The last time God revealed himself to the whole world, there were only two people on it.
God ordains the means. This includes our ability to know Him. Those two people were spoken to directly. We know Cain was spoken to directly, oddly enough, we don't know if Abel was. Enoch walked with YHWH, the rest of humanity walked away from Him. Though all mankind should have had the ancestral knowledge and passing along of the true God, it is obvious they did not so that by the time God reveals Himself and His plan to Noah, only eight people, and seven of them probably not directly, have heard from Him and about Him. A reset. A reboot. Through these eight, the race of men are given another chance to know YHWH and walk with him as one. And as with Cain, it becomes painfully apparent right away that will not be the case.
And God is content to wait generations for one man and one barren woman. Abram is chosen, among all the countless millions of people who were on the earth by that time, scattered by God himself at Babel, all with ancestral memory of the flood, all walking away from the True God. Abram is chosen and renamed "Father of Nations." Through Sarah and He, God would reveal Himself to the world...eventually. And not even their whole family. Not all of Abraham's children, but just the one, Isaac. And not all of his children, but the one, Jacob. In Jacob God chose to create a people for His own possession: Israel.
And so this one family, twelve clans, was chosen to be God's ambassadors, His representatives, His chosen priesthood of believers upon the earth and to the entire world. And then God waited. Four hundred years.
Taking no one's counsel but His own, when the time was right, God revealed Himself first to one man, Moses, then through the plea of prophecy and following, violent judgment, He revealed himself to both the nation of His sovereign election and their oppressors. Upon leading them out of that land he led them to a mountain and allowed them to see just a hint of his holiness and glory. And he gave them Words. Ten words to live by, to know God by, and by obeying, to show the world what the One True God was like. Then for forty years of wandering, He was manifestly in the midst of only one nation of all the nations and tribes in all the earth in a way they could physically see and hear.
And they walked away from Him. Even while, literally, walking behind Him and holding His revelation in a box in a tent in their midst. Their hearts, the box inside the tent of their bodies, the hearts of His chosen people, His royal priesthood of believers, were never with Him. He let them die in the wilderness. Their children entered the land following Joshua. But where was the cloud? It is never mentioned again. Did it leave in a ceremony? Did the presence of God fade away and none noticed enough to write it down? After this there is only the revelation of prophets, chosen instruments of God's divine word. And God waited.
And God is again content to wait for generations, four hundred years, for one man, a shepherd, David, whom he chooses from among the sheepfolds and makes king. To this one, the one man and his one line, God will give a promise of eternal kingship. His son, David's son, will build a kingdom that shall never pass away. Of all the people, of all the nations of the earth, God has chosen this one man, of one tribe, of one nation to be His representative to the world again. And then God waited.
