Perfect verse blameless 🥊

Have you ever had a nagging question that nothing seemed to quench? 

The prayer group I’m involved with has been re-reading Genesis. I listen to an audio recording. As I’m listening to a daily reading I hear, “These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.

KJV. I stop and do a double what the?

As Christians, we are taught that Jesus was the only perfect person to walk the face of the earth. Here we have Moses saying that Noah was perfect in his generation. What gives?

So I asked one very smart, highly educated preacher about this. His answer was you can’t bring Jesus down to Noah’s level. If you do, you are un-glorifying God. But? Yeah. Shrugged my shoulders, said okay and let it go. It really didn’t go. 

Then my head when to, was Jesus really a man? Is that where the error in my thinking was? Noah was a man perfect in his generation. While Jesus was not a man? He looked and acted the part but really wasn’t. 

As I ponder this with a new friend, I get a new view; “That what makes Jesus a great figure is exactly because of his humanity. His sacrifice becomes greater when you think of Jesus as a man who attains a perfection instead of an already-perfect man.” 

Talk about getting the gray matter pumping. So now what?

He introduced me to the NRSVA  = New Revised Standard Version Anglicised Edition of the Bible. For Genesis 6:9, it reads “These are the descendants of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God.”

Blameless? Not perfect. What’s the difference?

“Blameless” in Hebrew is most commonly translated from the word tamim (תָּמִים) or its shorter form tam (תָּם). Rather than sinless perfection, it signifies being complete, whole, having integrity, or being without blemish, often used to describe moral uprightness, such as in the cases of Noah (Gen 6:9) and Job (Job 1:1). Google AI overview. If using all the resources available to me offends you, I will apologize upfront. 

Blameless verses perfection. It’s amazing how one word cleaned up a mess in my mind. Noah was blameless. Jesus was perfect. 

This isn’t the first time that learning more about a subject eased my questions. Read the work linked below. 

Judges 19 – Poetry & More