From the Flood to Abraham
Restoring the Foundations · Article 4 of 14
After the flood, Yahweh said in his heart that “the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Genesis 8:21). Then he called one man out of the scattered nations and promised, “All the families of the earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:3).
Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (WEB), current public-domain edition, checked word for word. The WEB prints God’s name as Yahweh. Notes on the Hebrew and Greek are at the end.
A Fair Question
Genesis 1-11 is about everyone: the whole world made, the whole human family gone wrong, the whole earth judged, all the nations scattered. Then, in chapter 12, the camera narrows to one elderly man with a childless wife, and the rest of the Old Testament follows his family.
That can feel strange, even unfair. So here is the question for this article: Why did God choose one man and one family?
Genesis answers by showing what happened first. Judgment did not change the human heart, and human unity built a tower instead of a home. Then God chose one family, not to shut the world out, but to bring blessing to it.
Part 1: Judgment Could Not Change the Heart
A world filled with violence
By Genesis 6 the violence of Cain and Lamech has spread everywhere:
Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was continually only evil. Yahweh was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him in his heart. (Genesis 6:5-6)
“The earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence” (Genesis 6:11). God tells Noah, “I will bring an end to all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them and the earth.” (Genesis 6:13). In the Hebrew one verb stands behind “corrupt” and “destroy”: the judgment matches the ruin already there.
The word “sorry” troubles some readers, since Balaam’s oracle says God is not “a son of man, that he should repent” (Numbers 23:19). Yet 1 Samuel holds both together in one chapter: “the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent” (1 Samuel 15:29), and “Yahweh grieved that he had made Saul king over Israel” (1 Samuel 15:35). In the Hebrew, “grieved” there is the verb behind “repent” in 15:29 and behind “was sorry” in Genesis 6:6. We read Genesis 6:6 as real sorrow and a settled change in how God deals with a corrupt world, not as a mistake or a failure of foresight. That is our conclusion; the texts themselves state both God’s grief and his reliability.
Noah, the ark, and God’s remembering
“But Noah found favor in Yahweh’s eyes.” He “was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time. Noah walked with God.” (Genesis 6:8-9). God promises, “I will establish my covenant with you” (Genesis 6:18), and Noah’s response is complete: “Thus Noah did. He did all that God commanded him.” (Genesis 6:22).
The waters cover everything: “Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ship” (Genesis 7:23). Jesus says the flood “took them all away” (Matthew 24:39), and Peter writes that “the world that existed then, being overflowed with water, perished” (2 Peter 3:6). Readers differ on how Genesis’ words relate to modern maps, and Genesis gives none. What we conclude, closely, from “Only Noah was left” is that the judgment did not leave part of the judged world untouched.
Then: “God remembered Noah” (Genesis 8:1). In Scripture God’s remembering is faithful action, not recovery from forgetting. God brings the survivors out “that they may breed abundantly on the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply on the earth” (Genesis 8:17). The world after the flood is the same project as the world before it.
The heart unchanged
Noah offers sacrifices, and the narrator lets us hear God’s resolve:
Yahweh said in his heart, “I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake because the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth. I will never again strike every living thing, as I have done. While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night will not cease.” (Genesis 8:21-22)
Read the middle clause again. Before the flood: “every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was continually only evil” (Genesis 6:5). After the flood: “the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” The flood removed a violent generation. It did not remove the inclination that produced it. The world will go on because God is patient, not because people have become good.
God blesses Noah’s family with the words of creation, “Be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth” (Genesis 9:1). He protects every human life, “for God made man in his own image” (Genesis 9:6). He makes a covenant “with you, and with your offspring after you, and with every living creature”, and promises, “There will never again be a flood to destroy the earth” (Genesis 9:9-11). Then Noah plants a vineyard: “He drank of the wine and got drunk.” (Genesis 9:21). The man who walked with God is not sinless, and the family saved through the waters carries the heart Genesis 8:21 described.
This passage has been abused, so one more thing belongs here. When Noah wakes he says, “Canaan is cursed” (Genesis 9:25). These are Noah’s words, not God’s covenant speech; they name Canaan, not Ham or Ham’s other sons (Genesis 10:6); and they say nothing about skin color, a continent, or any modern people. The old idea of a curse of Ham, once used to defend slavery and racial contempt, has no basis in the text, and it contradicts Genesis 9:6.
Part 2: One Family, Many Nations
The nations from one family
Genesis 10 lists Noah’s descendants by families, languages, lands, and nations, and closes: “These are the families of the sons of Noah, by their generations, according to their nations. The nations divided from these on the earth after the flood.” (Genesis 10:32). The nations are one extended human family. Paul told the Athenians the same: God “made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the surface of the earth” (Acts 17:26).
Babel
People settle in the plain of Shinar and say:
“Come, let’s build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top reaches to the sky, and let’s make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad on the surface of the whole earth.” (Genesis 11:4)
Genesis does not condemn bricks, cities, or cooperation. The builders say what they want: a name of their own making, and not to be scattered. God had blessed Noah’s family to “replenish the earth” (Genesis 9:1), so reading their wish to stay put as resistance to that blessing, and their name-making as pride, is our conclusion from the story rather than something they say. When Yahweh gives his own reason, he speaks of what a united people “intend to do” (Genesis 11:6).
There is a quiet irony: the tower is meant to reach the sky, and “Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower” (Genesis 11:5). “So Yahweh scattered them abroad from there on the surface of all the earth. They stopped building the city.” (Genesis 11:8).
So by the end of Genesis 11, two answers to the world’s problem have failed. Judgment did not change the heart. Human unity did not build anything good. What will God do now?
Part 3: The Call
An unlikely beginning
Genesis narrows from the nations to Shem’s line, then to one household, and adds a short, heavy sentence: “Sarai was barren. She had no child.” (Genesis 11:30). Through Joshua, Yahweh later says more: “Your fathers lived of old time beyond the River, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nahor. They served other gods. I took your father Abraham from beyond the River” (Joshua 24:2-3). God did not choose a family that had already chosen him. Whether Abram himself had served other gods, Scripture does not say.
“All the families of the earth”
Now Yahweh said to Abram, “Leave your country, and your relatives, and your father’s house, and go to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great. You will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you... All the families of the earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:1-3)
Notice who does the work: “I will make... I will bless.” Abram is told to go; everything else is God’s promise. Notice the word “name.” The builders said, “let’s make a name for ourselves”; God says, “I will... make your name great.” Genesis does not draw the comparison, but the shared word and the order of the chapters invite it; that is our conclusion, and nothing here rests on it.
And notice where the promise ends: “All the families of the earth.” The Hebrew word for “families” is the word Genesis 10 used for the scattered peoples. That is the answer to our question. God chose one family for the sake of all the families. The choice is particular, a real man, a real household, a real land, and its purpose is worldwide.
The Hebrew verb form behind “will be blessed” can also mean will find blessing, and when the promise is repeated in Genesis 22:18 it uses a form often read will bless themselves. On any of these readings, the families’ blessing comes in connection with Abram and his offspring. When the apostles quote it, they read it as blessing that comes to the nations through Abraham and his offspring: Paul, “In you all the nations will be blessed” (Galatians 3:8), and Peter, “All the families of the earth will be blessed through your offspring” (Acts 3:25).
Two guardrails keep that answer from being twisted. First, God’s protection of Abram in Genesis 12:3 is God’s to carry out; it gives no license for injustice by Abraham’s descendants, and no formula for judging modern nations. Second, being chosen came with a calling: “I have known him, to the end that he may command his children and his household after him, that they may keep the way of Yahweh, to do righteousness and justice” (Genesis 18:19).
Abram goes
“So Abram went, as Yahweh had told him.” (Genesis 12:4). In Canaan, “Yahweh appeared to Abram and said, ‘I will give this land to your offspring.’” (Genesis 12:7). Hebrews says, “By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out to the place which he was to receive for an inheritance. He went out, not knowing where he went.” (Hebrews 11:8).
Genesis does not make him a hero without faults. In the next scene he goes down to Egypt and tells Sarai to say she is his sister, and Pharaoh has to rebuke him (Genesis 12:10-20). The promise rested on God’s faithfulness, not on Abram’s record. That is our conclusion.
Part 4: Faith Credited, Covenant Made
“So your offspring will be”
Time passes, and Abram still has no son. God takes him outside: “Look now toward the sky, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” He said to Abram, “So your offspring will be.” (Genesis 15:5). Then comes one of the most quoted verses in the Bible:
He believed in Yahweh, who credited it to him for righteousness. (Genesis 15:6)
The WEB names Yahweh as the one who credited it. The Hebrew says only and he credited it, and since Abram is the subject of “believed,” some read Abram as the one who reckons. But Yahweh is the speaker throughout the scene, and Paul reads it of God: “the man to whom God counts righteousness apart from works” (Romans 4:6). That is a canonical connection, and the WEB follows it. What Abram believed was a specific promise: an heir from his own body, and descendants like the stars.
The furnace and the torch
Abram asks how he will know that he will inherit the land, and God has him divide animals in halves (Genesis 15:8-10). God tells him his descendants will be foreigners, afflicted four hundred years, and will come out and return (Genesis 15:13-16). Then:
It came to pass that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold, a smoking furnace and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. In that day Yahweh made a covenant with Abram, saying, “I have given this land to your offspring, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates:” (Genesis 15:17-18)
Genesis says only the furnace and the torch passed between the pieces; it does not say Abram did, and it reports no pledge from him. That this covenant rests on God’s own commitment is our conclusion. And it concerns a real, bounded land with named peoples (Genesis 15:19-21), not a symbol.
An everlasting covenant
When Abram is ninety-nine, God appears again: “I am God Almighty. Walk before me and be blameless.” (Genesis 17:1). He renames him Abraham and says:
I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God to you and to your offspring after you. I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are traveling, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession. I will be their God. (Genesis 17:7-8)
“The land where you are traveling” is in Hebrew the land of your sojournings: Abraham still lives there as a foreigner. God gives the covenant a sign, circumcision, and a command: “As for you, you shall keep my covenant” (Genesis 17:9). He names the heir: “I will establish my covenant with him” (Genesis 17:19), that is, Isaac; Ishmael is blessed too (Genesis 17:20). Both sides stand together. God makes the covenant and gives the land; Abraham’s household is to walk before him and keep it.
Part 5: The Oath, and Three Texts Answered
God swears by himself
“God tested Abraham,” telling him to offer “your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love” (Genesis 22:1-2). At the last moment the angel stopped him: “now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me” (Genesis 22:12). Then “Yahweh’s angel called to Abraham a second time out of the sky” (Genesis 22:15):
“I have sworn by myself, says Yahweh, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son, that I will bless you greatly, and I will multiply your offspring greatly like the stars of the heavens, and like the sand which is on the seashore. Your offspring will possess the gate of his enemies. All the nations of the earth will be blessed by your offspring, because you have obeyed my voice.” (Genesis 22:16-18)
A note on the visitors and the angel. Genesis 18 opens, “Yahweh appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre” (Genesis 18:1), and Abraham “saw that three men stood near him” (Genesis 18:2). Later “The men turned from there, and went toward Sodom, but Abraham stood yet before Yahweh” (Genesis 18:22), and “The two angels came to Sodom at evening” (Genesis 19:1). Then “Yahweh rained on Sodom and on Gomorrah sulfur and fire from Yahweh out of the sky” (Genesis 19:24). In Genesis 22, “Yahweh’s angel called to him out of the sky” (Genesis 22:11), yet says, “you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me” (Genesis 22:12). Some read these as a second divine person, or as a pre-human appearance of the Son. The texts do not say so. They show a messenger speaking in the first person for the one who sent him, as Yahweh says of his angel, “my name is in him” (Exodus 23:21), and Genesis itself calls the visitors men and angels. That these are Yahweh’s agents speaking in his name, not Yahweh in a second person, is our conclusion. Genesis 18:22 and 19:24 fit the same pattern: the angels themselves say, “Yahweh has sent us to destroy it” (Genesis 19:13), so the fire that falls “from Yahweh out of the sky” (Genesis 19:24) is Yahweh acting through his messengers, our conclusion.
This is the first time Genesis reports Yahweh saying, “I have sworn.” The oath does not start a new plan; it confirms the promises already made, now in God’s own name. Hebrews draws the lesson: “since he could swear by no one greater, he swore by himself,” so “that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have a strong encouragement” (Hebrews 6:13, 18).
Text 1: faith, or works?
Twice the oath gives a reason: “because you have done this thing” and “because you have obeyed my voice” (Genesis 22:16, 18). God later tells Isaac the same: “because Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my requirements, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws” (Genesis 26:5). James joins this scene to Genesis 15:6: “Wasn’t Abraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? You see that faith worked with his works, and by works faith was perfected” (James 2:21-22). And: “You see then that by works a man is justified, and not only by faith.” (James 2:24). Paul, quoting the same verse, says that if Abraham was justified by works, “he has something to boast about, but not toward God” (Romans 4:2).
Those words should not be softened in either direction. Abraham’s obedience truly mattered; God swore “because” of it. Yet the promises the oath confirms were given before Abram had obeyed at all (Genesis 12:1-3), and his belief was credited for righteousness years before Moriah (Genesis 15:6). James answers people who claim a faith that does nothing; Paul answers people who think obedience earns God’s gift. Our conclusion is that the oath is God’s sworn seal on a promise that obedience did not purchase, given in answer to a faith that obeyed. Hebrews says Abraham offered Isaac “By faith,” “concluding that God is able to raise up even from the dead” (Hebrews 11:17, 19).
Text 2: “offspring,” one or many?
A note on translation. Older English Bibles, including the King James Version and earlier editions of the WEB, use seed in these promises; the current WEB says “offspring.” Both render the Hebrew zera and, in the New Testament, the Greek sperma. Each is grammatically singular in form, whether it means one descendant or a whole people. The current WEB brings out Paul’s contrast in Galatians 3:16 with “descendants” (plural) and “offspring”; the Greek has seeds and seed.
Paul writes, “Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his offspring. He doesn’t say, ‘To descendants’, as of many, but as of one, ‘To your offspring’, which is Christ.” (Galatians 3:16). Yet Genesis plainly uses the word for many, “like the stars of the heavens, and like the sand” (Genesis 22:17). Is Paul ignoring Genesis?
Not if we read on. Paul himself returns to the many: “If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring and heirs according to promise.” (Galatians 3:29). The word can mean one descendant or many, and Paul uses both senses in one chapter. His point is that the promise reaches its goal in one descendant, the Messiah, and through him reaches all who belong to him. Matthew opens the New Testament naming “Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matthew 1:1).
That does not move the promises away from Abraham’s family. Paul says of the Israelites, “whose is the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service, and the promises” (Romans 9:4), and of the same people, “Concerning the Good News, they are enemies for your sake. But concerning the election, they are beloved for the fathers’ sake. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” (Romans 11:28-29). He warns believers from the nations, “don’t boast over the branches” (Romans 11:18). That the nations share in Abraham’s blessing through the Messiah is explicit; that this leaves Israel’s promises unrevoked is stated in Romans 11:29 itself.
Text 3: the land “everlasting,” or “a better country”?
God promised Canaan “for an everlasting possession” (Genesis 17:8). But the only land Abraham bought in Canaan was a burial field (Genesis 23:17-20); Stephen says God “gave him no inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on” (Acts 7:5). And Hebrews says of the patriarchs:
These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and embraced them from afar, and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth... But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed of them, to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. (Hebrews 11:13, 16)
This is the text most often cited for saying the land was never the real point, so we read it closely. The same chapter calls Canaan “the land of promise” (Hebrews 11:9). The country Hebrews says they were not thinking of is “that country from which they went out” (Hebrews 11:15), the land they left, not Canaan. We take the “city” God has prepared to be the one John sees “coming down out of heaven from God” (Revelation 21:2); that is our conclusion. Paul says the promise was that Abraham should be “heir of the world” (Romans 4:13). Our conclusion is that the promise grows larger rather than vanishing: a real land, inside a renewed world, for people raised from the dead. Scripture does not spell out how Canaan and the renewed world relate. What it does not allow is a hope that leaves behind the earth, the body, or Abraham’s named descendants (Romans 8:18-25; 11:28-29; 1 Corinthians 15:20-28).
Where We Stand
What Scripture says explicitly: God judged a world filled with violence, preserved Noah, and covenanted never again to destroy the earth by flood (Genesis 6-9). After the flood the human heart was still “evil from his youth”, and Noah got drunk (Genesis 8:21; 9:21). The nations come from one family; at Babel God scattered builders seeking a name (Genesis 10:32; 11:4-8). God promised Abram a great nation, a great name, and blessing for all the families of the earth (Genesis 12:1-3). Abram believed and it was credited for righteousness; God covenanted a bounded land and an everlasting possession, and swore by himself (Genesis 15:6, 18; 17:7-8; 22:16-18). Israel’s calling is irrevocable (Romans 11:29).
Canonical connections: Paul and James both quote Genesis 15:6 (Romans 4:3; James 2:23). Paul calls the Messiah Abraham’s offspring and all who are Christ’s Abraham’s offspring (Galatians 3:16, 29). Hebrews quotes the oath (Hebrews 6:13-14) and says the patriarchs died without receiving the promises (Hebrews 11:13-16). Paul names God as the one who credits righteousness (Romans 4:6).
Our conclusions: That God’s grief in Genesis 6:6 is real sorrow, not a mistake. That Babel’s builders resisted the blessing to fill the earth. That Abram’s call answers Babel (nothing here rests on it). That the covenant of Genesis 15 rests on God’s own commitment. That the oath seals a promise obedience did not purchase. That Hebrews’ city is John’s New Jerusalem, and the land promise grows into a renewed world rather than vanishing. That Abraham himself will receive the inheritance in the resurrection (from the promise made “to you,” Genesis 13:15, with Acts 7:5).
What Scripture does not say: It does not say the flood changed the human heart, or that Noah was sinless. Noah’s words do not curse Ham, Africa, or any race. Genesis does not condemn cities or cooperation at Babel. God’s choice of Abraham does not make other nations worthless. Genesis 15:6 does not say Abram earned the promise. Galatians 3 and Hebrews 11 do not say Abraham’s descendants or the land were removed from the promise.
What This Means for Us
So, why did God choose one man and one family? Because judgment could not change the human heart, and human unity could not make a name worth having. God answered a scattered world by starting small: one childless couple, one family, one land, carrying a promise for all the families of the earth.
It means the choosing was never for the chosen alone. Abraham’s family was blessed in order to be a blessing, and called to “do righteousness and justice.” It means ancestry cannot save: “Don’t think to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father,’” said John the Baptist (Matthew 3:9). And no one is outside the reach of a promise that names “all the families of the earth.” It means faith that trusts God’s word and obeys it, as Abraham did when he left home not knowing where he was going.
And it means the blessing has come. Peter told a crowd in Jerusalem, “You are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘All the families of the earth will be blessed through your offspring.’ God, having raised up his servant Jesus, sent him to you first to bless you, in turning away every one of you from your wickedness.” (Acts 3:25-26). The way into that blessing is the one the apostles preached: repentance, faith in the risen Jesus, confession of him as Lord, baptism in his name, and obedience led by God’s Spirit. Peter said, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 2:38), and Paul writes of “as many as are led by the Spirit of God” (Romans 8:14). The hope is bodily: “he who raised up Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies” (Romans 8:11). Abraham, who died without his inheritance, will receive it in the resurrection; that is our conclusion, from the promise made “to you and to your offspring forever” (Genesis 13:15).
For Study
Questions
- How does God describe the human heart before the flood (Genesis 6:5) and after it (Genesis 8:21)?
- What did the builders at Babel want, and what did God promise Abram (Genesis 11:4; 12:2)?
- How do Paul and James each use Genesis 15:6, and how does Genesis 22 bear on both?
- In a paragraph, answer this article’s question.
Verify it yourself
- Isaiah 54:9-10: God sets his oath about “the waters of Noah” beside his oath to his people.
- Romans 4:1-25: Paul on Abraham’s faith.
- Hebrews 11:8-19: Abraham’s faith from the call to Moriah.
Notes on the Text
Where the Hebrew or Greek bears on the argument (WEB verse numbers):
- Genesis 8:21: the Hebrew word behind “because” can also mean although; either way the human heart is still evil from youth.
- Genesis 12:3: the verb behind “will be blessed” can also mean will find blessing; “families of the earth” is literally families of the ground.
- Genesis 15:6: the Hebrew does not name the subject of “credited”; the WEB supplies “who” (Yahweh), following the sense Paul gives in Romans 4:6.
- Genesis 22:18: the verb behind “be blessed” is a form often read will bless themselves.
- Galatians 3:16: the Greek has seeds (where the WEB has “descendants”) and seed (where it has “offspring”); see the translation note.
- Hebrews 11:15-16: the Greek has no word for “country” in either verse; it carries on the “country” of 11:14.
Looking Ahead
Exodus opens with Abraham’s family enslaved in Egypt, as God told Abram (Genesis 15:13). Then “God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob” (Exodus 2:24). The next article, Rescued and Called, asks: Was the Law a way to earn God’s favor?
© 2026 Elvis Lucas, Open the Text. Original: https://openthetext.com/series/restoring-the-foundations/04-from-the-flood-to-abraham/
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