Why the Flood?

[dcyates]

Many see the Flood as a precursor of Hell fire. But neither the devil nor his angels were targets in the Flood. What was God trying to say in that cataclysmic event?

I think the exact opposite and that the Flood is ultimately a re-creation event. Just as the initial creation describes the earth beginning as a watery chaos in Genesis 1, because of the great wickedness of humanity God allowed the earth to be again subsumed under watery chaos in Genesis 7. Just as the ruach (spirit, breath, or wind) moved over the surface of the waters in Genesis 1.2, bringing order out of the chaos so that dry land appears, so also God "caused a ruach (spirit, breath, or wind) to pass over" the waters in Genesis 8.1, causing the waters to subside, thus bringing order out of chaos so that dry land appears. (Large bodies of water always symbolized chaos in the ancient Hebrew mind, which is likely the primary reason they never became a sea-faring people.) Just as God commanded both animals and humans to, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth," in Genesis 1, so also does he in Genesis 8 & 9. And just as humanity sinned and God curses the guilty in Genesis 3, so also does he in Genesis 9. There are numerous other, more minutely detailed parallels between the two.

I think these creation and new creation accounts are found so early in Scripture in order to establish the pattern, so that when we come to the Exodus, which is the defining event in the history of Israel, we also recognize it as a re-creation event and thus realize that, whenever God acts to save/redeem his people, he does so via an exodus/new creation story. Thus we find much the same elements when Joshua and Israel cross the Jordan to take possession of the Land God had promised them. We then find a New Exodus promised in the prophetic writings (see especially Isaiah), which are then fulfilled in the New Exodus/new creation events found throughout the ministry of Jesus, which climaxes on the Day of Pentecost, until the culmination of history as found in the book of Revelation with the re-creation of everything, of the new heavens and the new earth. Thus the new creation is found in the initial creation, the end is found in the beginning as God works to redeem his entire creation, to restore everything back to the way he had always meant it to be.