In essence, the Law of Noah is hard-wired into human nature. That is, the Law of Noah reflects what God revealed as the best way to live after the Fall. It would prevent the necessity of another global destruction of the human race until the End of Time. It answers to the Flaming Sword at the entrance to Eden (Genesis 3:24), the revelation of God that is living and active and sharper than a two-edged sword (Hebrews 4:12). It is as much as we can know about the fundamental nature of reality as God created it.
Of course, man has done his best to obscure that instinctive knowledge. Placing human reason on the throne of the soul and silencing the heart has produced a plethora of cultural diversions from God’s truth. We struggle to peel away all the man-made trash to recover what Noah and his kin took for granted.
The first and most shocking necessity for Westerners to grasp is that we are hard-wired for Ancient Near Eastern feudalism. The Genesis narratives all assume this as the standard form of human government that was the one best answer to God’s demand in the Covenant of Noah. Someone has to bear the sword and execute those who forget that blood is sacred in God’s eyes. In the broader biblical context, it requires something horrific in the human soul to treat any bloodshed with casual indifference.
On the one hand, God mentioned to Noah in passing that, when gathering animals into the Ark, some were clean (“kosher”) but the rest were not. So Noah was to collect seven each of the clean animals, but only a breeding pair of all others. These were acceptable offerings and safe to eat. On the other hand, God also told Noah that he could hunt down any animal as necessary. Animals are not on par with humans. While the blood of animals is sacred enough to require they be drained before eating, human blood is even more sacred in the eyes of God. It was more than simply a dead heart that did not treat blood as sacred; it was a demonic threat to God’s Laws that anyone should refuse to respect life.
Here we note echoes of shalom that arose later under Moses. The whole point of having a government is to protect human life, but more, to safeguard social stability. The Hebrew word shalom is more than mere peace, but all the things necessary for a peaceful life. It’s another way of describing social stability. The whole point of government is to promote a stable life that lends itself to the same predictability that God promised Noah. If Noah would institute a stable social life under ANE feudal government, then God would provide a stable cycle of seasons. All the other forms of government man has dreamed up since then are inferior in God’s eyes, because every part of His revelation assumes the ANE feudal government and the ANE tribal social structure to go with it.
Thus, we note that ANE feudalism is not about land and physical possessions, but regards people as the greatest treasure. In the ancient world outside of Eden, where most of humanity now have to learn how to reawaken the sensory heart, and learn the moral purity necessary to get nature to cooperate in sustaining life and health, any community would need all the bodies they can get. More people living together in a single community means greater safety and comfort, and a better chance at the material prosperity necessary to live.
At the same time, they hardly objectified the value of human life as Western society does. We say “life is precious” but then use that phrase as an excuse to make vast stretches of humanity utterly miserable. This is an example of human reason perverting God’s revealed truth. If all you have is your reason, then you cannot help but get everything wrong. ANE feudalism is not slavish about keeping every human heart beating, but rather clings to the moral value of reducing human suffering to a minimum. Some human suffering is simply part of the Fall; there is a legitimate level of misery built into our existence. Along with that is a legitimate level of mortality. Westerners have a rabid hatred for death; it was simply a part of life in the ANE. There is no fear of death in a sensory heart, but there is a distaste for unnecessary human sorrow.
Thus, with the proper moral priority on minimizing the natural human sorrow, we find that whatever flaws there might be in ANE feudal government, nothing else man has dreamed up can come close to answering God’s demands. The only hope for satisfying the Law of Noah is that ANE feudal government and a tribal social structure. That is, you generally expect to live among your kinfolks in extended family households. In each household there is a dominant male head, with a supporting female head, and everyone knows your personal business. We have a very poor grasp of just how much freedom was still offered in that setting. It was messy and inefficient with lots of time wasted on trying to convince folks to go along on a vast wealth of details in daily life. But it was safe and supportive, and thus quite stable.
Meanwhile, by various means some families rose to a higher influence than others within a clan, and some men rose to greater prominence. It was organic, with customs simply minimizing the risk of past sorrows. At some point, there was always a male chief who took responsibility for recognizing that one of their clan was a threat to social stability. Whatever their conduct, if the malefactor could not be restrained and the damage contained, they were executed to prevent them destroying shalom for everyone else. It was always personal, and there was no passing the buck to some outsider. Each family cleaned up their own messes. The same basic idea was extended to when one of your kin threatened the shalom of some neighboring clan or tribe, as well. Depending on the nature of the offense, you would either execute them yourself or turn them over to their victims.
Again, the stark reality: No other system of government and family life will satisfy the Covenant of Noah. This was not some random happenstance. God designed and created the ANE feudal society as the one best way to meet human need, to meet the fundamental nature of our wiring, and to meet the nature of reality itself.
