Noah stands at a watershed moment in history (2 Peter 3:5–7). In doing so, he serves as an Old Testament type of Christ.
His name sounds like the Hebrew word for “rest” (nuah), which is fitting because of the “eternal-sabbath-typifying rest” into which Noah ushers his family both as he enters the ark and enters the post-flood world.1 However, his name is chiefly connected to the Hebrew word for “relief” (naham) by the oracle spoken by his father: “Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands” (Gen. 5:29).
Nevertheless, the conceptual overlap between both words creates a wordplay associating Noah and Adam: the “resting” (wayyannihehu) of Adam in the garden in Genesis 2:15 and the hopes pinned on Noah for “relief” (yenahamenu) from the toil-curse in Genesis 5:29.2 In response to the curse foisted upon creation by the first Adam, one now arises who will begin the process of deliverance from this curse.
Several additional elements of the flood narrative present Noah as a new Adam:3
Both are uniquely associated with the image of God (Gen. 1:26–28; 9:6).
Both are given the creation mandate: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Gen. 1:28; 9:1, 7).
Both are parties in covenants with God (Hos. 6:7; Gen. 6:18; 9:9–17).
Both “walk with God” (Gen. 3:8; 6:9).
Both are associated with a sin involving “knowledge,” “nakedness,” and “covering” (Gen. 3:5, 7, 10, 21–22; 9:21–25).
Both witness God’s coming in judgment (Gen. 3:8–19; 6:5–7, 13, 17; see also 1 Peter 3:20).
Both beget warring “lines of seed” (Gen. 4; 9:25–27).
As a new Adam figure, Noah also becomes a type of Christ, the last Adam, who undoes what the first Adam did (1 Cor. 15:21, 45–49). Noah anticipates the coming of Christ in several ways.
On the one hand, his character and work anticipate Christ, who does these things in consummate and salvific fashion.4 For example:
Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord (Gen. 6:8), as did Jesus in Luke 2:40, 52.
Noah is called “righteous” (Gen. 6:9; Ezek. 14:14, 20), pointing us forward to Christ who was the truly and perfectly righteous One (1 Peter 3:18; 1 John 2:1), whose righteousness is ours by faith alone (1 Cor. 1:30; Phil. 3:9; 2 Peter 1:1).5
Noah complied with God’s plan for the deliverance of his family (Gen. 6:22, 7:5; Heb. 11:7), pointing us forward to Christ who complied perfectly with the Father’s plan for the eternal salvation of His elect (John 4:34; 17:4).
On the other hand, the New Testament explicitly invokes Noah to highlight the greater things that come in Christ.
First, the New Testament says that Noah’s prophetic role finds fulfillment in Christ, the consummate prophet. First Peter 3:19 speaks of Christ going and proclaiming (kēryssō) to “the spirits in prison.” While this is a debated and much misunderstood event, what is clear is that it is a fulfillment of Noah’s ministry of proclaiming God’s patience in his own day, such that 2 Peter 2:5 uses the same language to describe Noah as “a herald [kēryx] of righteousness.”
Building the ark was a proclamation of God’s plan whereby Noah condemned those around him (Heb. 11:7). It was likely accompanied by a spoken appeal (though we are not told its content) urging repentance before God’s patience ran out and the typological judgment of the flood arrived. Yet Christ not only proclaimed the need to repent before the final judgment, He bore that judgment in His own body and grants repentance and faith to His own.
Second, the New Testament describes the flood as a type of the final judgment (1 Peter 3:18–20; 2 Peter 2:5; Matt. 24:37–38; Luke 17:26–27), with baptism likewise portraying salvation through judgment by means of this flood imagery (1 Peter 3:21; see also Mark 10:38–39; Luke 12:50). The flood wiped out the ungodly world of Noah’s day, picturing a final day when the world is judged by fire (2 Peter 3:7). Yet Christ bore that judgment so that those in Him pass through in safety, just as Noah and his family remained safe in the ark. (Moses also passed through death-threatening waters in an ark [tevah]. Genesis 6–9 and Exodus 2 are the only places this word for “ark” is used.)
While baptism threatens with the floodwaters of judgment those who would apostatize against His covenant,6 it marks off Christ’s own as those who have indeed passed through the judgment waters safely in the “ark” of His own person and work.
The ark anticipated the temple and thereby foreshadowed the new creation; see Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview (Wipf & Stock, 2006), 225–30.↩
See Richard S. Hess, Studies in the Personal Names of Genesis 1–11 (Eisenbrauns, 2009), 28–29, 115–118.↩
Most of these points are adaptations of Bruce K. Waltke, An Old Testament Theology; An Exegetical, Canonical, and Thematic Approach(Zondervan, 2007), 296–302.↩
See William McEwen, The Glory and Fullness of Jesus Christ: In the Most Remarkable Types, Figures, and Allegories of the Old Testament (Reformation Heritage Books, 2022), 9–13.↩
For further explanation of the difference between the “righteousness” of various biblical characters and the perfect righteousness of Christ, see https://learn.ligonier.org/devotionals/righteousness-of-david.↩
See J.V. Fesko, Word, Water, and Spirit: A Reformed Perspective on Baptism (Reformation Heritage Books, 2010), 242–46.↩
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