Come on, you have to admit it is incredibly ironic that we’re expecting our first rain of the year on the day we’re reading the book of Noah as the chapter of the week in the bible. Noah, who was shut up in a boat with his family and all those stinking animals for longer than we have been shut down at home, must have been something. I mean, have you figured out how old he was when he built that ark? if he didn’t have those sons of his until the age of 500, how old was he when he went into carpentry? In my book “A Word in Edgewise” there is a little rumination about this… if he was 500, how old was his wife? Did the women have to be under 45 to have kids? I don’t know, but I just hope we don’t have a flood tomorrow night. Anyway, here’s the poem

The Generations of Noah

When Adam was 130 years, he had a son … and he named him Seth. ³ … When Seth was 105 years, he fathered Enosh. ⁴ When Enosh was 90, he fathered Kenan. ⁹   When Kenan was 70, he fathered Mahalalel. ¹⁰… When Mahalalel was 65, he fathered Jared. ¹⁵When Jared was 162 years, he fathered Enoch. ¹⁸   When Enoch was 65, he fathered Methuselah. ¹⁹ When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he fathered Lamech. ²²  When Lamech ¹⁰lived 182 years, he had a son. ²⁶  He named him Noah  ²⁹ After Noah lived 500 years old, he fathered Shem, Ham and Japheth. ³² 

Genesis 5

All you need to do

is count the ages of the men

and exactly when

they begat their heirs

And you know

the suffering

of child-bearing women

after the fall.

p.s. Saturday night is almost over and it hasn’t rained yet – but, as the weather forecaster keeps saying “conditions are very unstable”