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earth and sea are brought to their door; no thought passes through their mind as to the
sorrow and the toil that someone, somewhere, must endure to provide them with the
necessities of life. Lamech knew no such deadening influence; the toil of his hands was
hard and wearying because of the ground that the Lord had cursed. A friend writing
recently gave an unconscious echo of Lamech's words, saying, "When one, from the
back of the land, sees the toil of man and beast, there come to the lips no more fitting
words than, `Even so, Come, Lord Jesus'. "
Harps and organs, however, melodious and charming, brass and iron, modeled and
designed into the most wonderful of machines and inventions, though they may `prove'
to the natural man the upward development of man's attainments, afford no rest for those
in whose hearts the truth of God abides. Rest for them is found in the true Noah, whose
witness and whose experiences testify of the resurrection, and a new heavens and a new
earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." (From Volume VIII of The Berean Expositor,
pages 101-103).
Let us now set out the evident parallelism that the record of Genesis provides between
the lift story of Adam and that of Noah.
List of parallels and contrasts between the dispensations headed by:
ADAM
NOAH
A flood in the background that left
A judgment in the background
which left the earth without form and the earth a ruin (Gen. 7: 17-24).
void (Gen. 1: 2; Isa. 45: 18).
(The parallel between these two passages is so close that
commentators are divided as to which of them II Pet. 3: 5, 6 refers.)
The dry land appears on the
The dry land appears in Noah's
third day, grass and trees grow 601st year, and the pluckt olive leaf
(Gen. 1: 9-13).
indicated to Noah that this was so
(Gen. 8: 11-13).
Living creatures are "brought forth
Living creatures are `brought
forth' from the water and from the with Noah out of the Ark that they
earth, and God blessed them saying, may breed abundantly in the earth,
"Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the and be fruitful and multiply in the
waters in the seas, and let fowl earth" (Gen. 8: 15-19).
multiply in the earth" (Gen. 1: 20-25).
Man made in the image of God to have
"And God blessed Noah and his sons,
"dominion over the fish of the sea, and
and said unto them, Be fruitful, and
over the fowl of the air, and over the
multiply, and replenish the earth, and the
cattle, and over all the earth, and over
fear of you and the dread of you shall be
creeping thing that creepeth upon the
upon every beast of the earth, and upon
earth . . . . . and God blessed them, and
every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth
God said unto them, Be fruitful and
upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of
multiply, and replenish the earth and
the sea, into your hand are they
subdue it" (Gen. 1: 26-28).
delivered." "In the image of God made
He man" (Gen. 9: 1, 2, 6).