A recent psychological study found that human beings have trouble relating to or sympathizing with the sufferings of large groups of people. This explains why during the Rwandan and Bosnian genocides, where literally hundreds of thousands of people were butchered like cattle, the focus of American news agencies was on the murder of a 6-year old beauty pageant contestant named Jonbenet Ramsey. Part of it was no doubt the puzzle surrounding the life and death of this little girl, as we looked down our noses and asked what kind of a parent paints their child up like a red-light district worker and parades them around on a stage. The unspoken thought of some was that maybe Jonbenet’s mother got what she deserved, as horrific as that thought sounds out loud. These speculations only fueled the obsessive interest of the media at the time.
Genesis 7
"The LORD then said to Noah, "Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. 2 Take with you seven of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, 3 and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth. 4 Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made." And Noah did all that the LORD commanded him. 6 Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth. 7 And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. 8 Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, 9 male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah. 10 And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth. 11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month--on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. 12 And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights. 13 On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark. 14 They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings. 15 Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark. 16 The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. Then the LORD shut him in. 17 For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. 18 The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. 19 They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. 20 The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet. 21 Every living thing that moved on the earth perished--birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. 22 Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. 23 Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; men and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds of the air were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark. 24 The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days."
Every artist conception of the flood I have ever seen portrays it in the same way. Noah and his family enter the ark, with maybe a giraffe or two getting on at the last minute. God shuts the big door. As the floodwaters begin to rise, people outside realize their mortal peril. A handful of people, at most twenty-five, rush to the now closed ark, realizing that crazy Noah was actually right. Typically, the last picture in these portayals shows the water moving up the mountainsides. Very neat and tidy.
The reality, I believe, was not neat and tidy. As the flood waters rose, there must have been thousands of people clamoring toward the ark, banging on the sides, screaming to be let in. No doubt Noah and his family were nearly deafened by the sound of pleading. Those pleas would become more desperate as the water rose ever higher, as people broke their fingernails trying to cling to the high, smooth sides of the boat. It is beyond question, at least for me, that Noah and his family would have heard the death throes of thousands of drowning people, which is never neat and never tidy. Drowning is in fact one of the worst ways to die, I am told. It is agony all the way to the end.
How long did the ark float in the midst of a vast sea of bodies? At what point would the stench of decay and the rotten flesh drop beneath the surface? How long did the last human outside the ark hang on, until exhaustion and despair set in. Did Noah watch him fall, as he locked eyes with him, peering out a window?
See, you got more interested when I focused on that one last man, didn’t you?
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