Genesis 7:17-22
"Then the flood came upon the earth for forty days, and the water increased and lifted up the ark, so that it rose above the earth. The water prevailed and increased greatly upon the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. And the water prevailed more and more upon the earth, so that all the high mountains everywhere under the heavens were covered. The water prevailed fifteen cubits higher, and the mountains were covered. So all creatures that moved on the earth perished: birds, livestock, animals, and every swarming thing that swarms upon the earth, and all mankind; of all that was on the dry land, all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, died. So He wiped out every living thing that was upon the face of the land..."

The waters do not merely rise; they prevail until every high place is submerged and every breath of life outside the ark is extinguished. The language is deliberately absolute. And I suppose that's a good thing because there are many who speculate that maybe it was just a certain region that was flooded.

"All the high mountains everywhere under the heavens were covered" (7:19)

The writer repeatedly uses terms of totality. And previous passages supply the theological reason for that absolute scope.

The earth was corrupt and filled with violence; every intention of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil continually; all flesh had corrupted its way on the earth (6:5, 11–12).

The reason is clear, the wicked imaginations of mankind were the case. The cause was God's anger, the sentence was God's judgment, but the truth was that mankind deserved absolute destruction because mankind was absolutely corrupt because we are born from a sinful nature. And therefore absolute corruption meets absolute judgment.

You may object to that sentencing, and try to make the case that the truth is naturally subjective simply because we are born with this sin nature. We cannot help ourselves. So to assign that person with corruption when they are simply living out how they are made is to prejudge them, to prejudice them. In other words, if the human heart is bent toward evil from the start, and if that bent is inherited rather than chosen in the first instance, then the claim that absolute corruption deserves absolute judgment can sound like condemning people for what they could not help.

The text of Genesis, however, does not frame the matter that way, and neither does the rest of the Bible. Genesis 6 does not say that God saw people living out an unavoidable nature and then punished them for it. It says He saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, that the earth was filled with violence, and that all flesh had corrupted its way (6:5, 11–12).

The language is active.

Not of passive inheritance alone.

Let's not forget that all of this corruption that has been inherited was born out of one thing, "the knowledge of good and evil".

Mankind can be judged righteously by a righteous God because mankind knows better. The knowledge of good and evil is the hinge on which the accountability turns.

The Bible speaks about us and about God and his dealings with us. And it talks about how God knows our frame, yet we are dust. Therefore, God’s knowledge of our frame does not cancel the justice of the judgment; it qualifies the character of the Judge who brings it.

Psalm 103:14 says,
"For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust."

The same psalm has just spoken of the LORD’s compassion toward those who fear Him, removing their transgressions as far as the east is from the west (103:12–13). And yet here today we are dealing with passages from the book of Genesis that speak to the destruction of mankind. And it's very easy to stay hyper-focused on that judgment and miss the provision altogether.

The absolute language of the Flood; every mountain covered, every breath extinguished, every living thing wiped out, can so fill our field of vision that the single exception is reduced to a footnote. But we shouldn't miss that precious moment in God's grace. Immediately after the statement that God wiped out every living thing on the face of the land, the text adds the decisive clause.

"Only Noah was left, together with those that were with him in the ark" (7:23)

In truth, the right perspective is to view the totality of the destruction as the backdrop that makes the particularity of the preservation stand out. The provision is not an afterthought; it is the other half of the same sentence.

Understanding we are but dust, God still makes provision and empowers us to overcome our inherent sin nature. He makes the provision that we might have a spiritual rebirth and redemption. The ark is not merely a wooden box that happens to float; it is the concrete provision God makes so that those inside it pass through the judgment that falls on the rest of the world. And forty days and nights later, God blesses them. After the waters have prevailed, after every high mountain has been covered and every breath on the dry land extinguished, the narrative does not end with the floating ark. God remembers Noah (8:1), the waters recede, the ark rests, and at last Noah and his household step out onto the renewed ground.

It's a new world, transformed from the prior state of things. The world Noah steps into is not the world he left. The waters have not merely withdrawn; they have carried away the order that preceded them. Everything having to do with mankind's relationship with his environment has changed. When God speaks again, the terms of human life on the earth have shifted. The original mandate to be fruitful and multiply remains (9:1), yet it is now joined to a new fear.

"The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens" (9:2).

Do you understand the change?

Prior to the flood, mankind was vegetarian. And his relationship with the animal kingdoms around him was quite different than what we know today. Animals that once related to man under the peaceable commission given in Genesis 1 now live in dread of mankind for God has given them for food.

Into human hands is given "every moving thing that lives" for food (9:3)

At the same time a boundary is drawn in blood.

"You shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood" (9:4)

These are not minor adjustments. They mark a reordered relationship between mankind and the rest of the creation. The environment Noah’s household enters has been cleared by judgment; the creatures that share it now stand in a different posture toward the human beings who survived. The ground itself has been altered by the long prevalence of the waters. And what remains is a world still under God’s care. He causes the waters to recede, He brings Noah out, He blesses; but it is a world whose prior arrangements have been broken and reset.

Part of that reset is new law for all mankind. Genesis 9:5–6 places the taking of human life under a new and explicit sanction. After the permission to eat animal flesh and the prohibition against consuming blood, the text turns to the taking of the lifeblood of man.

"And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man.
Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed,
for God made man in his own image."

This principle is stated without any ambiguity. The one who sheds man’s blood is to have his own blood shed by man. Whether we're talking about an adult, young child, or unborn human being, all are measured by this principle. The principle in Genesis 9:6 is grounded in the image of God, not in age, size, location, or stage of development.

The warrant is the divine image borne by man. It speaks of the lifeblood of man and of the image in which God made man. The same God who has just permitted the eating of animals while forbidding the consumption of their blood now requires a reckoning for the blood of man.

Why?

Because every human victim is made in the image of God. In this way the reordered relationship includes both the new freedom (animals given for food) and the new boundary (human life guarded by the image). God has established in this law the value of all human life. God does not leave the value of human life to be inferred from usefulness, development, or social consensus. He anchors it in the act of creation by which He made man in His own image, an act reaffirmed for the post-Flood world. In establishing this ordinance, God therefore fixes the value of human life in the altered world Noah enters. waters have cleared the old order. The remnant has been preserved through the ark and blessed on the renewed ground. Now the God who knows that they are dust, and who has just judged a world filled with violence, speaks a law that treats every shedding of man’s blood as an assault on the image He bestowed.

In our modern age, we can number many instances of violence done against this God-given order. But the greatest by far; is not war, or violence committed in the act of the commission of a crime. The greatest crime against God's sanction is sanctioned by the courts of mankind.

I'm speaking of the crime against the unborn human children. And this crime is especially heinous because this affront to God's design is cloaked under the cover of human law which has been set-up as superior to God's law.

But this true? Is this righteous?

The God-given warrant is the image, not the place of residence, the stage of growth, or the dependence of the child on the mother. God's law sees that child as His image-bearer no matter how developed its body is.

And the same condition is what links any human to God's warrant. That is, within that developing child is the life-blood. Where the life-blood of man is present, the warrant of the image is present, and the reckoning applies. The developing child in the womb is not an exception to this. The life that is in the blood is already there.

People can talk all day long about when they think life begins in the womb or outside the womb, but the Bible makes it clear, very clear, how God views this situation. It does not leave the status of the child in the womb to be settled by later speculation about when life begins. Life begins in the blood. Where the lifeblood of man is present, the image-bearer is present. It's just that simple. The biblical text supplies no developmental threshold, no moment of birth, and no external permission that withdraws the image or suspends the God-given sanction against spilling that blood.

God’s view, as fixed in the ordinance spoken after the Flood, is therefore not ambiguous. People may debate timelines and visibility; but the ordinance does not. It sees the image-bearer, requires the blood, and leaves the boundary where the Creator placed it.

In the womb, specifically the yoke sac, blood formation begins very early. Blood islands form there, at about 16-19 days post fertilization. Some sources place the onset of blood-cell development as early as the end of the second week into the start of the third. These are the first cells that constitute blood; they arise before the embryo has bones, a liver, or a bone-marrow cavity. Shortly afterward the primitive heart tube begins to beat and circulate that blood. Cardiac activity is typically underway by days 21–22 (roughly the end of the third week).

The life that Genesis 9:4 locates in the blood is therefore present, and circulating, while the child is still measured in days, not months. That child is developing by God's provision within the Ark of the womb. Passing through the embryonic waters. Carried through by God.

Amen 🙏🏼