Genesis frequently employs the metaphor of God as a loving father who punishes errant humans as a means of leading them back toward "proper" behavior. Conversely, being just, God does not punish those who obey. And so Noah and his family will be spared from drowning. (Compare this to the circumstance of Utanapishtim in the Gilgamesh narrative, who survives because he is privy to "insider" information.) One might think that with the destruction of all the sinners (and we can understand sin to be anything contrary to the will of God), the survivors would return to a paradaisical state of unity with God. However, as we quickly learn, humans are prone to sin -- a doctrine that eventually will be codified as the doctrine of Original Sin. The notion is that the sin of Adam and Eve is passed on from generation to generation, thus we are born with "one strike against us." This proclivity toward sin is shown in the subsequent story of Ham, who sees his father Noah naked and is moved toward sexual thoughts. (Noah's other two sons piously cover their father without looking at him [thus avoiding temptation?].) Since Ham is the progenitor of the Canaanites, the story also serves as an explanation as to why God removes his favor from the Canaanites and bestows it upon the Hebrews.

The story of a flood that is survived only by a handful is one of the world's most widely disseminated myths. Accounts tend to fall into two major groups. From Mesopotamia westward is found the Receding Waters version, in which the boat of survivors eventually comes to rest on a mountaintop. (Compare the stories of the Sumerian Zuisidra, Babylonian Utanapishtim, Hebraic Noah, and Greek Deukalion.) East of Mesopotamia, and generally in the New World, we find the Earth Diver version. In these accounts the floodwaters never recede. One of the boat's inhabitants must dive to the bottom of the ocean and return with mud that is used to cover the waters and create a new earth. In many of these latter versions the characters are animals (and the actual Earth-Diver is often the culture's trickster figure).