While baptism threatens with the floodwaters of judgment those who would apostatize against His covenant, it marks off Christ’s own as those who have indeed passed through the judgment waters safely in the “ark” of His own person and work.

Noah stands at a watershed moment in history (2 Peter 3:5–7). In doing so, he serves as an Old Testament type of Christ.

His name sounds like the Hebrew word for “rest” (nuah), which is fitting because of the “eternal-sabbath-typifying rest” into which Noah ushers his family both as he enters the ark and enters the post-flood world.¹ However, his name is chiefly connected to the Hebrew word for “relief” (naham) by the oracle spoken by his father: “Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands” (Gen. 5:29).

Nevertheless, the conceptual overlap between both words creates a wordplay associating Noah and Adam: the “resting” (wayyannihehu) of Adam in the garden in Genesis 2:15 and the hopes pinned on Noah for “relief” (yenahamenu) from the toil-curse in Genesis 5:29.² In response to the curse foisted upon creation by the first Adam, one now arises who will begin the process of deliverance from this curse.

Several additional elements of the flood narrative present Noah as a new Adam:³

• Both are uniquely associated with the image of God (Gen. 1:26–28; 9:6).
• Both are given the creation mandate: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Gen. 1:28; 9:1, 7).
• Both are parties in covenants with God (Hos. 6:7; Gen. 6:18; 9:9–17).
• Both “walk with God” (Gen. 3:8; 6:9).
• Both are associated with a sin involving “knowledge,” “nakedness,” and “covering” (Gen. 3:5, 7, 10, 21–22; 9:21–25).
• Both witness God’s coming in judgment (Gen. 3:8–19; 6:5–7, 13, 17; see also 1 Peter 3:20).
• Both beget warring “lines of seed” (Gen. 4; 9:25–27).

As a new Adam figure, Noah also becomes a type of Christ, the last Adam, who undoes what the first Adam did (1 Cor. 15:21, 45–49). Noah anticipates the coming of Christ in several ways.

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