Episode 401 From Destruction to Covenant (Genesis 6:5-22; 8:6-14; 9:8-17)

This week we’re kicking off Season 4 of BibleWorm with Genesis 6–9, a text that is part children’s story, part post-apocalyptic nightmare: the story of the Great Flood and Noah’s ark. We talk about God’s regret at having made humankind and the challenge of knowing when things have failed and it’s time to start over. We imagine what it must have been like for Noah and those with him to endure many months of uncertainty and then the difficulty of knowing when the danger was finally over. And we discuss God’s movement from violent destruction to covenantal commitment, and we wonder whether we, too, can learn to respond to disappointment with deeper relationship rather than with violence.