English Essay 2

CB.
2/27/17

The importance of ethics and sanctions plays into many stories in the Bible, like Noah and the Flood. God had made a covenant law with mankind, or a bond. God’s curse of man means God’s curse of the whole earth and everything on it as well. The bond was that they would follow his ethics and they were his form of law though it’s not a law like don’t break into a store, though that is ethics, it’s basically to do good and to follow what God says. Then nothing bad will happen and you will be on a good path! If you don’t follow what God tells you to do there will be sanctions. The consequences vary for the actions. For example when Cain killed Abel because his offering wasn’t as good, the food he grew, then he could never grow food again. Of course there was grace in what he did because he put a mark on Cain so it would be less likely people would kill him while he was wandering around. Since he was cast out from the village. That connects to Noah and the Ark, with sanctions, because he saw evil and bad people on the earth with bad intentions in their hearts. And so he planned to flood and drown them all along with the animals. Of course that was the hierarchy of it. If man dies so do the animals! And God overall wanted to clean off the earth and start fresh. Noah was the exception ethically because he knew right from wrong and followed it so he would survive. More sanctions for more sin, so you could infer that there must have been a lot of bad on earth at the time.  Although Noah found favor in God’s eyes so he said to him “Build a Ark” and he was to take each animal and creature and insect that crawls on the earth in pairs. Noah was to take a male and female animal so there would be plenty of animals on earth when the flood was over. Good beasts and bad. This was God’s grace showing through because there was normally always a bright aspect to look for. So Noah and his family built this Ark. And when the time came it would be Noah his wife, and their three sons, and their wives. God told him various details on how to build the Ark. Everyone said they were crazy but they all later ate their words. The flood came for forty days and forty nights. Every living substance destroyed, only the people in the Ark survived. The flood stopped. God sent a dove with a olive branch a sign of peace (even today a olive branch means peace). Noah settled on earth. The rainbow was a reminder to man about what happened on that day and how God would never flood the earth again a promise! The importance of ethics and sanctions is very strong in this Bible story. It shows good prevails and that ethics matter! Noah didn’t face sanctions because he was a good person, the others had to face punishment for what they’d done and they had lost sight of what was good. They had also lost sight of God. This bond that God has with the people is an important thing to follow and the base for much of the bible stories and lessons, in different ways to learn from.