Noah

Noah

Antediluvian — survivor of the flood, lived 950 years

sets down the adze. Looks at his hands a moment.

Fear of the animals. You ask me that.

I will tell you what I feared. I feared the faces at the waterline. Men I had known. Men who had laughed at the pitch on my hands for a hundred and twenty years. Women. Children. (Genesis 6:17 — the LORD said every living thing under heaven. He was not vague about it.) I heard them in the rain. For a time I heard them. Then I did not.

The animals — the LORD brought them. Yavo'u — they came, by their own motion, to me (Genesis 7:9). I did not chase down a pair of leopards and wrestle them into a stall. They came as if something had been laid into their nature for that hour. That was the LORD's doing, not mine. A carpenter does not take credit for the grain in the wood.

Were they dangerous? I kept my sons busy. (Genesis 7:13) Eight people. Many creatures. Shem had calluses on his calluses by the time the waters receded. You do not have time to be afraid of a lion when you are shoveling what a lion leaves behind.

But afterwards — (Genesis 9:2) — the LORD said something had changed. The fear and dread of man would fall upon every beast. That verse sits uneasily with me. It was not so before. Something broke between us and the creatures. I do not know the full weight of what that means. I carry it.

The animals were not what frightened me on that boat.