Perhaps some of the answer to Ann's good questions about the end of Eden can be found in this passage. I find Walter Brugemann most helpful on Genesis. He says this:
" If the beginning of the flood narrative claimed only that, the text would be flat and one-dimensional. But there are two other matters here that enrich and greatly complicate the beginnings. First, with amazing boldness the narrative invites the listening community to penetrate into the heart of God . What we find there is not an angry tyrant, but a troubled parent who grieves over the alienation. He is growingly aware that the "imagination of the thoughts" of the human heart are iiiirelievedly hostile (v. 5). The conjuring, day dreams, and self-perceptions of the world are all tilted against God's purpose. God is aware that something is deeply amiss in creation, so that God's own dream has no prospect of fulfillment. With that perverted imagination, God's world has begun to conjure its own future quite apart from the future willed by God .
As a result, verse 6 shows us the deep pathos of God. God is not angered but grieved. He is not enraged but saddened. God does not stand over against but with his creation. Tellingly, the pain he bequeathed to the woman in 3:16 is now felt by God. Ironically, the word for "grieve" is not only the same as the sentence on the woman ("pain" 3:16), but it is also used for the state of toil from which Noah will deliver humanity (5:29). The evil heart of humankind (v. 5) troubles the heart of God (v. 6). This is indeed "heart to heart" between humankind and God. How it is between humankind and God touches both parties. As Ernst Wiirthwein suggests, it is God who must say, "I am undone" "
In this passage God seems to have changed God's mind on humanity, and as we move forward we discover that God is not as unchangable and unmovable as some of our categories like to make God. The God of Israel is not static but it some ways like the creatures fashioned in the image of God, "God hurts and celebrates, responds and acts with remarkable freedom," just like those heart breaking creatures called humans.
The question will come up again and again as to why the God of the Old Testament seems so different than the God of the New Testament. God may not be as different as we might think. God's determination to stick with these creatures fashioned after God is remarkable when these creatures disappoint, disobey, walk away, kill and mame each other and the creation, causing great hurt and pain to the holy parent who is God.
Perhaps the judgement we see in God in Eden or in the Ark narrative is more descriptive than prescriptive, something we bring on ourselves.
What do you think? Do you think of God as vulnerable, as one who grieves and hurts?
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