Genesis 8:20-22

4. Noah's Altar (Genesis 8:20-22).

20 And Noah builded an altar unto Jehovah, and took of every clean beast, and of every clean bird, and offered burnt-offerings on the altar. And Jehovah smelled the sweet savor; and Jehovah said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake, for that the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth, neither will I again smite any more every living thing, as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.

(1) These few verses are further evidence that Sacrifice had been a long-established Divine institution, dating indeed as the Bible dates it, from the very fountainhead of the race and the beginning of true religion (Genesis 4:1-8).

(2) Note that Noah's first act on coming forth from the Ark was to worship God, and to do so in the manner and by the means which God had long before ordained. The means were three, as noted heretofore: the altar, the sacrifice, and the priesthood. From the beginning these have been the divinely established elements of true religion. The altar was a raised structure or mound of natural earth and stones: not hewn stones, because by Divine ordination to lift up a tool on it was to pollute it (Exodus 20:24-26). In this case, as throughout the Patriarchal Dispensation, Noah acted as priest (mediator) for his entire household; for his sacrifice he took of every clean beast, and of every clean bird, and offered burnt-offerings on the altar. It is important to note, in this connection, that Noah worshiped God. Had he been a superstitious person, he would have prostrated himself before the Ark which was visible; instead he built his altar unto Jehovah the invisible but living and true God. Noah walked by faith: and faith knows that the things which are seen are temporal, that only the things which are not seen are eternal (Hebrews 11:2, 2 Corinthians 4:18). Note that these were burnt-offerings, that is, things that ascend, in allusion to the ascent of the smoke of such offerings to heaven (cf. Judges 20:40, Jeremiah 48:15, Amos 4:10).

(3) Note the Divine Soliloquy, (a) The circumstances of Noah's offering were of Divine appointment, as evidenced by the fact that his service was accepted. All religious services which are not perfumed with the odor of faith are of an ill savor before God (Calvin). Jehovah smelled the sweet savor. Whitelaw (PCG, 132): The meaning is that the sacrifice of the patriarch was as acceptable to God as refreshing odors are to the senses of a man; and that which rendered it acceptable was (1) the feeling from which it sprang, whether gratitude or obedience; (2) the truths which it expressedit was tantamount to an acknowledgment of personal guilt, a devout recognition of the Divine mercy, an explicit declaration that he had been saved or could only be saved through the offering up of the life of another, and a cheerful consecration of his redeemed life to God; and (3) the great sacrifice of which it was a type, This Great Sacrifice was, of course, the Sacrifice of the Lamb of God for the sin of the world (John 1:29, Ephesians 5:2). (b) The Divine soliloquy which follows (Genesis 8:21-22) is rich in overtones. Bowie (IBG, 547-548): Few sentences in Genesis reflect thought as naive as this. God is pleased with the smoke of sacrifice, and he begins to feel more warmly disposed. Like -de Lawd-' in The Green Pastures, he resigns himself to recognize that the heart of man is just about hopeless. It has been evil from his youth. So the only thing to do was to accept the situation and not put any dependence upon the possibility of correcting matters by another flood. There is something to the credit of humanity in the person of Noah, and that perhaps is all God can expect. As theology, that is childlike; yet there is a strange instinctive wisdom in it, just as there is sometimes in the pictures that children draw. There is the recognition that human sin is incredibly stubborn, that only a patient God could put up with it, that in spite of everything he will not visit upon us our deserts. The vision of what God's infinite compassion actually went out to do in Christ is a long way off, but even so the window of instinctive trust is open in that direction. Again, the sentiment is strongly anthropopathic, expressive, it would seem, of the Divine regret at so calamitous a judgment on man as the Deluge was, yet one that had to be, in the interst of absolute Justice.

REVIEW QUESTIONS

See Genesis 9:28-29.