It is Certain that Noah was a Human Being

We know that God’s salvation program is the same program for all that He saved. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord (Genesis 6:8). David cried out for mercy (Psalm 51:1-4) and besought the Lord that He might create in him a clean heart (Psalm 51:10). The same gospel was preached to them as well as unto us (Hebrews 4:2).

As we read the Bible we find that God often would speak a word to this or that saint, and they would immediately obey. Yet, obedience is also a common characteristic of a child of God. God’s saints have obeyed God throughout the New Testament era just as the saints of the Old Testament period obeyed Him.

I think we have to keep in mind that the Bible is record of conversations and excerpts of key historical events chosen by God out of the lives of the people we read about. For example, when Noah was 480 years old God came to him and commanded him to build the ark.

Genesis 6:13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

14 Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.

We read details of how the ark was to built, stores to be brought on board, etc. And then the summation:

Genesis 6:22 Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.

This task took 120 years to fulfill. That’s a lot of time in which a great many things happened to Noah that we know nothing about because God did not tell us about it. Did Noah ever wonder, or have troubling thoughts, about the work of building the ship? Did he and his wife ever argue or have difficult times over other matters (we need to do more farm work instead of ship building to make money, etc)? Did Noah ever wake up some days and feel depressed? Weary of the task given him? Tired of the mocking and reviling he was getting day after day by the people all around him?

Did Noah sometimes think that he was inadequate in his abilities to do a good job and to make the ship truly sea worthy? Did he not want to work on it some days?

Of course, this is all speculation, but it’s certain that Noah was a human being. And it’s also certain that troubles came to him over the course of those many decades that brought tribulation and affliction into his life of varying kinds. In order to keep the Bible somewhat concise, God left out a great many details regarding the thoughts, feelings, and actions of the people we read about on its holy pages. We can gather that if we knew more about Noah, Abraham, Joseph, and Daniel, and so on, we would find them very human and possessing very much the same frailties that we today possess.

Psalm 103:14 For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.