These two chapters relate God establishing a relationship of trust and goodness with the first human pair. This itself establishes a context of grace.
This needs little explanation: though God remained merciful in His acts of grace—He clothed them properly and delayed the onset of death—this narrative clearly creates a context of judgement.
Again it is clear that this narrative is to be read in a context of judgement despite God's act of grace and mercy to Cain and the birth of another child to Eve.
Even though this is only a genealogy, it tells us a great deal that is meaningful and important. In telling how names of these "pre-patriarchal patriarchs," how long they lived before they had children, and how long they lived afterwards, the genealogy unlines the grace of God: God is not finished with the human race yet. But notice also that everyone of these patriarchs died. God kept His word to the first couple that they would surely die if they eat of the fruit of the tree. This genealogy must, therefore, be read within a context of judgement.
It is easy to think of this story within a context of judgment; most of us remember the first 8 verses describing the wickedness of the people (6:1-8) and 8 verses on the flood (7:17-24). But the recounting of grace—of God's dealing with Noah and his family—takes up 72 verses (6:9-24; 7:1-17; 8:1-22; 9:1-17). And it is not just a matter of numbers. Notice:
1) how in the beginning of creation, chaos reigned (1:2), then dry land emerged from that water chaos. In the flood, the world was "uncreated" as the windows of heaven and the springs of the deep opened and dry land disappeared the watery chaos.
2) that the recession of the flood begins with "But God remembered Noah . . ." (8:1). Now, not only was Noah and his family saved, God made a covenant with them renewing the creational mandate He once gave Adam: "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth" (9:1, 7). The world is now "re-created" and God intention for it is being restored in a new creaton.
So while judgement is clearly present it is, in fact, overwhelmed by all the acts of divine grace.
This "table of nations" is enigmatic; it does not seem possible to discern any purpose for it, or even why it is here. This is not really so, but we will come back to this later.
However one looks at it this is a story of judgement. So severe that not a single human person born since then has been exempted from its effects. Notice also how the story ends abruptly (the next verse, "And this is the account of Shem," appears out of the blue and seems to have nothing to do with Babel at all) and on an emphatic note: "From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth."
As already noted, this list of names look very similar to the one in Gen 5. There are, however, important differences. The most significant one is this: though we know that they all died eventually (that's how they got their names into the list), the fact of their deaths is not even hinted at. It looks like a list of people who had lived happy fulfilled lives. For the second time since Gen 1-2, we have a context of grace, here without the slightest stain of divine wrath.
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