Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Robert Dee" <rdee AT coastalnow.net>]

Dear Steve:

You don't know me. I'm mostly a lurker on B-Hebrew. I try to let the experts 
talk. (Job 32:6)

At any rate, some comments you made were quite interesting to me about the 
time
before the flood.

One was about how winter would necessitate the need for meat. I had never 
made that connection
between those two things before. That was very interesting, and makes a lot 
of sense.

The other comment was about how the mist before the flood would water the 
ground. I had been thinking
about that too.

Obviously, the Bible does not give alot of detail about those times. But 
there may be another reason why
it was included in the account. After Adam and Eve sinned, God cursed the 
ground. The curse was 
evidently lifted at/after the flood. (Gen 8:21)

What I find interesting is that the first person to mention its effects is 
Lamech, Noah's father, at the 
time of Noah's birth. This was roughly 1050 years after Adam's creation, and 
600 years before the flood. (Gen 5:28, 29)

 Some time before that, man began displaying his natural inventiveness with 
various 'discoveries,' if you will,
involving metallurgy, toolmaking, musical instruments, and so forth. (Gen 
4:19-22) During those times, humans had 
two very important ingredients for making technological advancement, namely, 
long lifespans and unified language.
Yet the progress does not appear to have advanced much beyond what is 
mentioned. Again, though, alot of detail
is missing.

If the curse was, say, a gradual lowering of the water table (or something 
like that), it would gradually have 
forced humans to spend an increasing amount of time providing for themselves 
and less time for discoveries.
This would explain why it wasn't until Lamech that a complaint about the 
curse is recorded. (Incidentally, Adam
would then have not felt the full effects of the curse immediately, but he 
would have gone from a condition
where the work of his hands was blessed (in the garden), to where his efforts 
did not produce the expected 
benefits that he was accustomed to. - Gen 3:17, 18; Compare De 28:2, 8)

Adding to that theory (which, admittedly, that is all it is), if the waters 
making up the mist were, say, 
evaporated, then they would have fallen to earth with the rest of the flood 
waters. The flood, besides destroying
the wicked, would also have tended to restore the earth from the effects of 
the curse.

The fact that from Adam to Noah was 10 generations, and that it was 
prophecied by Lamech for the
curse to end in that tenth generation, would seem to indicate that the curse 
and its effects had some
Divine purpose behind it that was accomplished during that preflood period.

I would have replied to your comments on the forum, but the thread was closed 
before this. Anyways, Steve,
thank you for your stimulating comments. I appreciate how this type of forum 
allows for an
interchange of thought.

Best Regards,
Robert J. Dee
Walthourville, Ga, USA
rdee AT coastalnow.net