The Flood story that used the Hebrew Elohim to refer to God didn’t mention sacrifice. It couldn’t, because just two of each kind of animal were in the ark, so that an immediate sacrifice would have wiped out a whole species. Instead, it showed God immediately urging Noah and his family, as well as all the animals, to get about the business of repopulating the earth—“be fertile, and multiply.”

• Genesis 8:17 echoed the original creation command in Genesis 1:28, another sign that Genesis saw the Flood’s aftermath as, in effect, a second creation. In Revelation 21:5 (“I’m making all things new”), the ultimate new act of new creation belongs to God and Jesus, the Christ. What parts of life in this world do you especially look forward to God re-making? In what ways do you believe that will make life better?
• All that we know of life in the ancient Middle East suggests that over-population was just not a concern in the open, even desolate spaces of that part of the world. Given that, what enduring, timeless lessons do you believe we, living in a world with billions of people, can learn from the command to “be fruitful and multiply”? Was that command in any ways limited to the circumstances in which it was first given?