What kind of a guy was Noah before he found favor with the Lord? Was he a good guy or a bad guy? What what the heck is hyperbole and why will we spend so much time talking about how silly it can be?
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Hi! I’m Miss Tyler and welcome to another episode of Context for Kids where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. If this is your first time hearing or if you have missed anything, you can find all the episodes archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has them downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel.
(Parents, all Scripture comes from the CSB this week, the Christian Standard Bible) Okay guys, trivia question for you! This is a fun one. Put on your thinking caps.
The question is, “Was Noah a good man or a bad man when we first meet him?” Discuss that among yourselves real quick while I play the jeopardy music.
Okay, if you answered, “how the heck should I know that?” then you are correct, Truth is, we don’t know. Here, in the very last verse of the Torah portion Bereshith, which a lot of people study one week a year but it took us thirty-four weeks (hey, I am thorough, okay?!), it says this—although I am going to back up a few verses to get this one in better context:
5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
Well, here’s the deal—if every intention or every thought of humans was only evil continually then Noah wasn’t any better than anyone else in verse eight when he finds favor in God’s eyes. But, if this is hyperbole, then maybe Noah was an exception but before we talk about that we are going to do a lesson on hyperbole. And you’re saying, “Oh goody, I just love studying language arts during Bible time. Thanks, Miss Tyler, for making all my dreams come true today—not!” But hyperbole is really cool and can be super funny. We use hyperbole all the time when we want to make big points in zany ways.
Have you ever heard anyone say that they were so hungry that they could eat a horse? How about “my feet are killing me!” Or, “wow, that guy can lift a ton!” Maybe, “UGH mom! I have like a million years’ worth of chores to do!” Oh, I know, “I am sooo tired that I could sleep a week.” And, “that shopping list you gave me was a mile long!” Or, “It’s raining cats and dogs!” Now, are these lies? No, not at all. They are examples of something called hyperbole—or exaggeration. They are like idioms but instead of being something that only people who share the same language and culture can understand, hyperbole is saying something outrageous that everyone would understand as being a goofy way to make your point. I mean, I don’t care how big you are, no one’s stomach can hold even close to a whole horse. No one can lift two thousand pounds. A million years’ worth of chores is probably less time than it would take for you to clean up the entire planet by yourself single-handedly unless you are cleaning up animal poop because that just never stops coming. And you don’t say those things wanting to trick people. So, they aren’t lies. You know and they know that you are just being a whole lot of extra and very dramatic because it is way more fun to complain with hyperbole than to simply say, “Mother dear, I am feeling a bit peckish and would so appreciate some cucumber sandwiches when you get a moment. Thank you.”
No, we want to be over the top so that people will pay attention to what we are saying and take us really seriously. And the Bible uses hyperbole a lot. And that’s not hyperbole. I am not exaggerating. It really does because it is a very ancient way of communicating truth—one that we obviously still like to use. We find it especially in the Proverbs, which teach us wise actions, and in the Prophets, and especially in Jesus’s parables. Let’s look at some examples before getting to my absolute favorite bit of Bible trivia.
When we see words like never and always and forever in the Bible, or when we see certain things spoken of as guarantees—it can be hard to know whether they are hyperbole or actual promises. Obviously, when you see something that says, “The wicked never prosper” or “The righteous are never hungry,” that counts as hyperbole. The Psalms tell us that the wicked do prosper, all the time. In fact, the prophets even complain about it! Unless we want to call one verse true and another verse a lie, we have to look at whether or not the people who wrote this all down were using exaggeration to make a point or if they weren’t being honest. Well, we can’t go with the second option, right? If we do that then we won’t ever know if we can trust anything the Bible says! But, when Solomon recorded his proverbs, his mini bits of wisdom, he used exaggeration to show us what a good life and a bad life looks like, and he exaggerated the rewards of a good and bad life here on earth. Maybe because he grew up in a palace and was the richest man on earth. He didn’t really have much perspective on anything else!
But his goal was to encourage people to live good lives and so he talked about what should be true, when everything is going as it should be. Wicked people should never prosper, or be successful, and they don’t when everyone else is living like God wants them to. The righteous should never be hungry, and they aren’t going to as long as everyone else is living rightly. That’s the truth behind the exaggeration. Think of how much easier it is for a criminal to be successful when he or she is surrounded by other evil people. Think of how hard it is for a criminal to be successful when people won’t put up with his nonsense or protect him! Sometimes hyperbole tells us how things should be and it does that by shocking us into thinking about how things really are. After all, the Bible tells us about righteous people who were hungry and about wicked people who were healthy and wealthy. And the Bible isn’t afraid to tell you both things side by side—how things are and how things should be. That’s one of the reasons that ancient people loved using hyperbole, because it was shocking and it would really get them thinking.
I love this one in Judges 20:16–“There were seven hundred fit young men who were left-handed among all these troops; all could sling a stone at a hair and not miss.” I mean, dang, that’s some pretty good shooting! I couldn’t hit a hair with a sling even if the sling was already laying on top of the hair. And if the author was trying to tell us that was the literal truth, well of course that is nonsense, but we all know it was just a really great compliment. These guys had some mad skillz with rocks and slings. This is talking about how reliable and talented they were—but it isn’t like they could actually do it. No one can even see one hair from that far away, much less hit it with a stone from a sling. But it sure sounds cool!
Speaking of shocking, the absolute king of hyperbole is Jesus. Oh, He loved to teach people with hyperbole. Let’s look at some examples—in Matthew chapter 5, Jesus told his audience that instead of sinning, they should cut off their arm and pull out their eyeballs instead. What? So, are you telling me that right after that sermon, people were lining up to do that? Did they take Him seriously? Well, yes and no. They knew what He was doing. That’s how all the great sages taught people. Not only was it really entertaining—remember that they had no television, movies, or radio or anything like that and most people couldn’t read and even if they could read they would never be able to afford reading scrolls—but it really made people think. When a sage tells you that you should cut off your hand or pull out your eyeball, then believe me, you are wanting some other alternative! Anything but that! Great googly moogly! Well, the alternative was to refuse to use your eyes or your hands to sin against someone else—which seems to me to be a whole lot more pleasant! I am sure they would agree.
One time, Jesus was really angry at a group of men called the Pharisees. There weren’t very many of them, only about five or six thousand in the whole country—which isn’t a whole lot—but they were very influential with most of the Jews who couldn’t read or write, and the poor people who looked up to them because they really seemed like they were doing things right. Anyway, Jesus accused them of “straining gnats and swallowing camels.” What does that mean? Well, they would strain out a gnat from their water so that they wouldn’t become ritually unclean (I will explain that some other time) and there’s nothing wrong with that—I mean, I bet if a bug was floating in your drink you would fish it out too. But Jesus tells them that even though they are getting the little bugs out of their drink, they were turning around and swallowing camels—the biggest unclean animals in all of Israel! Were they really doing that? Were they so hungry they could eat a horse and just opened up their mouths and swallowed down a camel instead? Fur and all? Fur and worse! Of course not. Was Jesus lying when He accused them of that? Nope. He was using hyperbole. What He was saying was that they were getting rid of gnats and swallowing camels but what He was telling them was that they were focused on such little things and missing the really important stuff. I mean, you could strain gnats out of your drinks for a hundred years and all of them together still wouldn’t weigh as much as a camel, or even a baby camel. Sure, He could have said, “Dudes, you are totally missing the point. Your focus is off.” But, by using the hyperbole of them swallowing camels, Jesus really got everyone to pay attention to what He was saying. After all, even a smallish male camel weighs about 800lbs! And I did the math just for fun because I like math and since a gnat weights 2 miligrams, it takes almost 182 million gnats to weigh as much as one small male camel. But, I didn’t recheck my math—maybe you want to recheck for me and see what you come up with! Ugh, maybe swallowing one camel is a better option than that many bugs!
How about when Jesus told His disciples in Mark 10:25 “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” Did He really mean that literally? No, that was a popular way for Jewish sages to talk about something very difficult. In Israel, they talked about camels going through the eye of a needle, but the Jews living in the Parthian Empire to the east talked about elephants going through the eye of a needle. They did that because the camel was the biggest animal in Israel but in the east, the elephant was the biggest. Really, it is impossible for either one to go through that hole in a needle, not just difficult—so was Jesus saying that it was impossible for a rich person to be saved? Nope, just a few verses later, Jesus tells His disciples that with God all things are possible. And although I don’t think God would ever be so cruel as to push a camel or an elephant through the eye of a needle (get one and take a look and think about that!), He can certainly save rich people. And no, you may have heard the stories that there was a gate in Jerusalem called the eye of the needle but there wasn’t. That’s a myth made up many years later by a teacher who wanted to make a point.
And here’s one that sounds really awful! Luke 14:26—“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, and even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.” What the heck? Is Jesus seriously telling people that they have to hate their mom and dad and their wife and their kids and their brothers and sisters? What the heck kind of Gospel is this anyway? For God so love the world that He gave His only begotten Son but, oh by the way, you have to hate your family??!! That can’t be right. It makes no sense. And so, we should immediately start to suspect that this is another hyperbole! Jesus doesn’t tell people to hate one another but to love each other and to even be willing to die for each other. So, what does He mean? He means that we have to love him so much that everything else compared to it looks like hate. In other words, however much you love your mom and dad and grandma and grandpa and whoever, you should love God about a billion times more than that. That’s all. Jesus isn’t telling anyone to go hating on their family—we can’t love Jesus while hating the people He died to save, right? When He said, that, they must have all gasped at first but they knew what He meant. Certainly the man who was going around healing the sick wasn’t some kind of psychotic hater.
Do you like hyperboles? Are they fun and sometimes even funny? God sure thinks so or He wouldn’t have put so many in the Bible. God is so creative about how He teaches us things that are true. He really wants to get His point across! But my favorite bit of trivia is tied to something that Jesus said that isn’t scientifically true, and everyone knew it. In Mark 4:30-32, Jesus says—“With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable can we use to describe it? 31 It’s like a mustard seed that, when sown upon the soil, is the smallest of all the seeds on the ground. 32 And when sown, it comes up and grows taller than all the garden plants, and produces large branches, so that the birds of the sky can nest in its shade.”
Now anyone who knows anything about plants knows that although the mustard seed is pretty darned small, it wasn’t the smallest seed even in that small area of the world. But the Jewish sages used it as an example because most people were familiar with how tiny it was compared to the size of the plant that comes from it. It didn’t matter to anyone that it wasn’t really the smallest just like it doesn’t matter to us that although the rain might be coming down very, very hard, it certainly is not coming down as “cats and dogs.” Jesus was making a point about how God’s Kingdom was starting small but would someday take over the entire world. Because they all knew how small a mustard seed was compared to the plant that came from it, it meant more to them than, say, the much smaller orchid seed that wouldn’t produce anywhere near as big of a plant. When we tell the Bible that it has to be scientifically accurate—well, let’s just say that we are straining gnats and swallowing camels. Like the Pharisees were missing the point of why God gave laws to Moses—which was in order to limit the amount of sins they could commit, but God was wanting even more from them as they learned what kind of God He is. By looking at the laws to see what they could and couldn’t get away with doing to other people instead, they were like the people today who look at the Bible and ignore what God was trying to teach people, by speaking their language according to what they knew, and trying to find every little thing that is wrong with it instead. Well, we can’t do that. We don’t use hyperbole or a whole lot of things the same way that they used to. Learning to understand the language of the Bible and why they wrote that way is a smart thing to do and it will keep us from getting into trouble.
Oh, my favorite bit of trivia. Have you ever heard of “eye of newt”? If you have read Shakespeare’s Macbeth, it shows up at the very beginning of the play when the three witches are hovering over their cauldron talking about Macbeth and his fate. And if so, then you might have thought that these witches were going around, grabbing poor little newts, and removing their eyes to make potions. But no. Eye of newt was just a silly name that people, a long time, ago, gave to mustard seed. So, when you want mustard on your sammich, ask for eye of newt sauce. Not at a restaurant, that would be rude, but just with friends. And when they get all grossed out you can teach them something new and funny.
We’re going to see a lot of hyperbole when Moses tells us about the flood. It was purposefully written that way in order to shock us into seeing what wickedness looks like to God and what it does to everything in Creation. But what we’re going to talk about right now is an interesting question that we don’t really have an answer to, but it’s interesting to talk about anyway. The Bible says that all of Creation was ruined and that everyone’s thoughts were continually evil all the time. But it also says that Noah found favor with God, and some Bibles say that Noah found grace with God. So, the question is, was it an exaggeration/hyperbole that everyone was wicked and Noah was an okay guy. Or was Noah a wicked person too? Next week, we’re going to talk about the very next verse that says Noah was righteous and blameless and we will talk about what that means, but what we don’t know is if he was that way before he found favor with God or only after. Hmmm…like a lot of things in the Bible, it would be a good idea to see what Scripture says about such things. Are people good before they find favor with God, or only after they find favor with God? Another way of saying it is this—is God only interested in people who are already decent or does He like to take people who are just awful and make them into decent people?
What do you think about that? Was Noah a nice guy or a skunk? Was he only a nice guy compared to everyone else? Or was he just as bad? As we get more and more into Noah’s story, we will get some clues as to the answer to that but nothing for sure for sure that tells us one way or the other. A lot of the Bible is like that, right? We end up with more questions than answers a lot of the time, and that’s fine. That’s what makes studying the Bible more interesting than studying anything else. But we have to put on our critical thinking caps and see what’s there and what isn’t there. In this case, we’re going to look at the metanarrative of the Bible. And what on earth is a metanarrative other than some big huge word that I do not expect you to remember? Well, a metanarrative means a big story. The Bible is full of little stories, of course: David and Goliath, the Flood, Abraham and Sarah, Jesus and his disciples, Daniel and the lion’s den, etc…but how they are all related to one another is about the metanarrative of God working over the course of the entire Bible to save the world and to be king of the entire world and all the people in it. Every story in the Bible has to be related to that or it wouldn’t be included. We can call that the story of salvation.
The story of salvation in the Bible is about God taking undeserving people and making something entirely new out of them in order to save them and also the people around them. Have you ever heard of a testimony? A testimony is a person’s story about how God grabbed them and saved them through Jesus. It can also be a smaller story about how God saved people from terrible circumstances when they were already believers. Today I am going to tell you the story about someone just awful found favor with God and how God changed them.
Once upon a time, there was a girl with a boy’s name—we’ll call her Tyler. Back then, no girls ever were called Tyler even though there are quite a few now. Tyler was bullied in school, a lot, and it made her very angry at God. The reverend’s kids down the road, they were the worst as far as being cruel to her. Because of this, Tyler didn’t want anything to do with God and as she got older, she did some really messed up things. She just didn’t care how much she hurt herself and although she didn’t really like hurting other people, she didn’t give much thought to what she said and did most of the time and ended up being pretty mean sometimes. She only compared herself to the people who had hurt her in school and in her neighborhood, and so compared to them, everything she did looked pretty good and okay. But the things she was doing weren’t okay. She wasn’t totally awful. She was a hard worker and could be a good friend but she had so much anger and hate in her heart that she wasn’t really a safe person to be around either and as she got older, her thoughts became more and more wicked. But, one day Tyler found favor with the Lord, despite everything she was doing and saying and thinking. The Lord didn’t look around and say, “Wow, she’s better than most people and so I am going to reward her with salvation.” No siree bob. God decided to take pity on her and He loved her and He pestered her for a good long time before she finally decided to let Him love her. And He made it possible for her to love Him back, but it took a long time and He still has a lot of work to do with her. And twenty-two years later, she is teaching you guys how to let Him love you too. So, I wonder if Noah, maybe, is like me. Maybe he was just a normal guy, like all the others, and he found favor with God and God changed him.
I love you. I am praying for you. And I hope you have a wonderful week studying the Bible with the people who love you.