Three Words for Man, and the Last One Is Noah

THREE WORDS FOR MAN, AND THE LAST ONE IS NOAH

Part four of four

A word study

Where We Left Off

Part one walked verses one to four. Part two took verse five. Part three took verse eight and the grace Noah found.

This one is a word study on verse nine, and it gathers up something that has been running through the whole chapter.

The Verse

Three Words for Man, and Moses Used All Three

Now I want you to see something I did not see until I went looking. I looked these up in my study Bible, and there is a note at the foot of this study saying where they come from.

My King James says MAN in verse one, MAN in verse three, MEN in verse four, and MAN in verse nine. Four times, and it looks like one word. It is not. Three different Hebrew words are given underneath.

VERSE ONE AND VERSE THREE give adam. The entry calls it a human being, an individual or the species, mankind. It says generically the human race. And it calls it the more dignified of the words for man.

VERSE FOUR gives enosh, in men of renown. The entry calls it properly a mortal, and sets it against the more dignified adam. It says the word may come from a root meaning to be weak or sick.

AND VERSE NINE gives a third one. Ish. And the entry says of it, plainly, this word does not indicate humankind but the male gender in particular. A man as an individual. So read the chapter with that in your hand.

It starts with mankind, the species. It goes to the mortal ones, the mighty men who were of old. And it ends on one man. Mankind. Mortal. Then a man.

I am not going to tell you Moses arranged those three to make that picture, because he does not stop and say so.

What I can tell you is which word is under which verse. That I read it as a narrowing is my reading, and it is mine.

Just

Genesis 6:9 says Noah was a JUST man.

The word is given as tsaddiq, and the entry says something I want you to hold. Someone or something is considered just or righteous BECAUSE OF CONFORMITY TO A GIVEN STANDARD.

And it names my verse twice in the entry. Once for being in accordance with God's standards, and once for individuals.

That is the entry talking, and it is talking about how the word works, not about Noah.

And it adds that the word is often applied to God Himself, who is the ultimate standard used to define justice and righteousness.

But I do not need the word to carry that for me, because Genesis says it out loud one chapter later.

BEFORE ME. God saying it, about this man, in His own words.

So what I take from it, and the taking is mine, is that Noah was not just by his own reckoning. Somebody else said it about him.

Perfect in His Generations

Now the next word, and this is the one that stopped me.

My King James says PERFECT. The word is given as tamiym, and the entry defines it blameless, complete, without blemish, sound, whole.

And then it says this. In over half of its occurrences, it describes AN ANIMAL TO BE SACRIFICED TO THE LORD. A ram, a bull, a lamb.

The word for what God required of an offering is the word laid on this man.

I am not going to tell you Moses meant Noah to be read as a sacrifice, because he does not say it. I am telling you where else that word is used, and I am telling you it stopped me.

The entry also says the word is used of a complete day, a complete seven Sabbaths, a complete year. And of one's relationship with God, and it names Genesis 17:1 for that.

So the word carries whole, and it carries without blemish, and it carries complete.

Generations, and Then Generations Again

My King James says GENERATIONS twice in this verse. It opens THESE ARE THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH, and then it says he was perfect in his GENERATIONS.

And I nearly told you that was one word used twice. It is not.

I checked both of them in the King James with the numbering, and I looked up each entry. They are two different Hebrew words, and they are doing two different things.

THE FIRST ONE, under THESE ARE THE GENERATIONS OF NOAH, is toledoth. The entry gives generations, descent, family, genealogy, and an account or a course of history.

And I am not going to shrink that to descendants only. The same word turns up back in Genesis 2:4, of the heavens and the earth, and nothing came out of them the way a son comes out of a father. It is the account of a thing.

THE SECOND ONE, under PERFECT IN HIS GENERATIONS, is dowr. The entry gives an age or a generation, and it can speak of the people belonging to that generation. It opens out into three. A period of time. Those living during a period. And a generation marked by a quality, a condition, a class of men.

Now hold that word AGE carefully, because it will be read wrong. It is not age the way we say a man is sixty years of age. It is age the way we say IN MY GRANDMOTHER'S DAY, or THAT GENERATION WENT THROUGH THE WAR. The stretch of years, and the people who were alive in it together.

So here is how I am reading the two, and it is a reading. The first word turns me toward Noah's line and his account. The second turns me toward the generation Noah was living in.

And I will be honest that the second one can be read more than one way. Translations give it in his generation, in his time, in his generations, and among those in his generations. That I take it as among the people he stood with is my reading, and it is not the only one available.

And the third sense in that entry is the one I keep looking at. A generation marked by a quality, a condition, a class of men. That is not me inventing a category. Scripture uses the word that way elsewhere, of a crooked generation and a perverse generation and a stubborn one.

Now read verse five again. The word dowr does not tell me what the condition was. Verse five tells me. Dowr only tells me there was a generation to put it on. So one English word, and two Hebrew words underneath it.

The King James repeated the English. Moses did not repeat the Hebrew.

And what he meant by changing it I am not going to tell you, because he does not stop and say.

And Not the Same as the Days

While I had the book open I checked something else, because I wondered.

Genesis 1:5 gives DAY as yom, and that is the same word under HIS DAYS in Genesis 6:3 and under CONTINUALLY in Genesis 6:5. It is not the word under either GENERATIONS in verse nine.

So across this chapter and the one before it, the English gives me day, and days, and continually, and generations, and generations again. And underneath those there are three different Hebrew words. Yom for the day. And two others in verse nine.

I am not building anything on that. I am telling you they are not the same words, because the English will let you think they are.

Walked With God

And the verse ends where the chapter has been going. Noah walked with God.

I have been in that phrase before, in a study on Enoch, and I am not going to spend it twice. What I will say here is that it is the second time in Genesis those words are used of a man, and both of the men they are used of are in this line.

The Heart

Here is what I hold, and it is mine. The chapter began with mankind and God looking at all of it.

It came down through the ones the entry calls mortal, famous in their day.

And it ended on one man. Called righteous, and God says it Himself one chapter later. Called blameless. And walking with Him in the middle of a generation that was not.

Moses does not connect those three words for me. He just uses them, one after another, and lets the chapter narrow.

I read a God who did not lose sight of one man while He was looking at all of them. And that reading is mine.