If "The Flood" was a literal event that happened, was the need to start over the result of things not going according to God's Will? Or was The Flood always a part of God's plan?
Since I don't believe the story of the flood is literal, I may not be the best to answer this. But I think the point of the narrative should be understood in the general context of the larger narrative going on in Genesis.
That is, we are presented with a world of people behaving badly, we are told God regretted making the world and so He decided to wipe it out and start over. So He takes the most righteous man alive--Noah, and Noah and his family, along with a mating pair of every sort of animal, are brought upon the ark so that they might survive the flood and repopulate the world after.
The thing that is most striking is that the flood doesn't actually fix anything.
The world was no better after the flood than it was before the flood.
In fact, just as soon as the flood had ended, and Noah is described as building an altar and being pious in his devotion and worship of God, that we find him described as passed out drunk as a skunk in his tent, fully naked; then his son Ham goes in and "sees his nakedness" whatever that might mean, and Noah's response then is to curse Ham's son. And then just after this story we encounter the story of mankind, in its hubris, attempting to build a tower to attain divine status and power for themselves, to make their way up to God as though they too were gods deserving of such high status.
So people are behaving badly before the flood.
People are behaving badly after the flood.
Righteous Noah, well, he's not really all that righteous. He's just as sinful and fallible as any of the rest of us.
I think this is really important to understanding the over-arching narrative, not only of Genesis as the prologue to Exodus and the unfolding story of Israel; but is really important in the grand whole of the biblical drama--which as a Christian I believe is all leading to, and has its climax in Jesus. The healing, redemption, and renewing of the world cannot be accomplished by destroying it and starting over. Wiping the slate clean and starting over again does not fix the world, it doesn't fix the sinfulness of human nature.
Rather, God's way of fixing the world is going to start by calling a man by the name of Abram and his wife Sarai, out from home to a new place, and then establish a covenant and promise to him, that he would be called Abraham, the father of many nations, and that through his seed would come blessing and healing to all nations. And then Abraham begot Isaac, and Isaac begot Jacob, and Jacob was called Israel, and from Israel came the twelve patriarchs, and their descendants slaves in the land of Egypt.
God's way of healing the world is ultimately to be present in the world through a people, from whom would come the Messiah, and in the Messiah would come the fixing the world, the resurrection of the dead, the renewal of all things, and the hope of our part and place in that renewing of the world and its full renewal in the end.
God invites people to come and join Him in putting the world to rights.
-CryptoLutheran
