Genesis 4
Whoa, I forgot that God allowed Cain to live and procreate. We are descended from brother-murdering Cain, especially those of us who “dwell in tents and have livestock” or who “play the harp and flute.”
“Am I my brother’s keeper?” Classic. Also, yes, dude. Obviously. Take care of your brothers, y’all.
God curses Cain and then protects him with a mark that lets everyone know Cain will be avenged seven-fold on anyone who kills him. I’m starting to see why people describe revenge stories as Biblical.
Genesis 5
All these begots are not so hard. They’re somewhat humorous actually. There’s a nice rhythm to the repetition. And really, what’s boring about the sentence “So all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred and sixty-nine years and he died?” Nothing.
It does seem like God took/killed Enoch at the ripe young age of 365, because he liked him and wanted to be with him. Potential origin of the idea that young people die, because God wants them for himself.
For the record, Mahalalel is the best Biblical name so far, with Methuselah in second.
Genesis 6
Whoa, there were giants on earth? Sweet. Very Norse.
Oh no. God looked at man and saw that “every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” How depressing. God said that he was sorry he made us and the animals. Ouch. That hurts, God.
Apparently he didn’t like all the violence he was seeing. That’s fair, I guess, but wiping out everyone seems extreme.
It’s very nice of God to give Noah such thorough directions for building the ark.
Genesis 7
I don’t know which relative bought it for us, because no one in the family is religious, but my brother and I had a little ark and pairs of animals that we played with at Christmas. I had fun lining up the animals and imagining them calmly walking onto a boat together. I did wonder how Noah kept them from eating each other, but apparently the ark had a lot of chambers. It did horrify me to think of all the other animals drowning, not to mention the people.
Now did God cause the flood as punishment or as a cure? Was this meant to make the world less violent, because either that didn’t work or things must have been really messed up before the flood.
Atheist Reads the Bible 