In today's reading (chapter 13), Lot and Avram go their separate ways. Avram closes the chapter giving thanks. In Hevron, he builds an altar to God.
How do we thank God today?
When and where do we express our gratitude?
How do we thank others?
How do we solve our disputes?
All these questions appear in just eighteen verses!
Genesis 6 has angels sleeping with humans, wickedness increasing in the world and Noah finding favor in God's eyes. It is a complicated and violent world. From creation to this moment is only ten generations--yet their lifespans are tremendous. Noah comes into the picture and God hits the reset button.
When humankind began to increase on earth and daughters were born to them,
the [males among the] divine beings Others “sons of God.” saw how pleasing the human women were and took wives from among those who delighted them.—
יהוה said, “My breath shall not abide in humankind forever, since it too is flesh; let the days allowed them be one hundred and twenty years.”—
It was then, and later too, that the Nephilim appeared on earth—when divine beings cohabited with the human women, who bore them offspring. Such were the heroes of old, the men of renown.
יהוה saw how great was human wickedness on earth—how every plan devised by the human mind was nothing but evil all the time.
And יהוה regretted having made humankind on earth. With a sorrowful heart,
יהוה said, “I will blot out from the earth humankind whom I created—humans together with beasts, creeping things, and birds of the sky; for I regret that I made them.”
But Noah found favor with יהוה.
This is the line of Noah.—Noah was a righteous man; he was blameless in his age; Noah walked with God.—
Noah begot three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
The earth became corrupt before God; the earth was filled with lawlessness.
When God saw how corrupt the earth was, for all flesh had corrupted its ways on earth,
God said to Noah, “I have decided to put an end to all flesh, for the earth is filled with lawlessness because of them: I am about to destroy them with the earth.
Make yourself an ark of gopher wood; make it an ark with compartments, and cover it inside and out with pitch.
This is how you shall make it: the length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits.
Make an opening for daylight in the ark, and terminate it within a cubit of the top.. Put the entrance to the ark in its side; make it with bottom, second, and third decks.
“For My part, I am about to bring the Flood—waters upon the earth—to destroy all flesh under the sky in which there is breath of life; everything on earth shall perish.
But I will establish My covenant with you, and you shall enter the ark, with your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives.
And of all that lives, of all flesh, you shall take two of each into the ark to keep alive with you; they shall be male and female.
From birds of every kind, cattle of every kind, every kind of creeping thing on earth, two of each shall come to you to stay alive.
For your part, take of everything that is eaten and store it away, to serve as food for you and for them.”
Noah did so; just as God commanded him, so he did.
