most remote islands of Oceania. But the most interesting and biblical narrative was found among the ancient Babylonians. This is a Chaldean narrative, the original of which was recently discovered and read on stone tablets from the ruins of Nineveh. It even confirms in detail the truth of the biblical narrative 20 . All these legends seem to point to one common source, from where they were spread by separate tribes when they settled throughout all countries of the earth. VI. Descendants of Noah. Genealogy of peoples. Pandemonium of Babylon and the scattering of nations. The Beginning of Idolatry 21 After the flood, everyday life began again, with its usual worries and labors. Noah was an example of piety, hard work and other virtues for his children. But the word of God is true that “the thoughts of the heart of man are evil from his youth,” and the righteous Noah himself soon showed his sons an example of vicious weakness. He planted a vineyard, using for this, according to Jewish tradition, a shoot of a vine that protruded from the fence of paradise. Whether he did not know the effect of the fruit of the grape, or in consuming it, a tendency to vice manifested itself in him, which distinguished the people destroyed by the flood, who “ate and drank” immoderately, in any case, he became drunk and fell in an indecent position - “naked in his tent,” which caused a disrespectful and mocking attitude towards himself from his son Ham. Only the other sons, Shem and Japheth, treated him with respect and covered him up. Upon learning of this, Noah expressed his feelings in words that received prophetic significance for the fate of the descendants of his sons. The primitive state of society was patriarchal. Patriarch, i.e. the head of the clan had unlimited power over his children and their descendants, which subsequently belonged to the king; he was at the same time a priest who made sacrifices, and a prophet, as the guardian of the true religion and the herald of future destinies. Therefore, what Noah said to his sons was truly decisive for their future fate. Ham, for his disrespect for his parent and patriarch, was cursed in the person of his son Canaan; Shem was blessed as a representative of true piety, and Japheth was predicted to have an extraordinary spread on earth, and Canaan was given to both of them as slaves. The meaning of this prophecy is this: the earth will be divided among people and the descendants of Japheth will occupy the largest space; the true religion will be preserved in the descendants of Shem; at certain times he will conquer the land of Canaan with the tribe inhabiting it, and the Redeemer of the world will appear in his country. The descendants of Japheth will also dwell in the tents of Shem, i.e. will enter the land of Canaan, as a symbol of the true church founded in it. Noah himself lived another 350 years after the flood and died 950 years old, being the last representative of antediluvian longevity. Nothing more is said about him in the biblical chronicle, which proceeds to describe the further fate of his descendants. The earth was divided into three parts among the descendants of Noah's three sons. The descendants of Shem occupied Asia, mainly the Arabian Peninsula with adjacent countries; the descendants of Ham settled almost exclusively in Africa with offspring in the neighboring countries of Asia, and the descendants of Japheth settled the entire northern strip of earth inhabited at that time, running from the cradle of post-Flood humanity through Asia Minor to Europe, along the northern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. The origin of the population of these countries of the world from the three sons of Noah is indicated by the fact that science reduces the numerous languages ​​spoken by the peoples and tribes in these parts of the world to three main roots, which undoubtedly have their common origin in the primitive language, as it was before the “confusion of languages.” In particular, from the descendants of Japheth, one can indicate the peoples descended from his sons and grandsons: from Homer - the Cimbri, from Magog - the Scythians, from Madai - the Medes, from Javan - the Greeks (Ionians), from Thiras - the Thracians, and so on. From Shem descended all the Semitic peoples who inhabited Arabia and other neighboring countries of Asia. He was “the father of all the sons of Eber,” i.e. tribes and peoples related to the Jewish people. Finally, of the sons of Ham, Cush (or Cush) was the ancestor of the population of Ethiopia, Mizraim - Egypt, Fut - Libya and Canaan - the population of the land of Canaan, or Palestine. The descendants of Ham settled almost exclusively in Africa, with the exception of Canaan, which occupied Palestine and was subsequently partly expelled from it by the Israelites. But there was another descendant of the Hams who also settled in Asia. This is precisely Nimrod, the son of Cush, the founder of the Babylonian kingdom and the conqueror of Assyria. He was a “strong trapper,” but in his character he resembles the first city builder - Cain and his immediate descendants. He founded a city (Babylon) that quickly grew into a large, proud capital, dominating a large population with a number of other neighboring cities. It is not surprising that such success filled Nimrod and his descendants with extraordinary pride. They began to dream of founding a world monarchy in order to unite all the peoples of the earth under their rule and dominate them contrary to the will of God, which determined for them to be slaves. And for this purpose, having founded a powerful city in the land of Shinar, as Mesopotamia was called in ancient times, they formed a council, at which they decided, as a sign of their political power and as an expression of their pride, to build “a tower whose height reaches to heaven” 22. The enterprise was obviously insane and unfulfillable, but at the same time it was criminal and dangerous: criminal because it stemmed from pride, bordering on arrogance and rejection of God, and dangerous because it came from the midst of the cursed and unblessed descendants of Ham. His success in this matter could have a detrimental effect on other nations and thus infect them with criminal arrogance and wickedness. And so, when work began to boil, bricks were fired and earthen resin was prepared, the Lord decided to punish them for their crazy undertaking. “And the Lord said: Behold, there is one people, and they all have one language, and they will not deviate from what they have planned to do. Let us go down and confuse their language there, so that one does not understand the speech of the other. And the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth; and they stopped building the city and the tower. Therefore the name was given to it: Babylon; for there the Lord confused the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them throughout all the earth.” Near the location of ancient Babylon, even now there are huge ruins of some gigantic tower, seven multi-colored floors, called Birs-Nimrud, i.e. “The Tower of Nimrod,” and Jewish tradition sees in it precisely the tower with which the tribe of Ham wanted to glorify their name to the heavens. As for the “mixing of languages,” there is no need to identify it with the origin of languages. We do not know what this confusion consisted of, or what rudiments of language the various peoples carried with them during the dispersion. There is no doubt that at this very time the main features that distinguish the various classes of languages ​​occurred, and that the builders scattered because they could no longer understand each other. But this does not mean that languages ​​as they exist now were immediately formed then. Comparative linguistics reveals harmonious and wonderful laws in the structure and development of languages, alien to any disorderly confusion. Mixing could consist of different pronunciations and combinations of words (sufficient for mutual misunderstanding), and after settling in different countries, separate languages ​​had already developed based on these features. Since the wicked offspring of Ham, who had forgotten God and relied entirely on themselves, would not have been slow to instill the godlessness that distinguished them in all other tribes and peoples that they wanted to unite under the dominion of Babylon, then with the dispersion of the peoples the danger of the rapid spread of this evil was averted. But the makings of evil itself still remained, “because the thought of the human heart is evil from his youth.” Dividing further and further from the original cradle of humanity and those ancestors who kept true faith in God and the truths associated with it, and encountering many unprecedented objects and dangers, peoples little by little began to concentrate entirely on these immediate objects; their memory of the common traditions of their ancestors was obscured, and at the same time the very concept of God was obscured. Among the many difficulties and dangers, they needed a God who would be close to them and to whom they could resort for help in any present disaster. Meanwhile, the God of their fathers was invisible to them and was only vaguely presented to their imagination. In view of this, they could easily move on to the idolization of something visible that could especially strike their imagination with its greatness, beauty, usefulness or fear. This is how idolatry or paganism arose, which is nothing more than the rejection of the invisible and superstitious attachment to the visible. Instead of the invisible Creator and Provider, man began to idolize the visible - first of all, perhaps, the sun, moon and stars, as beneficent luminaries that gave life and guided in wanderings, then objects of the surrounding inanimate and animate world (useful or terrible animals), and, finally, outstanding people who, as heroes, became demigods and upon death passed into the host of gods. The idolization of the visible sky (Sabeism), visible and especially animate nature (zootheism) and man (anthropotheism) constitute the three main stages of paganism and, as its external expression, idolatry. These three types of idolatry subsequently found their most dramatic expression in three separate countries - Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece. True, man was not satisfied with such crude idolatry, and in addition to all the visible gods, he constantly recognized the dominance of a higher, inexorable fate over everyone and even over the gods (in which one cannot help but see vague traces of the memory of the one omnipotent Provider God), but idolatry, by its very essence, chained the mind to crudely sensual objects and distracted from everything supersensible. Sensual deities forced them to idolize sensual powers and properties, and with the spread of wickedness, things came to the point that people began to idolize and sanctify even gross vices in their sensual deities, imitation of which was made a religious duty. And so, instead of true reverence and reverence for God, crude idolatry and wickedness spread on earth. Waves of sin and superstition again flooded the earth and again threatened to completely destroy and eradicate true religion with its main root, which consisted in the great promise of the future Savior of the world from slavery to sin and moral death. True, on earth, among the general idolatry and wickedness, there were still some individuals who retained the true faith. But the environment could soon carry them away with a common stream of wickedness. Therefore, in order to preserve the seeds of true faith for the future, it was necessary to single out some bearer of them from the midst of lawlessness and make him the chosen father and ancestor of a new generation of believers. This is how it was arranged by the good Providence of God. This was 352 years after the flood according to the Hebrew reckoning and 1,207 according to the Greek reckoning. The latter reckoning seems more likely, since it provides more historical space for the commission of the important events outlined 23. According to the Hebrew text - in the very year of the flood. If we count a cubit of 21 inches (i.e. 12 inches), it will be 525 feet long, 87 1/2 wide and 52 1/2 high. According to the calculation of bl. Augustine (On the City of God 15:26), the dimensions of the ark in its three dimensions were the same as the proportional dimensions of the normal human body, “the length of which from the sole to the crown is six times the width of the chest and ten times the thickness or depth of the lying figure of a man, measured in a straight line from the ground.” In 1609, one Dutchman, Peter Jansen in Goorn, built a ship exactly in the shape of Noah’s Ark, and it turned out that with this shape the ship has much greater capacity (by one third) than with the usual form of building ships. For biblical measures, see the end of the book. See at the end of the book, appendix. III. Pandemonium of Babylon, Gen. 11:1–9. The disagreement in determining this time depends on the fact that the only data for its determination are the years of the post-flood patriarchs, whose testimony again differs significantly in the main texts of the biblical chronicle. The genealogy of the post-flood patriarchs begins with Shem, who gave birth to Arphaxad 2 years after the flood. All three texts agree in this indication, and therefore the difference in the indication of the years of the next patriarchs before the birth of their first son can be seen from the following table: From this table it is clear that in the indications of the years of the post-flood patriarchs, the Greek and Samaritan texts agree with each other, but the Hebrew evades them, consistently lowering the figure by one hundred years and in the indication of the years of Nahor by 50 years. Such a departure clearly indicates a deliberate shortening of years, and even entire generations, since Cainan does not appear in the Hebrew text at all. In view of the complete agreement of the Greek and Samaritan texts, their testimony receives more reliability compared to the Hebrew. You might be interested in: