And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that [was] with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged;
Ch. Gen 8:1-14. The Diminution of the Waters
1 (P). God remembered ] The same expression occurs in Gen 19:29, Gen 30:22. It is a form of anthropomorphism which is not infrequent in the O.T. and which is in continual use in the language of devotion.
and all the cattle ] LXX adds “And all the fowls and all the creeping things.” For the expression of pity for the brute beasts, cf. “and also much cattle,” in Jon 4:11.
God made a wind to pass ] The wind was to drive the waters back into their channels, and to dry up the ground. Cf. the action of the wind in Exo 14:21.
2 a (P). the fountains, &c.] The first clause in this verse describes the closing of the sources of the Flood mentioned in Gen 7:11 (P).
2 b, 3 a (J). and the rain continually ] This is the duplicate account from J, in whose version the rain for 40 days was the cause of the Flood (Gen 7:12).
3 b (P). after the end, &c.] The 150 days are those mentioned in Gen 7:24.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
– The Land Was Dried
1. shakak stoop, assuage.
3. chasar want, fail, be abated.
4. ‘ararat, Ararat, a land forming part of Armenia. It is mentioned in 2Ki 19:37, and Isa 37:38, as the retreat of Adrammelek and Sharezer after the murder of their father; and in Jer 51:27 as a kingdom.
8. qalal, be light, lightened, lightly esteemed, swift.
10. chul, twist, turn, dance, writhe, tremble, be strong, wait. yachal remain, wait, hope.
13. chareb, be drained, desolated, amazed.
Gen 8:1-3
The waters commence their retreat. And God remembered Noah. He is said to remember him when he takes any step to deliver him from the waters. The several steps to this end are enumerated.
A wind. – This would promote evaporation, and otherwise aid the retreat of the waters. The fountains of the deep and the windows of the skies were shut. The incessant and violent showers had continued for six weeks. It is probable the weather remained turbid and moist for some time longer. In the sixth month, however, the rain probably ceased altogether. Some time before this, the depressing of the ground had reached its lowest point, and the upheaving had set in. This is the main cause of the reflux of the waters. All this is described, as we perceive, according to appearance. It is probable that the former configuration of the surface was not exactly restored. At all events it is not necessary, as the ark may have drifted a considerable space in a hundred and fifty days. Some of the old ground on which primeval man had trodden may have become a permanent water bed, and a like amount of new land may have risen to the light in another place. Hence, it is vain to seek for a spot retaining the precise conditions of the primitive Eden. The Euphrates and Tigris may substantially remain, but the Pishon and Gihon may have considerably changed. The Black Sea, the Caspian, the lakes Van and Urumiah may cover portions of the Adamic land. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the prevalence of the waters begins to turn into a positive retreat.
Gen 8:4-5
The ark rested. – It is stranded on some hill in Ararat. This country forms part of Armenia. As the drying wind most probably came from the east or north, it is likely that the ark was drifted toward Asia Minor, and caught land on some hill in the reaches of the Euphrates. It cannot be supposed that it rested on either of the peaks now called Ararat, as Ararat was a country, not a mountain, and these peaks do not seem suitable for the purpose. The seventh month began usually with the new moon nearest the vernal equinox, or the 21st of March. The tenth month. The waters ceased to prevail on the first of the ninth month. The ark, though grounded six weeks before, was still deep in the waters. The tops of the hills began to appear a month after. The subsiding of the waters seems to have been very slow.
Gen 8:6-12
The raven and the dove are sent out to bring tidings of the external world. Forty days. Before Noah made any experiment he seems to have allowed the lapse of forty days to undo the remaining effect of the forty days rain. The window. He seems to have been unable to take any definite observations through the aperture here called a window. The raven found carrion in abundance, floated probably on the waters, and did not need to return. This was such a token of the state of things as Noah might expect from such a messenger. He next sends the dove, who returns to him. Yet other seven days. This intimates that he stayed seven days also after the raven was sent out. The olive leaf plucked off was a sign of returning safety to the land. It is said by Theophrastus (Hist. Plant. 4, 7) and Pliny (H. N. 13, 50) that the olive strikes leaves even under water. From this event, the olive branch became the symbol of peace, and the dove the emblem of the Comforter, the messenger of peace. After seven other days, the dove being despatched, returns no more. The number seven figures very conspicuously in this narrative. Seven days before the showers commence the command to enter the ark is given; and at intervals of seven days the winged messengers are sent out. These intervals point evidently to the period of seven days, determined by the six days of creation and the seventh day of rest. The clean beasts also and the birds are admitted into the ark by seven pairs. This points to the sacredness associated with the number arising from the hallowed character of the seventh day. The number forty also, the product of four, the number of the world or universe, and ten the number of completeness, begins here to be employed for a complete period in which a process will have run its course.
Gen 8:13-14
Noah delays apparently another month, and, on the first day of the new year, ventures to remove the covering of the ark and look around. The date of the complete drying of the land is then given. The interval from the entrance to the exit consists of the following periods:
| Rain continued | 40 days |
| Waters prevailed | 150 days |
| Waters subside | 99 days |
| Noah delays | 40 days |
| Sending of the raven and the dove | 20 days |
| Another month | 29 days |
| Interval until the 27th of the 2nd month | 57 days |
| Sum-total of days | 365 days |
Hence, it appears that the interval was a lunar year of three hundred and fifty-six days nearly, and ten days; that is, as nearly as possible, a solar year. This passage is important on account of the divisions of time which it brings out at this early epoch. The week of seven days is plainly intimated. The lunar month and year are evidently known. It is remarkable that the ten additional days bring up the lunar year in whole numbers to the solar. It seems a tacit agreement with the real order of nature. According to the Hebrew text, the deluge commenced in the 1656th year of the race of man. According to all texts it occurred in the time of Noah, the ninth in descent from Adam.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Gen 8:1-5
The waters assuaged
The gradual cessation of Divine retribution
I.
THAT IT IS MARKED BY A RICH MANIFESTATION OF DIVINE MERCY TO THOSE WHO HAVE SURVIVED THE TERRIBLE RETRIBUTION.
1. Gods remembrance of His creatures during the cessation of retribution is merciful.
2. Gods remembrance of His creatures during the cessation of retribution is welcome.
3. Gods remembrance of His creatures during the cessation of retribution is condescending.
II. THAT IT IS MARKED BY THE OUTGOING AND OPERATION OF APPROPRIATE PHYSICAL AGENCIES. And God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged. There have been many conjectures in reference to the nature and operation of this wind; some writers say that it was the Divine Spirit moving upon the waters, and others that it was the heat of the sun whereby the waters were dried up. We think controversy on this matter quite unnecessary, as there can be little doubt that the wind was miraculous, sent by God to the purpose it accomplished. He controls the winds. The Divine Being generally works by instrumentality.
1. Appropriate.
2. Effective.
3. Natural. Anti in this way is the cessation of Divine retribution brought about.
III. THAT IT IS MARKED BY A STAYING AND REMOVAL OF THE DESTRUCTIVE AGENCIES WHICH HAVE HITHERTO PREVAILED. Here we see–
1. That the destructive agencies of the universe are awakened by sin.
2. That the destructive agencies of the universe are subdued by the power and grace of God.
3. That the destructive agencies of the universe are occasional and not habitual in their rule.
IV. THAT IT IS MARKED BY A GRADUAL RETURN TO THE ORDINARY THINGS AND METHOD OF LIFE. This return to the ordinary condition of nature is–
1. Continuous.
2. Rapid.
3. Minutely chronicled.
The world is careful to note the day on which appeared the first indication of returning joy, when after a long period of sorrow the mountain tops of hope were again visible. It is fixed in the memory. It is written in the book. It is celebrated as a festival. Lessons–
1. That the judgments of God, though long and severe, will come to an end.
2. That the cessation of Divine judgment is a time of hope for the good.
3. That the cessation of Divine judgment is the commencement of a new era in the life of man. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
The ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat
The village of the ark
On the slopes of Ararat was the second cradle of the race, the first village reared in a world of unseen graves.
I. It was THE VILLAGE OF THE ARK, a building fashioned and fabricated from the forests of a drowned and buried world. To the worlds first fathers it must have seemed a hallowed and venerable form.
II. The village of the ark was THE VILLAGE OF SACRIFICE. They built a sacrificial altar in which fear raised the stones, tradition furnished the sacrifice, and faith kindled the flame.
III. The first village was THE VILLAGE OF THE RAINBOW. It had been seen before in the old world, but now it was seen as a sign of Gods mercy, His covenant in Creation.
IV. The village of the ark gives us our FIRST CODE OF LAWS. As man first steps forth with the shadows of the Fall around him, scarce a principle seems to mark the presence of law. Here we advance quite another stage, to a new world; the principles of law are not many, but they have multiplied. As sins grow, laws grow. Around the first village pealed remote mutterings of storms to come.
V. The village of the ark was THE VILLAGE OF SIN. Even to Noah, the most righteous of men, sin came out of the simple pursuit of husbandry. A great, good man, the survivor of a lost world, the stem and inheritor of a new, he came to the moment in life of dreadful overcoming. (E. P. Hood.)
Mount Ararat; or, The landing of the ark
I. SIN PUNISHED. Mount Ararat was a solemn witness to the severity of Gods judgments upon a guilty world.
II. GRACE REVEALED. Mount Ararat saw Divine grace displayed to sinful men.
III. SALVATION ENJOYED. Mount Ararat beheld salvation enjoyed by believing sinners: This temporal deliverance was a type of the spiritual. Immeasurably grander, however, will be the salvation of the saints.
1. In respect of its character, being spiritual instead of merely temporal.
2. In respect of its measures, being complete and not merely partial.
3. In respect of its duration, being eternal, and not merely for a brief term of years.
IV. GRATITUDE EXPRESSED. Mount Ararat heard the adorations and thanksgivings of a redeemed family.
V. SAFETY CONFIRMED. Mount Ararat listened to the voice of God confirming the salvation of His people. (T. Whitelaw, M. A.)
The resting of Noahs ark
The ark of Noah, so far as man was concerned, was left alone upon the waters–no human hand steered it, no human counsel guided it. It was like many a poor soul which is struggling, perhaps, its heavenward way through difficulties and fears, without one earthly friend to comfort it, or one heart in all the world to which to turn for solace and advice. And yet not alone was it tossed and heaved upon this solitary waste. There was an arm unseen directing it, there was strength unseen supporting it, and love unseen that was wafting it. The inhabitants of the ark, at that time, constituted the whole body of Gods believing people. Are there few that shall be saved? asked one of old. Yes, they are few, but they are all that can be saved; all that, by the largest stretch of mercy, consistent with Gods justice, can be brought in, shall be brought in. There is no class on earth, if I may so speak, which has not got its representative in heaven. For 150 days–and when, we would ask you, was waiting time stretched out so long?–for 150 days Noah was left without any visible token of Gods care, when, as the narrative simply and beautifully goes on, God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark. Yes; for everything when it comes into covenant with God becomes, from that moment, dear to God. You may be the least–you may be the vilest of all His creatures, but if you are in the ark, if you are a Christian, God must love you. If the whole world is crying in terror, to a good and merciful God we must go: He has a store for His children. How many a man has had reason to look back and say, That long, tedious affliction which seemed to me as if it would never end–what has it been to me but the saving of my soul? It has been thesnatching of me from that destruction where thousands of my companions have perished, and where perhaps I should have been this day, but for God afflicting me? The heaviest storm that follows you must one day be calmed; the rudest wind that assails you must one day be hushed. The waters at last began to assuage, and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month–it is well for the mind to keep an accurate record of the date of mercies–the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat. But Noah was not so soon as this to be released from his confinement, his term was not yet half completed: five months he had been locked in the ark, but seven months more must he yet remain in it. It is natural to imagine, that this last seven months must have seemed to pass more slowly than all the time while they were lying on the waves. If the troubled time of life brings its trials, so also does its calms. It is a hard thing to sit still, and very often there are the greatest perils in the still seasons of life. When is it that the soul of man is so tempted to presumption and self-righteous confidence? When is it that we become careless? When is it that the practical duties of life are neglected, and we sit down it a most dangerous spiritual slumber? Is it not in seasons when we have been imagining that we have reached a place of rest; when the soul, through an overweening confidence, abandons its efforts as if the work were done, and settles down on its lees? Oh, when I think of the dangers of lifes calms, I bless God, that the voyage is generally a rough one! When I remember the trials of the resting ark, I bless God that it is kept so long struggling in the storm! We look at the ark resting seven months upon the mountains of Ararat. What a lesson have we here against impatience! Did Noah and his family complain that they had to wait so long? Oh, no; on the contrary, we know the feelings of the mariner, after a long and dangerous voyage, when he is becalmed within sight of his native land, how he looks at the land and longs to spring upon the shore,–and much more than that, probably, was Noahs felling;–but nowmark his conduct: no impatient prayer escapes his lips, no restlessness seems to disturb his mind, his faith–as God will expect all faith to be–was a waiting faith. Not even when the least drop of water had dried away would he venture to leave the ark unbidden. God had shut the ark, and God, Noah knows, must open it. Not till the welcome word is given, Go forth, will he presume to leave the place, how dark and how drearisome soever that place may be. Now learn, from Noahs example, your line of duty under many a similar dispensation. Let us learn not to be impatient–I do not say of forbidden pleasures, that would be an easy thing; but do not be impatient of pleasure which it is permitted, nay, of pleasure which it is commanded you to enjoy; no, not for heaven itself. If God has shut any Noah in, be content to wait patiently till God shall open. It is your confidence to sit still. Take another lesson from the resting of the ark. The flood–the type of this our present life–was not yet half completed when Noah found a resting place on earth. From that hour he is, indeed, to wait for many a day before he shall be permitted to come forth; but from that hour Noah is safe. He can thus change no more, for he is anchored on a Rock. Now just so may it be with us on lifes long voyage. The time when it shall be good for us to land on the eternal shore, God alone has fixed–be it ours to wait for it. Long before our sojourn is nigh full–ay, at any time in all the course–we may find a safe anchorage under the Rock of Ages; and from the happy moment when you shall have been received upon a better mountain than that of Ararat, you will feel that you will move no more. There may be a rising of the deep waters around you, but you will be settled and at rest; and oh, how triumphant will you look down on the waters and floods of this worlds struggles, while your faith, standing high on the mountain of God, can feel that the foundations of eternity are under you. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)
The ark resting
What a splendid spectacle! The resting of an eagle who, after soaring half-way to the sun, and stretching across whole provinces; at last, the light of the evening gleaming on her golden feathers, folds on the crag her unwearied wing; the resting of a ship of the line at anchor after contending all day with the angry billows; even the resting of the great moon, as if tired with her long journey through the ether, upon some mount of pines or some hill of snow–are only faint images of the sublimity of the scene, when the Wanderer of the Waters, the God-built ship, its journey done, its work accomplished, its glory gathered, its crew safe, the commencement of a new era of hope for earth through it secured, calmly, and one would almost dream, consciously, reposes upon the proud summit which God has prepared to bear its burden and to share in its immortal fame. (G. Gilfillan.)
Safety
Noah anchored his ark to the Providence of God. No sails were unfurled to the breeze, no oars were unshipped to move the lumbering ark, no rudder was employed to steer. The Providence of God was deeper than the winds and waves and contrary current; and to that, he fastened his barque with the strong cable of faith. Hence the security of the ark with its living freight. (W. Adamson.)
Security
When Alexander the Great was asked how he could sleep so soundly and securely in the midst of surrounding danger, he replied that he might well repose when Parmenis watched. Noah might well be in peace, since God had him in charge. A gentleman, crossing a dreary moor, came upon a cottage. When about to leave, he said to its occupant, Are you not afraid to live in this lonely place? To this the man at once responded, Oh! no, for faith closes the door at night, and mercy opens it in the morning. Thus was Noah kept during the long night of the deluge; and mercy opened the door for him. (W. Adamson.)
Tops of the mountains seen
The emerging world
To realize this, let us suppose ourselves standing on a hill on a September morning, surrounded by a sea of mist. Nothing for awhile is visible but wild, rolling waves of dripping darkness, till at last the sun looks out, a wind begins to blow, and then there loom forth, peak after peak, the hundred hills around, starting up, as if newly created, from the gulf below, their bases still bathed in mist, but their tops crowned with light, and resembling the islands of some melancholy main. It is one of the sublimest of spectacles, reminding you of the worlds rising out of chaos, of Gods calling the things that were not, and they appeared, and compelling you, the spectator, to uncover, as the mountains have doge, in the presence of the God of day, although you see in him, what they do not, only the vicegerent of his heavenly King. And similar, but still more striking, must have been to Noahs eye, as he stood on the sides of the resting ark, the sight of the ancient landmarks of nature reappearing, the ridges of Taurus heaving up like islands through the waters, their shows for the time melted, and perhaps over them all, in the remote distance, the Finger Mount arising, relieved against, and pointing significantly to the calm blue sky! Sight reminding us of the rising of great buried truths, as at the Reformation, out of the darkness of ages; struggling, too, to free themselves from the incrustations of error, as the lion from the impediments of the Daedal earth, Sight reminding us of the resurrection of great reputations buried under loads of calumny, or whelmed in deluges of oblivion, into the light of general appreciation, and the consecration of long-denied reverence and love. Sight reminding us of the resurrection of the dead from their sepulchres–specially, shall we say, of the resurrection of aged and venerable patriarchs, having left their hoary hairs in the dust, arising to the vigour and freshness of immortal youth. (G. Gilfillan.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER VIII
At the end of one hundred and fifty days the waters begin to
subside, 1-3.
The ark rests on Mount Ararat, 4.
On the first of the tenth month the tops of the hills appear, 5.
The window opened and the raven sent out, 6, 7.
The dove sent forth, and returns, 8, 9.
The dove sent forth a second time, and returns with an olive
leaf, 10, 11.
The dove sent out the third time, and returns no more, 12.
On the twentieth day of the second month the earth is completely
dried, 13, 14.
God orders Noah, his family, and all the creatures to come out
of the ark, 15-19.
Noah builds an altar, and offers sacrifices to the Lord, 20.
They are accepted; and God promises that the earth shall not be
cursed thus any more, notwithstanding the iniquity of man, 21, 22.
NOTES ON CHAP. VIII
Verse 1. And God made a wind to pass over the earth] Such a wind as produced a strong and sudden evaporation. The effects of these winds, which are frequent in the east, are truly astonishing. A friend of mine, who had been bathing in the Tigris, not far from the ancient city of Ctesiphon, and within five days’ journey of Bagdad, having on a pair of Turkish drawers, one of these hot winds, called by the natives samiel, passing rapidly across the river just as he had got out of the water, so effectually dried him in a moment, that not one particle of moisture was left either on his body or in his bathing dress! With such an electrified wind as this, how soon could God dry the whole of the earth’s surface! An operation something similar to the conversion of water into its two constituent airs, oxygen and hydrogen, by means of the galvanic fluid, as these airs themselves may be reconverted into water by means of the electric spark. See Clarke on Ge 7:11. And probably this was the agent that restored to the atmosphere the quantity of water which it had contributed to this vast inundation. The other portion of waters, which had proceeded from the breaking up of the fountains of the great deep, would of course subside more slowly, as openings were made for them to run off from the higher lands, and form seas. By the first cause, the hot wind, the waters were assuaged, and the atmosphere having its due proportion of vapours restored, the quantity below must be greatly lessened. By the second, the earth was gradually dried, the waters, as they found passage, lessening by degrees till the seas and gulfs were formed, and the earth completely drained. This appears to be what is intended in the third and fifth verses by the waters decreasing continually, or, according to the margin, they were in going and decreasing, Ge 8:5.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
God remembered Noah, i.e. he showed by his actions that he minded and cared for him, or pitied and succoured him. God is said to remember his people, when after some delays or suspensions of his favour he returns and shows kindness to them, as Gen 19:29; 30:22; Exo 32:13; Job 14:13; Psa 132:1. As God punished the beasts for man’s sin, so now he favours them for man’s sake.
God made a wind to pass; a drying or burning wind, like that of Exo 14:21, which had a natural power to dry up the waters; but that was heightened by the assistance of a higher and miraculous operation of God.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
1. And God remembered NoahThedivine purpose in this awful dispensation had been accomplished, andthe world had undergone those changes necessary to fit it forbecoming the residence of man under a new economy of Providence.
and every living thing . . .in the arka beautiful illustration of Mt10:29.
and God made a wind to passover the earthThough the divine will could have dried up theliquid mass in an instant, the agency of a wind was employed (Ps104:4) probably a hot wind, which, by rapid evaporation, wouldagain absorb one portion of the waters into the atmosphere; and bywhich, the other would be gradually drained off by outlets beneath.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that [was] with him in the ark,…. Not that God had forgotten Noah, for he does not, and cannot forget his creatures, properly speaking; but this is said after the manner of men, and as it might have seemed to Noah, who having heard nothing of him for five months, and having been perhaps longer in the ark than he expected, might begin to think that he was forgotten of God; but God remembered him, and his covenant with him, and the promise that he had made to him, that he and his family, and all the living creatures in the ark, should be preserved alive during the flood, Ge 6:17 and God may be said particularly to remember him, and them, when he began to take measures for removing the waters from the earth, as he did by sending a wind, next mentioned: and thus God’s helping his people when in difficulties and in distress, and delivering out of them, is called his remembrance of them; and he not only remembered Noah and his family, who are included in him, but every living creature also, which is expressed; for as the creatures suffered in the flood for the sins of men, so those in the ark were remembered and preserved for the sake of Noah and his family, and the world of men that should spring from them:
and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged; not a stormy blustering one, that would have endangered the ark, but a gentle, hot, drying one; which stopped the increase of the waters, and made them less, and both drove away the rain, as the north wind does, as this perhaps was r, and caused the waters to move wards their proper channels and receptacles: this was the work of God, who has the command of the winds and waters, brings the former out of his storehouses, and restrains the latter at his pleasure; and this wind had this effect to assuage the waters, not from its own nature, but was attended with the mighty power of God to make it effectual, in an extraordinary manner: and it was, as the Targums of Jonathan and Jerusalem call it, “a wind of mercies”, or a merciful wind; or a wind of comforts, as Jarchi; for so it was to Noah and his family, and to all the creatures, since it served to dry up the waters of the flood, and caused them to subside.
r ————for clouds were fled, Driv’n by a keen north wind, that, blowing dry, Wrinkled the face of Deluge, as decay’d. Milton, B. 11. l. 841, &c.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
With the words, “ then God remembered Noah and all the animals…in the ark, ” the narrative turns to the description of the gradual decrease of the water until the ground was perfectly dry. The fall of the water is described in the same pictorial style as its rapid rise. God’s “remembering” was a manifestation of Himself, an effective restraint of the force of the raging element. He caused a wind to blow over the earth, so that the waters sank, and shut up the fountains of the deep, and the sluices of heaven, so that the rain from heaven was restrained. “ Then the waters turned ( i.e., flowed off) from the earth, flowing continuously (the inf. absol. expresses continuation), and decreased at the end of 150 days.” The decrease first became perceptible when the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat on the 17th day of the seventh month; i.e.,, reckoning 30 days to a month, exactly 150 days after the flood commenced. From that time forth it continued without intermission, so that on the first day of the tenth month, probably 73 days after the resting of the ark, the tops of the mountains were seen, viz., the tops of the Armenian highlands, by which the ark was surrounded. Ararat was the name of a province (2Ki 19:37), which is mentioned along with Minni (Armenia) as a kingdom in Jer 51:27, probably the central province of the country of Armenia, which Moses v. Chorene calls Arairad, Araratia. The mountains of Ararat are, no doubt, the group of mountains which rise from the plain of the Araxes in two lofty peaks, the greater and lesser Ararat, the former 16,254 feet above the level of the sea, the latter about 12,000. This landing-place of the ark is extremely interesting in connection with the development of the human race as renewed after the flood. Armenia, the source of the rivers of paradise, has been called “a cool, airy, well-watered mountain-island in the midst of the old continent;” but Mount Ararat especially is situated almost in the middle, not only of the great desert route of Africa and Asia, but also of the range of inland waters from Gibraltar to the Baikal Sea-in the centre, too, of the longest line that can be drawn through the settlements of the Caucasian race and the Indo-Germanic tribes; and, as the central point of the longest land-line of the ancient world, from the Cape of Good Hope to the Behring Straits, it was the most suitable spot in the world, for the tribes and nations that sprang from the sons of Noah to descend from its heights and spread into every land (vid., K. v. Raumer, Palst. pp. 456ff.).
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| The Earth Becomes Dry. | B. C. 2349. |
1 And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged; 2 The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained; 3 And the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated.
Here is, I. An act of God’s grace: God remembered Noah and every living thing. This is an expression after the manner of men; for not any of his creatures (Luke xii. 6), much less any of his people, are forgotten of God, Isa 49:15; Isa 49:16. But, 1. The whole race of mankind, except Noah and his family, was now extinguished, and driven into the land of forgetfulness, to be remembered no more; so that God’s remembering Noah was the return of his mercy to mankind, of whom he would not make a full end. It is a strange expression, Ezek. v. 13, When I have accomplished my fury in them, I will be comforted. The demands of divine justice had been answered by the ruin of those sinners; he had eased him of his adversaries (Isa. i. 24), and now his spirit was quieted (Zech. vi. 8), and he remembered Noah and every living thing. He remembered mercy in wrath (Hab. iii. 2), remembered the days of old (Isa. lxiii. 11), remembered the holy seed, and then remembered Noah. 2. Noah himself, though one that had found grace in the eyes of the Lord, yet seemed to be forgotten in the ark, and perhaps began to think himself so; for we do not find that God had told him how long he should be confined and when he should be released. Very good men have sometimes been ready to conclude themselves forgotten of God, especially when their afflictions have been unusually grievous and long. Perhaps Noah, though a great believer, yet when he found the flood continuing so long after it might reasonably be presumed to have done its work, was tempted to fear lest he that shut him in would keep him in, and began to expostulate. How long wilt thou forget me? But at length God returned in mercy to him, and this is expressed by remembering him. Note, Those that remember God shall certainly be remembered by him, how desolate and disconsolate soever their condition may be. He will appoint them a set time and remember them, Job xiv. 13. 3. With Noah, God remembered every living thing; for, though his delight is especially in the sons of men, yet he rejoices in all his works, and hates nothing that he has made. He takes special care, not only of his people’s persons, but of their possessions–of them and all that belongs to them. He considered the cattle of Nineveh, Jon. iv. 11.
II. An act of God’s power over wind and water, both of which are at his beck, though neither of them is under man’s control. Observe,
1. He commanded the wind, and said to that, Go, and it went, in order to the carrying off of the flood: God made a wind to pass over the earth. See here, (1.) What was God’s remembrance of Noah: it was his relieving him. Note, Those whom God remembers he remembers effectually, for good; he remembers us to save us, that we may remember him to serve him. (2.) What a sovereign dominion God has over the winds. He has them in his fist (Prov. xxx. 4) and brings them out of his treasuries, Ps. cxxxv. 7. He sends them when, and whither, and for what purposes, he pleases. Even stormy winds fulfil his word, Ps. cxlviii. 8. It should seem, while the waters increased, there was no wind; for that would have added to the toss of the ark; but now God sent a wind, when it would not be so troublesome. Probably, it was a north wind, for that drives away rain. However, it was a drying wind, such a wind as God sent to divide the Red Sea before Israel, Exod. xiv. 21.
2. He remanded the waters, and said to them, Come, and they came. (1.) He took away the cause. He sealed up the springs of those waters, the fountains of the great deep, and the windows of heaven. Note, [1.] As God has a key to open, so he has a key to shut up again, and to stay the progress of judgments by stopping the causes of them: and the same hand that brings the desolation must bring the deliverance; to that hand therefore our eye must ever be. He that wounds is alone able to heal. See Job xii. 14, 15. [2.] When afflictions have done the work for which they are sent, whether killing work or curing work, they shall be removed. God’s word shall not return void, Isa 55:10; Isa 55:11. (2.) Then the effect ceased; not all at once, but by degrees: The waters abated (v. 1), returned from off the earth continually, Heb. they were going and returning (v. 3), which denotes a gradual departure. The heat of the sun exhaled much, and perhaps the subterraneous caverns soaked in more. Note, As the earth was not drowned in a day, so it was not dried in a day. In the creation, it was but one day’s work to clear the earth from the waters that covered it, and to make it dry land; nay, it was but half a day’s work, Gen 1:9; Gen 1:10. But, the work of creation being finished, this work of providence was effected by the concurring influence of second causes, yet thus enforced by the almighty power of God. God usually works deliverance for his people gradually, that the day of small things may not be despised, nor the day of great things despaired of, Zech. iv. 10. See Prov. iv. 18.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
GENESIS – CHAPTER EIGHT
Verses 1-5:
“God” is “Elohim,” denoting His relation to His creatures.
“Remembered” does not indicate that God forgets. He remembers man’s sin when he punishes them (Ps 25:7). He remembers the needs of His own when He supplies them (Ne 4:19).
“Living thing” chayyah, of wild beast see Ge 1:25; 7:14. “Cattle” denotes the domesticated animals.
“Wind” is ruach, a current of air that would assist in evaporation of the waters on the earth (see Pr 25:23; Ex 14:21).
“The waters assuaged,” literally, began to grow calm. This was the first stage in the drying up of the waters.
There were three sources of water: (1) the fountains of the deep; (2) the windows of heaven; and (3) the rain (see Ge 7:11, 12). All were “shut up” or closed.
“The waters returned …continually” is literally, “going and returning,” an allusion to the ebb and flow of the waters in their tidal action.
There were three states in the ceasing of the waters: (1) they were quieted (v. 1); (2) there was the beginning of the ebbing motion; and (3) the perceptible diminishing of the waters. These occurred over a gradual period of time, and not all at once.
On the seventeenth day of the eleventh month, the ark “rested,” literally “grounded” on a mountain in the range known as Ararat. It is generally accepted that this is in the region of Armenia, or eastern Turkey. The general elevation of the mountain range is about 6,000 feet above sea level. The highest peak is an extinct volcano, called Mt Ararat, about 17,000 feet high.
Many expeditions have been launched in an attempt to find the remains of the Ark. In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s three eyewitnesses claim to have seen the Ark. One is an elderly Armenian, who claims to have seen the Ark as a boy. Other elderly Armenians tell similar stories. Another claimed eyewitness was in the US Air Force stationed in Turkey in the early 1970’s. He arranged with a Turkish friend to visit the purported site of the Ark. The friend had an uncle who was an elderly shepherd living on Mt Ararat. He took them to see the Ark. Another eyewitness was a US serviceman who in the early 1970’s flew over Mt Ararat in a Navy jet plane with sophisticated cameras. He took pictures of the Ark, which were never released.
Many individuals and groups have attempted to gain permission from the Turkish government to climb Mt Ararat to search for the Ark. Some have illegally entered the country to attempt such an expedition. This has led the government to impose an almost total ban on all attempts to locate the Ark and document its existence. In 1981, a military takeover brought about more stable conditions within Turkey. This has resulted in improved relations with the West, and a partial lifting of the ban in the summer of 1982.
Former astronaut Col James Irwin teamed with Eryl Cummings in an expedition in August, 1982. A series of misfortunes including injury and lack of experienced climbers, caused the search to be withdrawn. A major storm made aerial search impossible. Col Irwin and his party attempted later in the year to return to the search, but were unable to secure the necessary permits from Turkish officials.
Efforts were underway to conduct another search in the summer of 1983, by teams of competent researchers. Perhaps the Ark will be found, where it has remained since Noah evacuated it following the Flood. If so, it will be one of the century’s greatest discoveries, and will authenticate for all the Genesis record of the flood. Such visual evidence is not necessary, however, for one who accepts this record as God’s inspired, infallible Word.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
1. And God remembered Noah. Moses now descends more particularly to that other part of the subject, which shows, that Noah was not disappointed in his hope of the salvation divinely promised to him. The remembrance of which Moses speaks, ought to be referred not only to the external aspect of things, (so to speak,) but also to the inward feeling of the holy man. Indeed it is certain, that Gods from the time in which he had once received Noah into his protection, was never unmindful of him; for, truly, it was by as great a miracle, that he did not perish through suffocation in the ark, as if he had lived without breath, submerged in the waters. And Moses just before has said that by God’s secret closing up of the ark, the waters were restrained from penetrating it. But as the ark was floating, even to the fifth month, upon the waters, the delay by which the Lord suffered his servant to be anxiously and miserably tortured might seem to imply a kind of oblivion. And it is not to be questioned, that his heart was agitated by various feelings, when he found himself so long held in suspense; for he might infer, that his life had been prolonged, in order that he might be more miserable than any of the rest of mankind. For we know that we are accustomed to imagine God absent, except when we have some sensible experience of his presence. And although Noah tenaciously held fast the promise which he had embraced, even to the end, it is yet credible, that he was grievously assailed by various temptations; and God, without doubt, purposely thus exercised his faith and patience. For, why was not the world destroyed in three days? And for what purpose did the waters, after they had covered the highest mountains rise fifteen cubits higher, unless it was to accustom Noah, and his family, to meditate the more profitably on the judgments of Gods and when the danger was past, to acknowledge that they had been rescued from a thousand deaths? Let us therefore learn, by this example, to repose on the providence of God, even while he seems to be most forgetful of us; for at length, by affording us help, he will testify that he has been mindful of us. What, if the flesh persuade us to distrust, yet let us not yield to its restlessness; but as soon as this thought creeps in, that God has cast off all care concerning us, or is asleep, or far distant, let us immediately meet it with this shield, ‘The Lord, who has promised his help to the miserable will, in due time, be present with us, that we may indeed perceive the care he takes of us.’ Nor is there less weight in what is added that God also remembered the animals; for if, on account of the salvation promised to man, his favor is extended to brute cattle, and to wild beasts; what may we suppose will be his favor towards his own children, to whom he has so liberally, and so sacredly, pledged his faithfulness?
And God made a wind to pass over the earth. Here it appears more clearly, that Moses is speaking of the effect of God’s remembrance of Noah; namely, that in very deed, and by a sure proof, Noah might know that God cared for his life. For when God, by his secret power, might have dried the earth, he made use of the wind; which method he also employed in drying the Red Sea. And thus he would testify, that as he had the waters at his command, ready to execute his wrath, so now he held the winds in his hand, to afford relief. And although here a remarkable history is recorded by Moses, we are yet taught, that the winds do not arise fortuitously, but by the command of God; as it is said in Psa 104:4, that ‘they are the swift messengers of God;’ and again, that God rides upon their wings. Finally, the variety, the contrary motions, and the mutual conflicts of the elements, conspire to yield obedience to God. Moses also adds other inferior means by which the waters were diminished and caused to return to their former position. The sum of the whole is, that God, for the purpose of restoring the order which he had before appointed, recalled the waters to their prescribed boundaries so that while the celestial waters, as if congealed, were suspended in the air; others might lie concealed in their gulfs; others flow in separate channels; and the sea also might remain within its barriers.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
THE DAWN OF HISTORY
Gen 1:1 to Gen 11:9.
IN beginning this Bible of the Expositor and Evangelist, I am keenly sensible of the seriousness of my task. The book to be treated is the Book of Books, the one and only volume that has both survived and increasingly conquered the centuries, and that now, in a hoary old age, shows no sign of weakness, holds no hint of decay or even decrepitude; in fact, the Book is more robust at this moment than at any time since it came to completion, and it gives promise of dominating the future in a measure far surpassing its influence upon the past.
The method of studying the Bible, to be illustrated in these pages, is, we are convinced, a sane and safe one, if not the most efficient one. Years since, certain statements from the pen of Dr. James M. Gray, superintendent of the Moody Bible Institute, fell under our eyes, and those statements have profoundly influenced our methods of study.
Five simple rules he suggested for mastering the English Bible:
First, Read the Book.
Second: Read it consecutively.
Third: Read it repeatedly.
Fourth: Read it independently.
Fifth: Read it prayerfully.
Applying these suggestions to each volume in turn, if ones life be long continued, he may not hope to master his English Bible, but he will certainly discover its riches increasingly, and possess himself more and more of its marvelous treasures,
It was on the first Sunday of July, 1922, that I placed before myself and my people the program of study that produced these volumes. To be sure, much of the work had been done back of that date, but the determination to utilize it in this exact manner was fully adopted there and then. It was and is my thought that the greatest single weakness of the present-day pulpit exists in the circumstance that we have departed from the custom of our best fathers in the ministry, namely, Scriptural exposition. If, therefore, these volumes shall lead a large number of my brethren in the ministry, particularly the young men among them, to become expository preachers, and yet to combine exposition with evangelism, my reward will be my eternal riches.
Stimulated by that high hope, I turn your attention to the study itself, and begin where the Book begins and where all true students should begin, with Gen 1:1, but in thought, an eternity beyond the hour of its phrasing, for by the opening sentence we are pushed back to God. In the beginning
GOD.
That is the starting point of all true studies. The scientist is compelled to start there, or else he never understands where he is, nor yet with what he deals. God, the One of infinite wisdom, infinite power, infinite justice and of infinite goodnessIn the beginning God.
Having heard that name and having understood the One to whom it is applied, we are prepared for what follows,created the heavens and the earth marvelous first verse of the Bible!
All in this first chapter is wrapped up in that first sentence; that is the explanation of all things; what follows is simply the setting forth of details.
I agree with Joseph Parker that the explanation is simple. No attempt at learned analysis; that the explanation is sublime because it sweeps in all of time, all of material suggestions, all of power and illustrates all of wisdomthe heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork; day unto day uttereth speech and night unto night showeth knowledge, and it is a sufficient explanation, the only one that satisfies the mind of man.
Infidel evolutionists cannot account for the beginnings. The geologist who does not believe, digs down to a point where he says, Who started all of this? and waits in sadness while the dumb rocks are silent; but for the Christian student no such mystery makes his work an enigma.
Everywhere he sees the touch of God; in the plants, the animals, the birds and in man,God. Where the unbeliever wonders and questions to get no reply, the believer admires, saying, This is my Fathers hand, the work of my Fathers word. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear (Heb 11:3), and he joins with the Psalmist, Let all nations praise the name of the Lord for He commanded and they were created (Psa 108:5).
Competent scholars have called attention to the careful use of words in the Bible, a use so painstaking and perfect as to give a scientific demonstration of the verbal inspiration theory. When it is said that God created the heavens and the earth, the Hebrew verb bara is employed, and it means to create something from nothing, so that God gave the death blow to the evolution theory some thousands of years before that unprovable hypothesis was born! The same word bara is also used in the 21st verse (Gen 1:21) concerning the creation of mammals, and three times in the 27th verse (Gen 1:27) concerning the creation of man, while a kindred word asah (neither of which convey any such thought as growth or evolution) is employed concerning His making man in His own image in Gen 1:26.
God, then, is not a mechanic; He is a Creator. He did not come upon the scenes of the universe to fashion what existed independent and apart from Him, but to create and complete according to His own pleasure.
In later chapters we shall show how these creative acts are confirmed by science itself, and argue the utter folly of trying to find incompatibility between Gods Work and Gods Word.
So for the present we may pass from God the Creator, as revealed in the first chapter, to
ADAM THE MAN
of the second chapter. An infinite decline, somebody says. But let us be reminded that it is not so great as appears at this present hour. The only man God ever made outright was not what you and I see now. The man He made was in His own image, after His own likeness, only as far below
Him as the finite is below the infinite; as the best creation is below the best Creator.
The man God made was good. The man God made was great. The man God made was wise. The man God made was holy. The men we see now are not His children, but the children of the fallen Adam instead, for Eve, fallen, brought forth after her kind; and what a fall was that!
When man disobeyed, he brought on himself and all succeeding ages sin, and its wretched results. There are those who blame God for the fall of man and say, He had no business to make him so he could fall. But everything that is upright can fall, and the difference between a man who could not fall and a man who could fall is simply the difference between a machine and a sentient, intelligent, upright, capable being.
There was but a single point at which this man could oppose Providence. Situated and environed as Adam was, the great social sins that have crushed the race could make no appeal to him. It is commonly conceded that the Decalogue sweeps the gamut of social, ethical and even religious conduct. Adam had no occasion to bow down before another God, for Jehovah, his Creator, was his counsellor and friend, and of other gods he knew nothing nor had he need of such. There was no provocation that could tempt him to take the name of that God in vain. There was no Sabbath day, for all days were holy, and the condemnation to labor was not yet passed. There was no father and mother to be honored. To have committed murder was unthinkable; first because there was no provocation, and second, such an act would have left him in the world alone, his heart craving, unsatisfied, and his very kind to perish. The seventh commandment meant nothing to the man whose wife was in the image of God, and the only woman known. Theft was impossible, since all things belonged to him. False witness and covetousness against a neighborhe had no neighbor.
But when God selected for Himself a single tree, leaving the rest of the earth to Adam, and he proved himself unwilling to let the least of earthly possessions be wholly the Lords, he gave an illustration to the unborn millenniums that man, in his almost infinite greatness, would not abide content that God Himself should be over and above him; and from that moment until this, that very thing has been the crux of every contention between the Divine and the human. If we may believe the Prophets, it was that very temptation that caused Lucifers fall and gave us the devil and hell!
All talk of shallow minds that God condemned the race because one man happened to bite into an apple, is utterly wide of the mark. Condemnation rests upon the race because every man born of the flesh has revealed the same spirit of rebellion shown by our first parentswe will not have God rule over us even to the extent of keeping anything from us. The wealth of His gifts should shame and restrain against His few prohibitions.
But, alas for mans guilt and godlessness! Equally wide of the mark is that other superficial reasoning that it is unjust of God to condemn me because some one of my forefathers misbehaved! Why charge God with injustice concerning something He has never done and will never do? Why not let
Him speak for Himself in such matters, and listen when he declares, The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him (Eze 18:20).
If, therefore, Adam with a body, mind and spirit unsullied, never having been weakened by an evil act or habit, did not stand, what hope for any man in his own merit. Are we better than they? No, in no wise, for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles that we are all under sin. As it is written, There is none righteous, no not one. There is none that understandeth. There is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way. They are altogether become unprofitable (Rom 3:9-12).
You say that the temptation was a subtle one. I answer, Yes, that is Satans way to this hour. You say, The desire was for wisdom. I answer, Yes, that is still Satans appeal; you need to see and to know more than you do, hence you had better try this sin.
Over one of the most palatial but wicked doorways of all Paris there used to be an inscription, Come in; nothing to pay, and so far as mere entrance to that place was concerned, that was true. But those who entered found when they had come out that they had visited the place at the cost of character, not to speak of that meaner thing money.
In passing, we call your attention to the justice of Gods judgment upon this sin. Its heaviest sentence fell upon the serpent, Satans direct agent; that wisest of all beasts of the field. He was accursed above all cattle, and brought down from his upright, manly-appearing position to go upon his belly and to eat dust all his days, and to be hated and killed by the seed of the woman with whom he had had such influence.
The second sentence in weight fell upon the woman who listened to this deception and led the way in disobedience. The man did not escape. The associate in sin never does. His love for the principal may in some measure mitigate Gods judgment, but the justice of God would be called in question, and even His goodness, if He permitted any sin to be unpunished.
EVE, THE PRINCIPAL PERSON
in this third chapter must have been in her unfallen state Adams equal, mentally and morally. We have had great women, beautiful women, women worthy the admiration of the world, but I have an idea that the worlds greatest woman was not Cleopatra, the beautiful but selfish; nor Paula, that firmest of all friends; nor Heloise, the very embodiment of affection; nor Joan or Arc, heroism incarnate; nor Elizabeth, the wonderful queen; nor Madam De Stael of letters; nor Hannah Moore of education; but Eve, our first mother.
When I think on her and look at the frail, feeble, sickly, sinful sister of the streets, I feel like weeping over the fact that our first mother fell; and today among her daughters are those so far removed from Gods ideal.
THE FAMILY
of the fourth chapter had its beginning in sin, and it is a dreadfully dark picture that is here presented. Envy, murder and lust appear at once. Abel is murdered, Cain made a criminal, polygamy introduced and all social vices which curse the sons of God. The picture would incite despair, but for the circumstance that in the third chapter God had made a promise which put Grace instead of Law.
There was need, for unless the womans seed should bruise the serpents head, that serpents venom will not only strike the heel of every son, but send its poison coursing to his heart and head; without God, without hopedead indeed!
Truly, as one writer has said, We lose our life when we lose our innocence; we are dead when we are guilty; we are in hell when we are in shame.
Death does not take a long time to come upon us; it comes on the very day of our sin. In the day when thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. Before that sentence there is no hope, except in these words spoken of the seed of woman against that old serpent, Satan; It shall bruise thy head the first prophecy of the wonderful gift of Gods Son.
Of
CAIN AND ABEL
we appreciate the contrast! The self-righteousness on the part of one; self-abasement on the part of the other. Cains saying, The fruit of mine own hands shall suffice for my justification before God; Abel saying, Without the shedding of blood there is no remission, and that spirit of Cain dominates the early society, as we have already seen; for while the population grew rapidly, sin kept pace, and even seemed swifter still. From self-righteousness they rushed to envy, to murder, and to lust.
The Pharisee may thank God that he is not as other men are, but history is likely to demonstrate the want of occasion for his boasting, for pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
The most dangerous man is the man who recognizes no dependence upon another than himself; and the man most likely to be an extortioner, to be unjust, the man most apt to be an adulterer, yea, even a murderer, is this same Cain who says, See the fruit of my hands. The youthful Chicago murderers thought their fine family connections and their university educations would save them from suspicion and condemnation! I tell you, it is the humble man who is justified in Gods sight!
The man who cries, God be merciful to me a sinnerrather than the man who wipes his lips and says, I am clean, and is offended when you talk to him of the necessity of purifying Blood in which to baptize his soulhe is the man who is justified in Gods sight.
THE FIFTH CHAPTER
covers a period of about 1,500 years, and contains but one great name, not introduced in the other chapters, and this is the name of Enoch. Note that his greatness consisted in the single fact that he walked with God.
Dr. Dixon said, He did not try to induce God to walk with him. He simply fell in with Gods ways and work.
Some one asked Abraham Lincoln to appoint a day of fasting and prayer that God might be on the side of the Northern Army. To this that noble President replied, Dont bother about what side God is on. He is on the right side. You simply get with Him.
Enoch was an every-day hero! Walking patiently, persistently, continuously is harder than flying. They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. Like Enoch of old, they shall not see death, for God shall take them, and before their translation they shall have this testimony that they please God.
We have said that this fifth chapter covers 1,500 years. I call you to note the fact that it contains a multitude of names; names that even the best of Bible students do not, and cannot call. Nobody has ever committed them to memory; nobody cares to. They are not worth it. They were given to no noble deeds; they lived and died. The only wonder we have about them is that God let some of them live so long, unless it be that we also wonder how they managed to live so long and accomplish so little. Yet these nonentities have a part in Gods plan. They were bringing forth children; grandchildren came, and great grandchildren, and the children of great-grandchildren until Enoch was born, and by and by Noah; then the whole line was noble from Seth, Adams better of the living sons, down to these great names. It is worth while for a family to be continued for a thousand years, if, at the end of that time, one son can be born into the house who shall bring things to pass; one Enoch who shall walk with God; one Noah who shall save the race! There are people who are greatly distressed because their parents were neither lords, dukes nor even millionaires. They seem to think that the child who is to come to much must descend from a father of superior reputation at least. History testifies to the contrary, and shows us that the noblest are often born into unknown houses. The most gifted sons, the most wonderful daughters have been bred by parents of whom the great world never heard until these children, by their fame, called attention to their humble fathers.
The multiplied concessions that advocates of the evolution theory are obliged to make by facts they face at every turn, excite almost tender pity for them. Professor Conklin, in his volume The Direction of Human Evolution puts forth an endeavor in splendid defense of this hypothesis worthy of a better cause, and yet again and again he is compelled to say the things that disprove his main proposition. Consider these words. Think of the great men of unknown lineage, and the unknown men of great lineage; think of the close relationship of all persons of the same race; of the wide distribution of good and bad traits in the whole population; of incompetence and even feeble-mindedness in great families, and of genius and greatness in unknown families, and say whether natural inheritance supports the claims of aristocracy or of democracy.
When we remember that most of the great leaders of mankind came of humble parents; that many of the greatest geniuses had the most lowly origin; that Shakespeare was the son of a bankrupt butcher and an ignorant woman who could not write her name, that as a youth he is said to have been known more for poaching than for scholarship, and that his acquaintance with the London theatres began by his holding horses for their patrons; that Beethovens mother was a consumptive, the daughter of a cook, and his father a confirmed drunkard; that Schuberts father was a peasant by birth and his mother a domestic servant; that Faraday, perhaps the greatest scientific discoverer of any age, was born over a stable, his father a poor sick black-smither, his mother an ignorant drudge, and his only education obtained in selling newspapers on the streets of London and later in working as apprentice to a book-binder; that the great Pasteur was the son of a tanner; that Lincolns parents were accounted poor white trash and his early surroundings and education most unpromising; and so on through the long list of names in which democracy glories when we remember these we may well ask whether aristocracy can show a better record. The law of entail is aristocratic, but the law of Mendel is democratic.
Quaint old Thomas Fuller wrote many years ago in his Scripture Observations,
I find, Lord, the genealogy of my Saviour strangely checkered with four remarkable changes in four immediate generations:
1. Roboam begat Abia, that is a bad father and a bad son.
2. Abia begat Asa, that is a bad father a good son.
3. Asa begat Josaphat, that is a good father a good son.
4. Josaphat begat Joram, that is a good father a bad son.
I can see, Lord, from hence that my fathers piety cannot be entailed; that is bad news for me. But I see also that actual impiety is not always hereditary; that is good news for my son.
It is not so much a question as to your birth, or to the line in which you are, as to the nobleness of the family tree, as it is what sort of a branch you are; what sort of a branch you may become.
The Duke of Modena flung a taunt at a Cardinal in a controversy, reminding him that his father was only a swineherd of the Dukes father. The Cardinal calmly replied, If your father had been my fathers swineherd, you would have been a swineherd still.
In the race of life it does not make so much difference where we start as how we end.
I do not mean to despise the laws of heredity. They are somewhat fixed, wise and wonderful. The child of a good father has the better chance in this world, beyond doubt. But our plea is that no matter who the fathers are, we may so live that our offspring shall be named by all succeeding generations. I call attention to Enoch in illustration.
About
NOAH
four chapters or more enwrap themselves. Gods man has a large place in history. It is hard enough for Him to find one who is faithful, but when found He always has an important commission for him.
The most important commission ever given to any man was given to this man; namely, that of saving the race. Noah did his best, but when he saw that he was not succeeding with the outside world, he turned his hope to himself as the last resort; to his family as his possible associates. That is always the last resort. Man must save himself, or he can save no one else. The man who saves himself by letting God save him, stands a good chance of being accepted by his own family, and his faith will doubtless find its answer in their salvation as well. Even if it fail with the outside world, that world will be compelled to remember, when Gods judgment comes, that this commissioned one did what he could for them.
In Hebrews we read, By faith Noah moved with fear prepared an ark to the saving of his house. The fear of man bringeth a snare. The fear of God effects salvation. The fear of man makes a coward; the fear of God incites courage. The fear of man means defeat; the fear of God accomplishes success. Be careful whom you fear! I like the man who can tremble before the Father of all. I pity the man who trembles before the face of every earthly foe.
The story is told that two men were commissioned by Wellington to go on a dangerous errand. As they galloped along, one looked at the other, saying, You are scared. Yes, replied his comrade, I am, but I am still more afraid not to do what the commander said. The first turned his horse and galloped back to the Generals tent and said, Sir, you have sent me with a coward. When I looked at him last his face was livid with fear and his form trembled like a leaf. Well, said Wellington, you had better hurry back to him, or he will have the mission performed before you get there to aid. As the man started back he met his comrade, who said, You need not go. I have performed the mission already.
It was through Noah that the Lord gave to humanity a fresh start. God is always doing that. It is the meaning of every revolutionGod overrules it for a fresh start. That is the meaning of wars they may be Satanic in origin, but God steps in often and uses for a fresh start. That is the meaning of the wiping out of nationsa fresh start, and man is always doing what he did at the firstfalling again.
Noah was a righteous man; with his family he made up the whole company of those who had been loyal to God, and one might vainly imagine that from such a family only deeds of honor, of valor, acts of righteousness would be known to earth. Alas for our hope in the best of men!
He has scarcely set foot upon dry ground when we read, (Gen 9:20-21), Noah began to be a husbandman and he planted a vineyard, and he drank of the wine, and was drunken, and he was uncovered in his tent, and down the race went again! Man has fallen, and his nakedness is uncovered before God, and the shame of it is seen by his own blood and bone. Truly, by the deeds of the law no flesh shall be justified in His sight, because our deeds are not worthy of it. Faith becomes the only foundation of righteousness. That is what the eleventh chapter of Hebrews was written to teach us. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he, and when once a man has fixed his faith in the living God, and keeps it there, the God in whom he trusts keeps him, and that is his only hope. For by grace are ye saved through faith and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast (Eph 2:8-9).
NIMROD
the principal personage in the tenth chapter has his offices given. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord, and he was a king. The beginning of his kingdom by Babel and Erich, and Accad and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.
Our attention has been called to the fact that before this chapter, nations are unknown, but now established government appears. Chapter 9:6 is the basis of it, and in Rom 13:2-4 we see that God set the seal of His approval upon it. Nimrod comes forth as the first autocrat and conqueror. One can almost hear the marches to and fro of the people in this chapter; cities are going up and civilization doubtless thought it was making advance, but how far it advances we shall speedily see.
The things in its favor were dexterously employed. Some wise men suddenly remembered that they all had one speech and said, We ought to make the most of it. True, as Joseph Parker says, Wise men are always getting up schemes that God has to bring to naught. Worldly wise men have been responsible for the most of the confusion our civilization has seen. Men who get together in the places of Shinar and embark in real estate, and lay out great projects and pull in unsuspecting associates, and start up tremendous enterprises, and say, under their breath, in their secret meetings, We will get unto ourselves a great name. We will exalt ourselves to heaven, and after the world has done obeisance to us, we will walk among the angels and witness them bow down; but God still lives and reigns. The men who count themselves greatest are, in His judgment, the least; and those that reckon themselves most farseeing, He reckons the most foolish; and those who propose to get into Heaven by ways of their own appointment, He shuts out altogether and drives them from His presence, and they become wandering stars, reserved for the blackness of darkness; for we must learn that self-exaltation brings Gods abasement. He that exalteth himself shall be humbled, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. God is willing that man shall come to Heaven but, as some one has said, If we ever get to Heaven at all, it will not be by the dark and rickety staircases of our own invention, but on the ladder of Gods love in Christ Jesus.
God is willing that we should have a mansion, but the mansion of His desire is not the wooden or brick structure that would totter and fall, but the building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. God is willing that we should dwell in towers, but not the towers of pride and pomp, but those of righteousness wrought out for us in Christ Jesus.
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
CRITICAL NOTES.
Gen. 8:4. Ararat] A region nearly in the middle of Armenia, between the Araxes and the lakes Van and Urumia (2Ki. 19:37, Isa. 37:38 : [land of Armenia, lit. of Ararat], even now called by the Armenians Ararat, on the mountains of which the Ark of Noah rested; sometimes used in a wider sense of the whole of Armenia (Jer. 51:27) itself. (Gesenius.) It is especially the present Aghri Dagh or the great Ararat (Pers. Kuhi Nuch, i.e. Noahs mountain, in the classics , Armen. massis) and Kutshuk Dagh or little Ararat. (Furst.) As the drying wind most probably came from the east or north, it is likely that the ark was drifted towards Asia Minor, and caught land on some hill in the reaches of the Euphrates. It cannot be supposed that it rested on either of the peaks now called Ararat, as Ararat was a country, not a mountain, and these peaks do not seem suitable for the purpose. (Murphy.)
Gen. 8:5. And the waters decreased] In the Heb. the construction here so changes as to impart a dramatic life and variety to the composition. Following the idiom of the original, we may render Gen. 8:4-5 thus: Then does the ark rest, in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the mountains of Ararat. But the WATERS have come to be going on and decreasing as far as the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, have appeared the tops of the mountains. Note the emphasis thrown on THE WATERS, and the contrast thereby implied: as much as to say, The ark becomes stationary; not so THE WATERSTHEY go on decreasing for more than two months more. As nature abhors a vacuum, so does the sacred story abhor monotony. As it progresses, the feeling changes, the lights and shades are altered; under-tones are heard, glimpses of new views are caught. The ever-varying manner of the original should delight the student and admonish the public reader and the preacher.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Gen. 8:1-5
THE GRADUAL CESSATION OF DIVINE RETRIBUTION
I. That it is marked by a rich manifestation of Divine mercy to those who have survived the terrible retribution. And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark. We are not to imagine from this verse, that God, had at any time during the flood, been unmindful of the ark and its privileged inhabitants, but simply that now He has them in especial remembrance, being about to deliver them from their temporary confinement. The Divine mercy is always rich toward man, but especially toward the good, in critical junctures of their history. Noah was indeed in a position to appreciate the loving attentions of heaven. Nor was the Divine remembrance limited to Noah and his relatives, but it extended to the animals under his care; thus extensive and all including is the providence of God in its beneficent design toward the wide universe.
1. Gods remembrance of his creatures during the cessation of retribution is merciful. True, Noah was a good man, and, in entering the ark, was obeying a Divine command, but what intrinsic right had he to such distinguished protection, and to the special remembrance of heaven? He could only receive it as the unmerited gift of God. God remembers the good in their afflictions, and that he does so is the outcome of His own merciful disposition toward them. Men would only get their desert if they were left to perish in the ark, on the wide waste of water on which it sails. Anything short of this is of Gods abundant compassion.
2. Gods remembrance of his creatures during the cessation of retribution is welcome. We can readily imagine that the ark would not be the most comfortable abode for Noah and his comrades, it would be confined in its space, and certainly not over choice in its companionships or select in its cargo. And while it was admirably adapted to the immediate use for which it was constructed, yet we doubt not that its occupants would be glad to escape from its imprisonment. The Divine remembrance of them at this time was the herald of their freedom; now they will soon tread the solid but silent earth again. Gods remembrance of His creatures after times of judgment, is generally the signal of good concerning them, the token of greater liberty, and of enhanced joy, even in the secular realm of life.
3. Gods remembrance of his creatures during the cessation of retribution is condescending. That the Divine King of heaven should give even a transient thought to a few individuals and animals, sailing on a wide sea, in an ark of rude construction, is indeed as great a mystery as condescension, and is evidence of the care which He extends to all His works. And thus it is that God adapts Himself to the moral character of man, and to the condition of all human creatures, in that he drowns the wicked in judgment, but remembers his servants in love. Thus He makes known His attributes to the race.
II. That it is marked by the outgoing and operation of appropriate physical agencies. And God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged. There have been many conjectures in reference to the nature and operation of this wind; some writers say that it was the Divine Spirit moving upon the waters, and others, that it was the heat of the sun whereby the waters were dried up. We think controversy on this matter quite unnecessary, as there can be little doubt that the wind was miraculous, sent by God to the purpose it accomplished. He controls the winds. Jonah in the storm. The disciples in the tempest. And He would thus send out a great wind to agitate the waters that they might cease from covering the earth. God often sends his ordinary messengers on extraordinary errands. He has not to create or originate new forces to achieve new tasks, He can adapt the existing condition of nature to all the exigencies of life. And thus it happens that the cold bitter winds that blight our hopes, are sometimes commissioned to assuage our sorrows; one agency may be employed in manifold service. Hence we cannot antecedently estimate results by the agencies employed. The Divine Being generally works by instrumentality.
1. Appropriate.
2. Effective.
3. Natural. And in this way is the cessation of divine retribution brought about.
III. That it is marked by a staying and removal of the destructive agencies which have hitherto prevailed. The fountains also of the great deep, and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained; and the waters returned from off the earth continually; and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated. And thus when the destructive elements have done their work, they are restrained by the authority which gave them their commission to go forth. There are perhaps few nations on the face of the globe but have experienced times of famine and pestilence, and how glad have been the indications that these destructive agencies have stayed their raging. These fierce agencies of the material universe, when let loose upon man, make terrible havoc; are almost irresistible; will neither yield to entreaty or to skill. They have their time, and when their mission is accomplished they return to their original tranquillity. Here we see:
1. That the destructive agencies of the universe are awakened by sin.
2. That the destructive agencies of the universe are subdued by the power and grace of God.
3. That the destructive agencies of the universe are occasional and not habitual in their rule. The deluge of waters was not the frequent phenomenon of nature. but was a miracle wrought for the purposes of the degenerate age. The fierce agencies of the universe are under Divine control, they are not supreme, but are the emissaries of holy justice. The most awful retributions of God come to an end, and break again into the clear shining of His mercy.
IV. That it is marked by a gradual return to the ordinary things and method of life. And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen. Thus the tops of the mountains were visible, though they would not be seen by the inmates of the ark, as the window was not in a convenient position to admit of this, and they would not be able to open the door. And so the retributive judgments of God return to the ordinary ways of life, they do not permanently set aside the original purpose of creation. This return to the ordinary condition of nature is:
1. Continuous.
2. Rapid.
3. Minutely chronicled. The world is careful to note the day on which appeared the first indication of returning joy, when after a long period of sorrow the mountain tops of hope were again visible. It is fixed in the memory. It is written in the book. It is celebrated as a festival. LESSONS:
1. That the judgments of God, though long and severe, will come to an end.
2. That the cessation of Divine judgment is a time of hope for the good.
3. That the cessation of Divine judgment is the commencement of a new era in the life of man.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Gen. 8:1. Gods gracious ones may be regarded as forsaken by the Lord. (Psa. 13:1).
Gods free grace keepeth his saints in mind when they seem to be forgotten.
The manifestation of Gods care and help to his desolate ones is joined with his remembrance of them.
God careth for the lower creatures for the sake of his Church.
Grace can create means, and render them effectual to salvation.
At the call of God, that which would otherwise enrage the waters, shall appease them.
God repeals his judgment by means, as well as imposeth them.
And God remembered Noah. He might begin to think that God had forgotten him, having not heard from God for five months together, and not yet seeing how he could possibly escape. He had been a whole year in the ark; and now was ready to groan out that doleful Usquequo Domine: Hast thou forgotten to be merciful? etc. But forgetfulness befalls not the Almighty. The butler may forget Joseph, his fathers house; Ahasuerus may forget Mordecai; and the delivered city the poor man that by his wisdom preserved it (Ecc. 9:15). The Sichemites may forget Gideon; but God is not unfaithful to forget your work and labour of love, saith the Apostle (Heb. 6:10). And there is a book of remembrance written before him, saith the prophet, for them that fear the Lord. (Mal. 3:16.) A metaphor from kings that commonly keep a calendar or chronicle of such as have done them good service: as Ahasuerus (Est. 6:1), and Talmerlane, who had a catalogue of their names and good deserts, which he daily perused, oftentimes saying that day to be lost wherein he had not given them something. God also is said to have such a book of remembrance. Not that he hath so, or needeth to have; for all things, both past and future, are present with him: he hath the idea of them within himself, and every thought is before his eyes, so that he cannot be forgetful. But he is said to remember his people (so he is pleased to speak to our capacity) when he showed his care of us, and makes good his promise to us. We also are said to be his remembrancers (Isa. 62:6) when we plead his promise, and press him to performance. Not that we persuade him thereby to do us good, but we persuade our own hearts to more faith, love, obedience, etc., whereby we become more capable of that good.(Trapp).
Gen. 8:2-3. And the rain from heaven was restrained. These four keys, says the Rabbins, God keeps under his own girdle:
1. Of the womb;
2. Of the grave;
3. Of the rain;
4. Of the heart. He openeth, and no man shutteth; he shutteth, and no man openeth. (Rev. 3:7.)(Trapp).
Gods method of healing is contrary to that of wounding. Wind, fountains of deep, and windows of heaven are at Gods disposal.
All creatures move with agility and constancy at Gods word for the deliverance of the Church.
God has his set time, and at that moment judgments must cease, and salvation appear to his saints.
Gen. 8:4-5. No hazards shall prevent the means appointed for the safety of the Church from perfecting it. The tossing of waters shall not endanger the ark, so long as God steers it.
God vouchsafes a partial rest unto his Church below, as an earnest of the full.
Time and place are appointed by God for performing mercy to his Church.
Waters must go and fall for the comfort of the Church, under the command of God.
Mercies are measured to months and days.
God gives His Church mercy, and to see it.
Now this mountain of Ararat is at least, according to the statements of the most recent visitors, 17,000 feet in height, that is to say, rather more than three times the height of the highest mountain in Scotland, Well, then, if the waters of the flood rose to such a height that they covered its summit, and by subsiding, enabled the ark to rest quietly on that summit, I cannot see how it is possible to escape the conclusion, which Hitchcock in his work on geology denies, however, that the waters did cover the whole habitable globe, round and round. The assertions of Scripture are so broad and so strong, that I cannot see how to escape their force. And then, the language is repeated: abated from off the earth.The waters prevailed upon the earth. Now, let any honest, impartial reader of this chapter say what would be the impression upon his mind; and I am sure it would be, that the flood there described was universal. And, as I stated before, if the flood was not universal, if it was topical, why did Noah take into the ark creatures found in every climate of the earth? For instance, the raven, I believe, exists almost everywhere; the dove certainly is found in eastern, western, northern, and southern latitudes. What was the use of preserving a bird that must have lived everywhere? And, when the dove went out of the ark, why did she return to it? If you let out a dove between this and Boulogne, you will find that it will fly to the nearest dry land, probably to its own dovecote, as carrier-pigeons, it is well known, do. If this flood had not been universal, when the dove was let out, with its immense rapidity of wing, it would have soon reached that part of the globe that was not covered by the flood; but she found no rest for the sole of her foot: and the presumption, therefore, is, that the whole face of the earth was covered by this deluge.(Dr. Cumming.)
1. The first difficulty in the way of supposing the flood to have been literally universal, is the great quantity of water that would have been requisite.
2. A second objection to such a universality is, the difficulty of providing for the animals in the ark.
3. The third and most important objection to this universality of the deluge is derived from the facts brought to light by modern science, respecting the distribution of animals and plants on the globe.(Hitchcock.)
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY THE
REV. WM. ADAMSON
Longings! Gen. 8:1. As prisoners in castles look out of their grated windows at the smiling landscape, where the sun comes and goes; as we, from this life, as from dungeon bars, look forth to the heavenly land, and are refreshed with sweet visions of the home that shall be ours when we are free. And no doubt the longings of Noah and his family were intensely deep for the hour when once more they could leave their floating prison to rest beneath sunny skies, and to ramble amid verdant fields. So does the new creature groan and travail in pain for the moment when it shall be freed from this body of death, and rest upon the sunny slopes of the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. But patience! and thine eyes shall see, not in a swift glance cast, but for eternity, the land that is far off:
Yes! though the land be very far away,
A step, a moment, ends the toil, for thee;
Then changing grief for gladness, night for day,
Thine eyes shall see.Havergal.
Judgments! Gen. 8:5. After the tossings cease the window is opened, and the tops of the mountains are seen. Its light shines in from the new world. What is at first seen appears isolated. The waters still only permit glimpses, unconnected glimpses of the coming new earth. Yet there it is; and the hill tops are pledges of untold and unknown scenes of future joy. For many a day Noah, the spiritual man, has been shut up; but now the floods of regenerating judgment assuage, and the light breaks in. Now the new man belongs to the new creation; for the old man and his monstrous progeny are destroyed, and
Mercys voice
Is now heard pleading in the ear of God.
Safety! Gen. 8:1. A ship was sailing in the Northern Sea, with wind and tide and surface current all against her. She was unable to make way. In this emergency the captain observed a majestic iceberg moving slowly and steadily in the very direction he desired to take. Perceiving that there was an undercurrent far below the surface, and acting on the extended base of the iceberg, he fastened his vessel to the mass of ice, and was carried surely and safely on his course against the wind and wave. Noah anchored his ark to the Providence of God. No sails were unfurled to the breeze, no oars were unshipped to move the lumbering ark, no rudder was employed to steer. The Providence of God was deeper than the winds and wave and contrary current; and to that, he fastened his barque with the strong cable of faith. Hence the security of the ark with its living freight:
Let cold-mouthed Boreas, or the hot-mouthed East,
Blow till they burst with spite;
All this may well confront, all this shall neer confound me.Quarles.
Protection! Gen. 8:4. Years ago, one of our fleets was terribly shattered by a violent gale. It was found that one of the ships was unaffected by the fierce tumult and commotion. Why? Because it was in what mariners designate so forcibly the eye of the storm. Noah was so situated. While all was desolation, he was safe. The storm of wind and rain and watery floods might toss and roar and leap; Noahs ark was at restsafe in the eye of the storm. And just as the ships compass is so adjusted as to keep its level amidst all the heavings of the sea; so the heaven-built structure was calm amid encircling billows. Amid the fluctuations of the sea of life, the Christian soul remains undisturbedcalm amid tumultuous motionin the eye of the storm.
Leave then thy foolish ranges,
For none can thee secure
But One who never changes,
Thy God, thy life, thy cure.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
PART TWENTY-TWO:
THE WORLD AFTER THE FLOOD
(Gen. 8:1-22; Gen. 9:1-29)
1. The Subsidence of the Flood (Gen. 8:1-14).
And God remembered Noah, and all the beasts, and all the cattle that were with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged; 2 the fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained; 3 and the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of a hundred and fifty days, the waters decreased. 4 And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. 5 And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen. 6 And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made: 7 and he sent forth a raven, and it went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth. 8 And he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground; 9 but the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him to the ark: for the waters were on the face of the whole earth: and he put forth his hand, and took her, and brought her in unto him into the ark. 10 And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark; 11 and the dove came in to him at eventide; and, lo, in her mouth an olive-leaf plucked off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. 12 And he stayed yet other seven days, and sent forth the dove; and she returned not again unto him any more. 13 And it came to pass in the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth; and Noah removed the covering of the Ark, and looked, and, behold the face of the ground was dried. 14 And in the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dry
2. The Chronology of the Flood,
(1) Noah entered the Ark on the 17th day of the second month of the 600th year of his life (Gen. 7:11). The earth was found to be dry on the 27th day of the second month of the 601st year of his life (Gen. 8:14). On the basis of a thirty-day month, this means that the duration of the Flood was 371 days. (This total is computed as follows: Of the 600th year of Noahs life, the 14 remaining days of the second month must be added to the 300 days of the next ten months; that is, 314 days in all. [Note that Noah removed the covering of the Ark on the first day of the first month of the next (601st) year of Noahs life (Gen. 8:13), hence it follows that 314 days elapsed between the entrance into the Ark, and the removal of the covering of the Ark.] Now, of the 601st year of Noahs life, to the first month of 30 days must be added the 27 days of the second month, that is, 57 days in all. The two figures, 314 days and 57 days, give us a total of 371 days of Noahs life that were spent in the Ark. These figures serve as a framework for determining the details that we get, on breaking down the various phases of the duration of the Flood.)
(2) These 371 days break down into two general parts: the period of prevailing (Gen. 7:24) and the period of assuaging or abating (Gen. 8:1).
(3) The period of prevailing began with torrential rains extending over a period of 40 days (Gen. 7:12); then followed an additional rise of the waters for 110 days (as a consequence of the awesome terrestrial, oceanic, seismic, and stratospheric forces that were unleashed); that is, 150 days in all (Gen. 7:24).
(4) The period of abating (Gen. 8:1) included a phase of decrease which extended from the 17th day of the seventh month to the 1st day of the tenth month (Gen. 8:4-5), that is, 13 plus 30 plus 30 plus 1, or 74 days in all; an additional forty days until Noah sent forth the raven (Gen. 8:6-7); then seven days (by implication of the phrase, Gen. 8:10, other seven days) until he sent forth the dove the first time (Gen. 8:8), another seven days until he sent forth the dove a second time (Gen. 8:10-11), and still another seven days until he sent forth the dove the third and last time (Gen. 8:12). It will thus be seen that we have now accounted for 150 plus 74 plus 40 plus 21 days, or 285 in all. But the chronology of Noahs life, as given above, in which we find that 314 days elapsed between the entering into the Ark and the removal of the covering of the Ark (Gen. 8:13) indicates a period of 29 days between these two events (314 minus 285 days: cf. again Gen. 7:11 and Gen. 8:13). And it was 57 days after this that the whole earth was found to be dry enough for the disembarkation (Gen. 8:14). (It should be noted that only the face of the ground was found to be dry when the covering of the Ark was removed, Gen. 8:13). Adding all these figures, 40 plus 110 plus 74 plus 40 plus 21 plus 29 plus 57, we have a total of 371 days between the occupancy of the Ark and the withdrawal therefrom. (See E. F. Kevan, NBD, 427).
(5) There certainly is a noticeable lack of any discrepancy in these various figures. For example: (a) After the waters had prevailed upon the earth 150 days, they began to assuage (Gen. 8:1). (b) On the same day the Ark rested on the mountains of Ararat (Urartu of Assyrian inscriptions) between the lakes of Van and Urmia. That is, the 17th day of the seventh month, the day on which the Ark came to rest (Gen. 8:4) was exactly 150 days after the Flood began on the 17th day of the second month (Gen. 7:11). (Note well: The circumstances that, from the beginning of rainfall to the grounding of the Ark on seems not to be an insoluble problem, Evidently they returned to the sources whence they came, that is, all that were not congealed in polar icecaps and glacial beds, or buried in newly formed subterranean seas, ButIs there enough water on our planet to cover the entire earth) Eminent authorities tell us: (a) that the proportion of land area to water area on the earth is about three-tenths to seven-tenths (that is, there is more than twice as much water as land); (b) that the average depth of the ocean is twelve times the average height of the land surface (hence, if deeper parts of the ocean and the highest elevations of land were brought to an average level, a world-wide ocean that would cover the entire earth to the depth of one and one-half miles would be produced); (c) that, moreover, if the water now stored in the form of ice at the polar icecaps and glacial beds were released, the volume of the ocean would be raised by one hundred and fifty feet; (d) that if in addition to all these changes, there were others of a cataclysmic nature, such as the rise of sea beds and the sinking of continents, there is no difficulty whatever to find enough water for a flood that would cover the whole earth. And it must be remembered that even though God apparently unleashed natural forces in bringing on the Flood, the fact still remains that the phenomenon as a whole was essentially supernatural in character. We do not propose here to set limits to the power of God nor to enter into a controversy with the Lord Jesus Christ. We see no reason for assuming, however, that the Genesis Flood was in any respect a violation of the natural fact that the water cycle on our planet operates in a closed system.
(9) God remembered Noah and all the creatures with him in the Ark. (Gen. 8:1). Lange (CDHCG, 309): God has always remembered Noahbut now he remembers him in a special sensethat he may accomplish his deliverance. There comes a turn in the flood, and the ground of it lay in the government of God. To the rule of judgment upon the human world, succeeds the rule of compassion for the deliverance of Noah and humanity, as also of the animal-world. It is his compassion, not simply his grace. For God also remembered the beasts. God remembers the survivors in mercy (cf. Gen. 19:29; Gen. 30:22). God remembers mans sins when He punishes them (cf. Psa. 25:7), and the needs of His people when He supplies them (Neh. 5:19). One wonders if Noah, throughout all those dark days in the Ark, did not become depressed by a feeling that God must have forgotten him. (Cf. the words of Moses, Num. 11:11-15; those of Habakkuk the prophet [Gen. 1:2-4]; those of the Psalmist, Gen. 44:24; and especially the cry of Jesus from the Cross, Mat. 27:46). But even when we seem lost to everything else we are not lost to God. In Whittiers words:
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care.
And God also remembered the animals with Noah in the Ark, a touching indication of the tenderness of God toward His creatures. Skinner (ICCG, 165): The inclusion of the animals in the kindly thought of the Almighty is a touch of nature which should not be overlooked. (Cf. Deu. 25:4; Psa. 36:6; Psa. 145:9; Psa. 145:15-16; Jon. 4:11). The passage is anthropomorphic, of course, essentially anthropopathic: it has been said rightly that the most God could do for man was to supply him with an anthropomorphic image of Himself.
(10) The Raven and the Dove. The raven, an unclean bird, a bird of prey capable of sustaining itself by feeding on carrion, was a creature especially fitted for the mission imposed upon it. This bird was evidently so named because of its black color (cf. Pro. 30:17, Son. 5:11): note the Latin equivalent corvus. There are numerous references to the dove in Scripture (e.g., Lev. 5:7; Lev. 12:6 [its use for sacrificial purposes]; Psa. 68:13 [its beautiful plumage]; Psa. 55:6 [its power of flight]; Isa. 38:14; Isa. 59:11 [its plaintive cry]; Mat. 10:16 [its gentleness]). The dove is also an emblem of the purity and gentleness of the Holy Spirit: cf. Mat. 3:16-17, Luk. 3:21-22, Joh. 1:32-34, Act. 10:38, Owen (DHS, 46): At the beginning of the old creation, the Spirit of God moved on the waters, cherishing and communicating a prolific, vivifying quality to the whole, as a dove gently moves upon its eggs, communicating vital heat; so at the new creation, He comes as a dove upon Him who was the immediate author of it. Skinner (ICCG, 156): The description of the return and admission of the dove is unsurpassed . . . for tenderness and beauty of imagination. Note also the account of the freshly plucked olive-leaf (Gen. 8:11). The olive tree did not grow at great altitudes, and is said to have flourished even under water. The olive branch is frequently mentioned in ancient literature as an emblem of peace. Brownville (SHS, 23): As John describes the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, he distinctly says that the Spirit is to remain as an abiding presence in Him [Christ: cf. Joh. 1:29-34]. Referring back to the experience of Noah, we remember that when the window of the ark was opened for the third time and the dove sent forth, it did not return but went to its abiding-place on the cleansed earth. Thus the Holy Spirit did not go back into heaven, but abode in Jesus in all His fullness. This fullness of the Spirit was His not only at all times in the Incarnation, but eternally; we cannot divide the Trinity of the Godhead. But here it is manifest, that we might believe and understand. Marsh (EHS, 918): Noahs dove came forth from the ark. Gods Dove came from heaven. There are two thoughts suggested by this. As the dove came forth from the ark, the ark being a type of Christ, so the Holy Spirit, because of what Christ is, and has done, comes forth to the earth of mans iniquity; and to tell him of the only ark of salvation wherein he can find safety and peace. The lighting of the Holy Spirit on Christ as the Dove proclaims two things; first, He could come as the Dove on the Lamb of God, for there was a correspondence between the spotlessness of Gods Lamb and the gentleness of Gods Dove. Second, He came upon Christ as the Dove, to qualify Him for his ministry, and to act through Him in blessing to others. Again: What were the results from the sending forth of the dove from the ark, and the coming of the Spirit upon Christ? There were three sendings forth of the dove from the ark. The first time it found no rest for the sole of its feet, and returned to the ark. Josephus says that the dove came back to Noah with her wings and feet all muddy. May we not take this as illustrative of the fact that in all the missions of the Spirit, from the Fall to the coming of Christ, He always had to bear testimony to mans sin and iniquity? . . . The second time the dove came back to the ark with an olive-leaf in its mouth, which is significantly said to be plucked off. The word means, to be freshly torn from the tree. The Hebrew word Taraph comes from a root which means to tear in pieces, and is generally used to describe the action of wild beasts in rending their prey to pieces. It is rendered rent in pieces in Gen. 37:33, where Jacob takes it for granted that Joseph had been killed by a wild beast when he sees blood-stained garments of Joseph. The same root is given as ravening in Psa. 22:13, where Christ speaks of the wicked who were surrounding Him like a lot of wild beasts. Rotherham translates this verse, They have opened wide their mouth, a lion rending and roaring. Putting these Scriptures together, do they not suggest to us the thought, that as the olive-leaf was torn off, and the dove bore in its mouth this emblem of peace, so the Holy Spirit bears testimony to the death of Christ, Who was cut off out of the land of the living for our transgressions, and now proclaims that Christ has made peace by the blood of His cross? The third time the dove came forth from the ark it did not return, It had found a resting-place. So with the Holy Spirit. He had gone to and fro from the presence of the Lord, in Old Testament times, finding no resting-place, but when He beheld the One in Whom God delighted, then He rested upon Him. The first three gospels mention that the Spirit descended or lighted upon Christ; but John adds, the Spirit abode upon Him. The Greek word meno means to dwell, and is so rendered again and again, God rested after His creative work; Christ in figure having accomplished His redemptive work, rests in the sanctification of God (Heb. 4:10); and now the Spirit rests upon Christ, henceforth to find His permanent abode in Him. All His mission emanates from Christ, all His blessings are found in Him, all His instructions are from Him, all His ministry is toward Him, all His unfoldings are about Him, all His aim is to enhance His glory, and all His working in the believer is to reproduce Him, . . . Why is the Holy Spirit given to believers? For the same reason that the dove came to Noah, and the Spirit came upon Christ. First, to assure us that for us the judgment of sin is past, for the storm has burst upon Christ and has exhausted itself upon Him. Second, to take up His abode in the mystical body of Christ through our union with the Head, and to impart His nature and infuse His grace in every part. . . . We can only rise to the dove-like character as we have the fullness of the Dove-like Indweller, This author goes on to name the chief characteristics of the dove as purity (Song of S. Gen. 2:14, Gen. 6:8-9; cf. Eph. 5:22-23, Joh. 3:29; Rev. 21:2; Rev. 22:17, 2Co. 11:2; Col. 3:12; 1Pe. 2:5; Gal. 5:22-25); as cleanness, hence suitable for sacrifice; as gentleness of manner (cf. Mat. 5:3; Mat. 5:5; Mat. 5:9; Mat. 10:16; Rom. 8:9); and as constancy (cf. Rom. 12:1; 1Co. 15:58; Rev. 2:7; Rev. 2:11; Rev. 2:17; Rev. 3:3; Rev. 3:12; Rev. 3:21). (Doves, we are told, are strictly monogamous). The very fact that the dove could be offered in sacrifice is proof that it was a clean bird. Two of the characteristics of a clean bird were that it could fly and that it did not feed upon flesh. All grain-feeding birds that did not feed upon flesh were clean. The difference between a raven and the dove is plainly to be seen in the two which were sent out of the ark. The raven did not come back into the ark; it undoubtedly found carrion outside upon which to feed; but the dove was forced by the necessity of hunger to come back to Noah. The Holy Spirit is very particular about the food upon which He feeds. His one aim and ministry is associated with the Word of God. He finds His satisfaction in making known the message God has given Him to reveal. He is the Inditer of the Word, and He is also the Explainer of it (Marsh, EHS, 18). Biederwolf (HSHS, 178): Think of the many beautiful characteristics of a dove. How lovely was the character of Jesus because of these dove-like traits, sweet-tempered and gentle, yet just like Him may we be. There is gentleness, tenderness, loveliness, innocence, mildness, peace, purity, patienceall this and more for him in whose heart is made a place for the dove-like Spirit to nestle. J. W. McGarvey (FG, 86): The dove suggests purity, gentleness, peace, etc. In fact the nature of the bird makes it a fit emblem of the Spirit, for it comports well with the fruits of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23). The nations of the earth emblazon eagles upon their banners and lions upon their shields, but He who shall gather all nations into His kingdom appears as a Lamb, and his Spirit appeared under the symbol of a dove. Verily His kingdom is not of this world. It is a kingdom of peace and love, not of bloodshed and ambition. Noahs dove bore the olive branch, the symbol of peace, and the Holy Spirit manifested Jesus, Gods olive branch of peace sent into this world (Psa. 72:7, Luk. 2:14, Joh. 14:27, Eph. 2:11-18).
(11) The Covering of the Ark (Gen. 8:13). Since the word used here, mikseh, is used elsewhere only to designate the third and fourth covering of the ark of the testimony (Exo. 26:14, etc.) and of the holy vessels when the procession was on the march (Num. 4:8; Num. 4:12), a covering made of leather and skins, it has been supposed that this was the kind of covering which Noah removed from the Ark, or, rather, it would seem from the door of the Ark. Lange thinks this does not necessarily follow, in view of the fact that the deck of an ark on which the rain-storms spent their force, must surely be of as great stability as the ark itself (CDHCG, 311). The Jerusalem Bible (p. 23) renders this: Noah lifted back the hatch of the ark and looked out. The surface of the ground was dry. The hatch is defined, in nautical terms, as the covering of an opening in the deck: it would seem that in Noahs ark the opening must have been the door. Was this covering designed to point forward to the Covering (Atonement) for mans burden of sin which was provided by our Lord up the Cross (Joh. 1:29)?
REVIEW QUESTIONS
See Gen. 9:28-29.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
VIII.
(1) God.Elohim. On the Jehovistic theory, one would have expected Jehovah here. (See Excursus.)
Every living thing.See Note on Gen. 7:14.
The waters asswaged.Heb., became still. It is plain from this that the strength of the waters, described in Gen. 7:24, has reference to the violent currents, which still existed up to the end of the one hundred and fiftieth day, after which they ceased.
A wind (comp. the creative wind in Gen. 1:2) began to blow as soon as the rains ceased, or even before, as must necessarily have been the case with so vast a disturbance of the atmosphere; but its special purpose of assuaging the waters only began when the downpour was over. This wind would affect the course of the ark, but scarcely so strongly as the currents of the water.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
1-3. God remembered Noah The ark, containing the seed of the Church and of the human race, a solitary speck in the watery wilderness, was remembered by God . The tokens of that remembrance followed . The providential means by which the land was dried and made once more a habitation for man are now related . Three causes are mentioned: a wind passing over the earth, (toward the sea,) which dispelled the clouds and laid open the earth to the sun, (a land breeze, which carried the clouds seaward;) as a consequence of this, the shutting of the windows of heaven; and, thirdly, the stopping of the fountains of the great deep, which was probably effected by the gradual re-elevation of the land which had been gradually subsiding during the increase of the deluge . As the sun broke through the clouds the waters were thus seen to follow the wind . As the result of these causes the waters subsided. And the waters turned from off the earth, continually turning, and diminished at the end of the hundred and fifty days.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
HISTORY OF THE DELUGE, Gen 6:9 to Gen 8:22.
The traditions of a deluge which at one time covered the whole inhabited earth and swept away the whole human race except a single family, or very few persons, who were saved in an ark, (ship, boat, or raft,) is almost, if not quite, as widely spread as the human race itself. Some terrible event of this character; some dreadful catastrophe that overwhelmed the race in destruction by water, is deeply impressed on the memory of mankind. Among the nations of Western Asia, the Chaldeans, Phrygians, and Phenicians remarkably reproduce the biblical account. Noah is the Xisuthrus of the Chaldee Berosus, while the Sibylline books mention that the earth was peopled by his three sons, one of whom was named Japetus. The traditions of Eastern Asia, as the Persian, Indian, and Chinese, though more or less mixed up with their peculiar mythologies and cosmogonies, are yet unmistakable. The Noah of the Chinese is Fahhe, who escaped from the deluge with his wife, three sons, and three daughters, and was the second father of the human race. In a Chinese Buddhist temple is a beautiful stucco picture of Noah floating in his ark amid the watery deluge, while a dove flies toward the vessel with an olive branch in her beak. ( Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 16: 79.) The Noah of the East Indians is Manu, to whom Bramah announced the approach of the deluge, and bade him build a ship, store it with all kinds of seeds, and then enter into it with seven holy beings. When the flood covered the earth Bramah, in the form of a horned fish, drew the ship through the waters and landed it finally on the loftiest summit of the
Himalaya. Manu was the father of a new race. The Koran relates the story with peculiar amplifications and embellishments, describing, at great length, Noah’s faithful preaching, and picturing its rejection by the scoffing world, stating that one of his sons was among the scoffers, who attempted to escape to a mountain and was drowned before his father’s eyes. In the well-known Greek traditions Noah appears as Ogyges or Deucalion. The story is found in various forms in Pindar and Apollodorus, and is related with graphic power and poetic embellishment by Ovid and Lucian. Lucian describes Deucalion, the single righteous man, putting his family and many kinds of animals into a chest, when a heavy rain fell, and the earth opened, sending forth floods of water by which the greater part of Hellas was submerged, while Deucalion’s chest floated to the top of Parnassus. The traditions of the deluge among the various aboriginal American nations are interesting and remarkable. The Noah of the Aztecs is Coxcox, who saved himself, with his wife, on a raft. Humboldt describes Mexican pictures of this deluge and of the confusion of tongues; the race being represented as dumb after the catastrophe, and a dove being pictured distributing among them tongues from the top of a tree. He also relates that the Noah of another Mexican nation was called Tezpi, who was saved in a spacious bark with his wife, children, some animals and food. “When the Great Spirit ordered the waters to withdraw Tezpi sent out from his bark a vulture. The bird did not return on account of the carcases with which the earth was strewn. Tezpi sent out other birds, one of which, the hummingbird, alone returned, holding in its beak a branch clad with leaves.” In the Chaldee tradition, Xisuthrus sends out the birds three times, the second time they returned with mud on their feet, and the third time they return no more. Many of the American traditions blend the history of Noah with that of Adam, while the Chaldee and Phrygian stories confuse Enoch and Noah. Thus Xisuthrus is taken to heaven after the ark is stranded, while the Phrygian Annakos, or Nannakos, (Enoch,) foretells the flood and weeps and prays for the people. In the reign of Septimus Severus, (A.D. 193-211,) a coin was struck in Apamea of Phrygia, which commemorates this local tradition, though by that time it may have been modified by the Bible history. This city was anciently called Kibotos, or the “Ark,” and the medal represents a square vessel, floating in the water, containing two persons, while on its top is perched a bird, another flying toward it bearing a branch. Before the ark are represented the two inmates stepping on the dry land. Some specimens have the name or , on the vessel .
Was the deluge universal? The universality of this tradition certainly points to a deluge that was universal as far as mankind is concerned. The Scripture language demands, Delitzsch remarks, that the flood be considered as universal for the earth as inhabited, but not for the earth as such; Scripture has no interest in the universality of the flood in itself, but only in the universality of the judgment of which it was the execution. Our exposition of the whole narrative is determined in the settlement of the primary question, Was this a miraculous or simply a providential judgment? Did God in this catastrophe destroy the human race through natural or supernatural causes? For if it were a miracle, it is perfectly idle, because utterly unphilosophical, to speculate as to its causes and effects. Miraculous events are entirely beyond the province of reasoning; and if the deluge belongs to this class we can no more tell how the waters were made to cover the earth, and how Noah could gather and preserve the animals in the ark, than we can tell how Christ turned water into wine, or rose from the dead. No Christian doubts that God’s power is adequate to the production of even such a series of stupendous miracles as are involved in the hypothesis of a universal deluge; but the simple question is, Does the text, on fair interpretation, teach that such a vast array of miracles were concentrated in this event, or does it describe the destruction of a wicked race by natural causes? We think that all the circumstances of the event, abounding as they do in allusions to natural causes and effects, show that the sacred historian did not intend to describe a miracle, but a natural catastrophe, by which God destroyed the “world of the ungodly,” and which is, therefore, as to all its phenomena, a legitimate subject for speculation. Commentators are now agreed, that if it were universal it must have been a miracle, yet few realize the stupendousness of the miracle supposed. Unless there were a new creation after the flood, which some gratuitously imagine without the least authority from the sacred narrative, and which, if assumed, renders any preservation of animals in the ark unnecessary, all existing species of land-animals, including mammals, birds, and insects, must have been saved in the ark. In former times, when the extent of the animal kingdom was imperfectly known, commentators (as Clarke) were able to show, with great plausibility, that the ark furnished ample accommodations. But several important items have always been omitted; the insects, of which there are probably half a million of species, and which would have been as surely destroyed by a universal deluge as cattle or fowls; marine animals, which have their habitat on the shores between the tide-marks, and cannot live under fifty fathoms of water; the coral animals, which would all have been destroyed by water standing at the depth supposed; and the fresh water fishes, if the waters of the deluge be supposed to have been salt, or the salt water fishes, if they be supposed to have been fresh. Also, it is not generally considered that, miracle apart, it was necessary to preserve the vegetable as well as the animal kingdom in the ark, since many terrestrial plants and seeds would have been destroyed by such a deluge. But Noah was not commanded to gather marine animals nor seeds. Each continent and zone has now its zoological provinces, determined by climate, elevation, soil, etc. The polar bear cannot live in the torrid zone; the carnivora of the tropics cannot live within the Arctic circle. The animals of America are wholly different from those of the old continent in the corresponding zones. The South American jaguar must have travelled through several zones and the greater part of two continents, to have reached the ark. If, after a cursory study of the zoological provinces of the earth, we endeavour to imagine a procession of animals from the uttermost parts of both continents and from the isles of the sea, towards Western Asia, one thousand six hundred pairs of mammals, six thousand pairs of birds, insects more numerous than all other animals together, gathering about the ark, it is only by supposing a series of miracles that the picture can be made possible to thought. These miracles multiply in number and magnitude as we try to think of this vast menagerie dwelling together in harmony, fed and kept clean for a year by Noah and his sons, and finally departing in safety from Ararat, and thence diffusing themselves through the world. All this, we most freely admit, is possible to God. If it were a miracle, all these questions and objections are idle; but in that case it is also idle to attempt to reason on the matter at all. All miracles are alike easy to God. He could have gathered these animals to Noah and afterwards have dispersed them, as easily as he created them in their various provinces at first, but the text says, that Noah was commanded to bring them into the ark. Gen 6:19. God could have fed them as he fed Israel with manna, as he fed Elijah by ravens, and if the text stated that they were thus miraculously fed we should believe it, but it states (Gen 6:21) that Noah was commanded to gather of all food that is eaten for the sustenance of all the population of the ark . There is no indication of miraculous help in this work; all is described as a natural transaction .
Some (Prichard, Kurtz, Jacobus) suppose that new species were created after the flood, but if this be so there was obviously no need of making any provision for animals in the ark; besides, there is not a word in the text on which to base such a supposition, while the whole narrative clearly implies that the work of creation ceased at the end of the creative week. Others (Wordsworth, Lange) strongly favour the Darwinian theory of the origin of species, and suppose, or hint, that new species were brought into being, naturally or supernaturally, after the deluge. This is not the place to discuss Darwinism, but it is certainly premature for the Scripture commentator to call in its aid before it has been made to appear as even a plausible hypothesis. It would be more consistent for those who regard the transaction as miraculous not to attempt to explain it in any way.
Many eminent biblical scholars (for example, Stillingfleet, Poole, Le Clerc, Dothe, Pye Smith, Murphy, Lewis) interpret the text as teaching that the deluge was, as Delitzsch expressed it, universal for mankind, but not for the earth. This is simply a question of exegesis, and as such should be settled. The first impression naturally received by the English reader from the narrative is certainly that the waters covered the whole geographical earth, rose above the highest mountains, and destroyed every living terrestrial thing except the dwellers in the ark. “Behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven.” Gen 6:17. “And all flesh died that moved upon the earth . All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.” Gen 7:21-22, etc . “And all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered . ” Gen 7:19. But the change of a single word in these passages would greatly modify this impression, and yet this is a change which parallel passages fully warrant us in making . The word , here translated earth, is quite as often rendered land throughout the Old Testament . In the Pentateuch it is applied in a multitude of instances to the land of Egypt and of Canaan . Comp . Exo 1:7; Exo 1:10; Exo 3:8; Exo 3:17, etc . Thus in Gen 43:1: “And the famine was sore in the land,” that is, of Canaan . Gen 41:56. “And the famine was over all the face of the earth,” (certainly not the geographical earth, but Egypt and the adjacent countries . ) Exo 10:15, “Locusts covered the face of the whole earth,” that is, land of Egypt. The Concordance will show a multitude of such passages. Hence Murphy renders the word land, throughout the description of the deluge. In the mind of the inspired writer this word meant simply that portion of the earth where man dwelt and which was the inhabited land. Of the vast geographical earth he had no idea, and so to him the word could not have had the meaning that it now conveys. See Introd., pp. 64, 65, and notes on Gen 1:1.
Again, the word , rendered all or every in this description, in common with other Hebrew words and phrases of a similar character, often has a partial signification . Until accustomed to this idiom the text sometimes appears even to contradict itself . For example, in Exo 9:25, we read, “And the hail smote throughout all the land of Egypt, all that was in the field, both man and beast; and the hail smote every herb of the field, and brake every tree of the field.” Yet that the word “all,” or “every,” is not to be understood literally, in a universal sense, appears from Exo 10:15, wherein it is said that the locusts “did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left.” So also in Exo 9:6, in describing the plague of the murrain, it is said “ all the cattle of Egypt died;” yet the next two plagues that of the boils and that of the hail are said to have fallen upon the cattle that were in the field. King Nebuchadnezzar (Dan 4:1) and Darius (Dan 6:25) make their proclamations “unto all people, nations, and languages that dwell in all the earth;” language that would seem to be emphatically and laboriously universal; yet in Dan 6:26, we find it explained by “every dominion of my kingdom . ” The New Testament Greek shows the same idiom . Thus in Act 2:5, we read, “There were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven . ” Yet in Gen 6:9-11 we have a list of these nations given, which by no means embraces the whole human race . So Paul speaks of the Gospel which he declares was then “in all the world;” and “preached to every creature which is under heaven . ” Col 1:6; Col 1:23. Thus we see that the expression, “all the high hills which were under the whole heaven” may, without the least exegetical strain upon the language, be understood to describe a deluge that, with reference to the earth, geographically considered, was local and partial .
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Generations of Noah, Gen 6:9 to Gen 9:29.
Note here, again, how the history doubles back upon itself. Noah has been already introduced, (Gen 5:29; Gen 5:32,) but now the divine record of beginnings and developments takes a new departure . Compare note at beginning of chap . v, and Introd . , pp . 49, 50 .
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
The Creator Remembers His Creatures ( Gen 8:1-3 )
Gen 8:1-3
‘And God (Elohim the Creator) remembered Noah and every living thing, and all the cattle that were with him in the ark, and God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters began to subside. The fountains also of the deep, and the openings in the heavens were stopped, and the rain from the heavens was restrained, and the waters receded continually from the earth, and after one hundred and fifty days the waters had subsided.’
God, the Creator, ‘remembered’ His creatures. This is the author’s vivid way of stating that God stepped in to act, and it was as Elohim that He acted in order to preserve His creation. He had not of course actually forgotten them, for He was in control of the whole event, and He had Himself ensured that they would be safe throughout the voyage.
It is noteworthy that the author makes the action indirect. He does not say ‘God blew’ but that He caused a wind to blow. (Incidentally this seems to confirm that Gen 1:2 is correctly translated ‘Spirit’ of God, otherwise the author would also here have said ‘wind of God’. There is a difference between His direct action and His indirect action). But as well as the wind blowing the actions of the seas also ceased, and the torrential rains subsided, and the waters thus began noticeably to drop, and this went on for one hundred and fifty days (five moon cycles), thus paralleling the period when the waters prevailed. Note that Gen 8:2 is a parallel reversal of Gen 7:11-12.
Note that Gen 8:1-3 are a summary of events, and will now be followed up with some of the detail. Now we are to learn some of the things that happened during the one hundred and fifty days of the receding of the waters, including the touching down of the ark, the first sighting of the tops of the mountains, and the further wait before Noah felt it might be time to act.
(The question arises as to whether the one hundred and fifty days mentioned here is the same as that mentioned in Gen 7:24. It would appear to us that it is indeed a second period of one hundred and fifty days during which the floods continually abated, commencing with the touching down on the mountains of Ararat and finishing when the earth was again ‘dry land’. However the question is not of primary importance).
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
“The Histories of the Sons of Noah” – The Flood ( Gen 6:9 b – Gen 10:1 a) – TABLET IV
It has been common practise among a large number of scholars to seek to split the flood narrative into different so-called ‘documents’. This has partly resulted from not comparing them closely enough with ancient writings as a whole and partly from over-enthusiasm for a theory. There is little real justification for it. Repetitiveness was endemic among ancient writings, and is therefore not a hint of combined narratives, and the intermixture of statistical material, such as dating, with story type is known elsewhere. The interchanging of the divine names Yahweh and Elohim has already been noted as occurring for good reasons (Gen 4:25-26; Gen 5:29).
The whole account is a clear unity, and is formulated on a 7 day – 40 day – 150 day – 150 day – 40 day – 7 day pattern (the numbers partly inclusive), taking us from when God commanded Noah to enter the ark to the return of the dove with the olive leaf which showed the Flood was over. The causes of, and purposes for, the Flood are consistent throughout, as are its final aims. There is certainly expansion in thought, but there is no contradiction. (Alternately we may see it as a 7 – 40 – 150 – 40 – 7 pattern depending on how we read Gen 8:3).
The Flood
The word for flood is ‘mabbul’ which only occurs outside Genesis 6-11 in Psa 29:10, where its meaning is disputed. In Psalms 29 its use follows the description of an extremely devastating storm ‘caused’ by Yahweh which strips the trees bare, and ‘Yahweh sits enthroned over the flood’ may well therefore mean that He causes, and takes responsibility for, even the subsequent cataclysmic flood. But it may alternatively mean that ‘Yahweh sits enthroned over the cataclysm’, the storm we have just read about. (The writer sees all natural phenomena as under God’s control and is using a massive storm and cataclysm as a picture of Jahweh’s great power. If the word does mean flood he may well have had Noah’s flood in mind). In the New Testament and in the Septuagint mabbul is ‘translated’ as kataklysmos (Mat 24:38-39; Luk 17:27; 2Pe 2:5). It therefore can be taken with some confidence as meaning in this context a ‘cataclysmic flood’ with the emphasis on the cataclysm.
The basis of the account consistently throughout is that man will be destroyed because of his extreme sinfulness (Gen 6:5-7; Gen 6:11-13; Gen 7:4; Gen 7:21-23; Gen 8:21). This contrasts strongly with Mesopotamian flood myths where the innocent admittedly die with the guilty, and the flood is the consequence of the anger of gods over some particular thing which annoys them.
How Extensive Was the Flood?
The question must again be raised as to what the writer is describing. There is no question but that it is a huge flood of a type never known before or since, but how far did it in fact reach?
In Hebrew the word translated ‘earth’ (eretz) even more often means ‘land’. This latter fact derived from the fact that ‘the earth’ (our world) as compared with the heavens (Gen 1:1), became ‘the earth’ (dry land) as opposed to the sea (Gen 1:10), became ‘the earth’ (their land) on which men lived (Gen 12:1). It is thus quite in accordance with the Hebrew that what is described in this passage occurred in just one part of what we would call the earth, occurring in ‘Noah’s earth’ where Noah was living with his family.
This is not just a matter of choosing between two alternative translations. The reason eretz could be so used was because of how the ancients saw things and applied language to them. To them there was their known ‘earth’, their land, and then their land with the surrounding peoples, and then the rather hazy world on the fringes and then beyond that who knew what? Thus to them ‘the earth’ could mean different things in different contexts.
Even in its wider meaning it meant what was indeed a reasonably large area, and yet from our point of view would be seen as a fairly localised area, and ‘the whole earth’ to them was what to us would still be limited horizons. We can compare Gen 41:57 where ‘the whole earth’ come to Egypt to buy food and 1Ki 10:24 where ‘the whole earth’ come to hear the wisdom of Solomon. Compare also how the Roman world and its fringes were ‘the world’ in the New Testament (Luk 2:1; Act 24:5; Rom 1:8; Col 1:6).
Thus there are three possible answers to the question as to how far the flood stretched, looking at it from the writer’s point of view.
1). That all mankind was involved and that the Flood was global. However, it could not strictly mean this to the writer, or to Noah, for both were unaware of such a concept. All they could think of was ‘the world’ according to their conception of it. What the writer could have meant was ‘all that there is’. But was he not rather concerned with the world of man?
2). That all mankind was involved, but that they were still living within a certain limited area and were therefore all destroyed in a huge flood, which was not, however, global, as it would not need to involve lands which were uninhabited.
The fact of the worldwide prevalence of Flood myths might be seen as supporting one of these two views. So also might the argument that had the area been too limited Noah could have been instructed to move with his family outside the area, however large. Against this latter, however, it could be argued that God was seen as having a lesson to teach to future generations, and that He had in view the preservation of animal life as part of Noah’s environment.
3). That it was only mankind in the large area affected by the demonic activity (Noah’s ‘earth’ or ‘world’) that were to be destroyed, and that the Flood was therefore vast, but not necessarily destroying those of mankind unaffected by the situation described.
What cannot be avoided is the idea that the Flood was huge beyond anything known since. It was remembered in Mesopotamia, an area which had known great floods, as ‘the Flood’which divided all that came before it from all that followed (see, for example, the Sumerian king lists) . They too had a memory of how their king Zius-udra survived the Flood by entering a boat and living through it, although in his case others, apart from his family, were seen as surviving with him in the boat. Alternative suggestions offered have been the consequences of the ice age ceasing, raising water levels and causing huge floods, or the falling of a huge asteroid into the sea.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Noah and His Family Leave the Ark In Gen 8:1-22 Noah and his family leave the ark.
Gen 8:1 And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged;
Gen 8:2 Gen 8:3 Gen 8:4 Gen 8:3-4
Gen 7:11, “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month , the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.”
Gen 8:5 And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.
Gen 8:5
“And the ark went and rested on the top of Lubar, one of the mountains of Ararat. And (on the new moon) in the fourth month the fountains of the great deep were closed and the flood-gates of heaven were restrained; and on the new moon of the seventh month all the mouths of the abysses of the earth were opened, and the water began to descend into the deep below.” ( The Book of Jubilees 5.28-30)
Gen 8:6 And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made:
Gen 8:7 Gen 8:8 Gen 8:9 Gen 8:10 Gen 8:11 Gen 8:12 Gen 8:10-12
Gen 1:2, “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters .”
Gen 8:13 And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth: and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and, behold, the face of the ground was dry.
Gen 8:14 Gen 8:15 Gen 8:15
Gen 7:11, “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.”
Gen 8:14, “And in the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dried.”
Gen 8:14-15 Comments Noah’s Time on the Ark Had a Purpose – In just over one year, all dead life had time to deteriorate so it would not stink in the land. This prevented Noah and his family, and particularly the animals on the ark, from contracting diseases by coming in contacting with rotting flesh.
Gen 8:16 Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons’ wives with thee.
Gen 8:17 Gen 8:18 Gen 8:19 Gen 8:20 Gen 8:20
Gen 4:4, “And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering.”
Gen 8:21 And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.
Gen 8:21
Gen 8:21 Comments – In Gen 8:21 God removes the curse from the ground, which he set in motion in Gen 3:17. Seedtime and harvest is now set in motion on the earth. God is giving man a second opportunity to take dominion over the earth and to subdue it. A fruitful earth was one means of accomplishing God’s original command to be fruitful and multiply. This is why God gave this command again to Noah in Gen 9:1, “And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.”
Thus Noah became a farmer (Gen 9:20).
Gen 9:20, “And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:”
Thus, this verse is a fulfillment of the prophecy of Gen 5:29.
Gen 5:29, “And he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed .”
For one thousand years, or ten generations, the earth had been cursed, since the time of Adam and Eve:
Gen 3:17, “And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;”
Now the earth was commanded to bring forth its abundance. We see this promise later in the life of Issac.
Gen 26:12, “Then Isaac sowed in that land, and received in the same year an hundredfold: and the LORD blessed him.”
We see the earth’s ability to bring forth is harvest under the Mosaic Law.
Lev 25:19, “And the land shall yield her fruit, and ye shall eat your fill, and dwell therein in safety.”
Gen 8:22 While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
Gen 8:22
Because of man’s human depravity and the divine judgment of the Flood, the characteristics of the earth have forever been changed. The earth will need redemption, in a similar way that mankind needs redemption. Rom 8:19-23 says that all creation will travail until this time of redemption has come. Just as man’s mortal body will have to pass away in order for him to receive a resurrection body, so will this present earth have to pass away so that a new heavens and earth can be created.
As an example of this present earth’s inability to fulfill God’s original purpose and plan, we find Jesus passing by a fig tree at a time when He hungered. Because there were no figs on the tree, Jesus cursed it and it withered and died (Mat 21:18-19, Mar 11:12-26). Jesus cursed the tree because it failed to fulfill its purpose of providing fruit to mankind. The fig tree came to an end because it could not fulfill its destiny. It was created t provide fruit for the Creator of the universe, but because of the Fall and the corruption that followed, the fig tree could not do what it was created to do. Therefore, it was one part of God’s creation that must be destroyed so that all things can be made new again. In contrast, the original earth in the Garden of Eden did not have summer and winter, cold and heat. Therefore, seedtime and harvest took place year round, so that fruit was always available. Adam and Eve could partake of any fruit at any season of the year. Jesus understood that this present earth was out of order when the fig tree could not provide fruit as man’s request, and cursed the fig tree, which testified of the passing away of this present earth.
Gen 8:22 “seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease” – Comments – God describes the characteristics of this new world after the Flood in Gen 8:22. Paul describes these characteristics in his epistles as the “fashion (or form) of this world” (1Co 7:31). Before the Flood, there were no seasons as we know them today; there was no summer and winter, no season of hot weather and of cold weather. The seasons are commonly understood by scholars to have been relatively constant, with little variations in temperature. Plants would grow year round and not seasonally as we see them grow today. Thus, the emphasis of Gen 8:22 is its emphasis on the primary characteristic of this post-flood earth, which has seasons. The development of a seed sown and its harvest is dependent upon three factors: temperature, rain, and sunlight. The cold and heat provide the temperatures, the summer and winter provide the rainy and dry seasons, and the day and night provide the sunlight and darkness, all of which are factors in the growth and maturity of the seed and its harvest.
We know in the pre-flood earth and in eternity there will be no such seasons of changing weather. In Heaven neither will there be day and night as there is in this age.
God will use these new characteristics during this present age to judge mankind, using such events as earthquakes, famine and floods. We see this in Jesus’ description of the Great Tribulation in Matthew 23-24 and in the book of Revelation. This is why God said in this verse, “As long as (this particular) earth remains” In other words, as long as this earth with these characteristics remains, mankind will be governed by these characteristics.
Gen 8:22 Comments – Gen 2:4 to Gen 9:29 shows us the characteristics of the heavens and the earth prior to the flood and how man’s sins altered these characteristics of nature. The heavens and the earth were originally without form and void (Gen 1:2). God then created them in seven days in a marvelous way so that the earth could serve mankind (Genesis 1-2). Man’s sinfulness altered these characteristics (Genesis 3-8) until we have the earth in its present form (Gen 8:22), having fallen into the state of vanity until the redemption of the sons of God when it to will be made anew (Rom 8:18-23).
Within the context of this statement in Gen 8:22, God was promising Noah that He would never again disrupt the earth with a flood, so that there would always be an uninterrupted set of seasons. In other words, the earth would continue on a normal course until it comes to an end, and mankind enters eternity with the Lord, who destroys the present heavens and earth and makes them new again. The earthly cycles of day and night become a covenant that God cannot break (Jer 33:19-20). His covenant with day and night is reconfirmed after the flood with similar covenants of seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, and summer and winter (Gen 8:22), in which God will hold Himself faithful so that He will no longer violate them by causing another flood. Thus, Gen 8:22 serves as a list of existing covenants that God has established, which are joined within the context of this passage of Scripture with God renewing His covenant and commission with the animal kingdom and with mankind to be fruitful and multiply.
Jer 33:19-20, “And the word of the LORD came unto Jeremiah, saying, Thus saith the LORD; If ye can break my covenant of the day, and my covenant of the night, and that there should not be day and night in their season;”
God had cursed the ground when Adam and Eve fell in the Garden of Eden. After the flood, God removed that curse when Noah disembarked off of the ark and offer a sacrifice. God said in the Gen 8:21, “I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake.” Thus, the earth will now properly respond to seedtime and produce a harvest. This is what God is saying to Noah in this passage. Now the harvest will be determined by seasons, since prior to the flood, there was no cold and heat, summer and winter. There were no seasons like we know them today. Seedtime and harvest time will now have to be planned around the seasons of the year. Thus, this statement is important to Noah because he was a agriculturalist and perhaps herdsman, making his living from the ground. He was going to have to adjust his farming methods to these new characteristics of the earth.
Many recent preachers, such as Oral Roberts, [127] have pointed out in the last few years using this verse in Gen 8:22, God will also use these characteristics to bless mankind. If mankind will learn to obey these new principles and laws of nature he can reap an abundant harvest. Roberts interprets spiritual principles from this text to teach that when we sow our finances and other types of gifts as unto the Lord, we are to expect some type of harvest from Heaven. Thus, these characteristics of the earth serve as God’s instruments in effecting His plan of redemption for mankind upon the earth.
[127] Oral Roberts, Miracle of SEED-FAITH (Tulsa, Oklahoma: Oral Roberts, c1970).
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Ten Genealogies (Calling) – The Genealogies of Righteous Men and their Divine Callings (To Be Fruitful and Multiply) – The ten genealogies found within the book of Genesis are structured in a way that traces the seed of righteousness from Adam to Noah to Shem to Abraham to Isaac and to Jacob and the seventy souls that followed him down into Egypt. The book of Genesis closes with the story of the preservation of these seventy souls, leading us into the book of Exodus where we see the creation of the nation of Israel while in Egyptian bondage, which nation of righteousness God will use to be a witness to all nations on earth in His plan of redemption. Thus, we see how the book of Genesis concludes with the origin of the nation of Israel while its first eleven chapters reveal that the God of Israel is in fact that God of all nations and all creation.
The genealogies of the six righteous men in Genesis (Adam, Noah, Shem, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob) are the emphasis in this first book of the Old Testament, with each of their narrative stories opening with a divine commission from God to these men, and closing with the fulfillment of prophetic words concerning the divine commissions. This structure suggests that the author of the book of Genesis wrote under the office of the prophet in that a prophecy is given and fulfilled within each of the genealogies of these six primary patriarchs. Furthermore, all the books of the Old Testament were written by men of God who moved in the office of the prophet, which includes the book of Genesis. We find a reference to the fulfillment of these divine commissions by the patriarchs in Heb 11:1-40. The underlying theme of the Holy Scriptures is God’s plan of redemption for mankind. Thus, the book of Genesis places emphasis upon these men of righteousness because of the role that they play in this divine plan as they fulfilled their divine commissions. This explains why the genealogies of Ishmael (Gen 25:12-18) and of Esau (Gen 36:1-43) are relatively brief, because God does not discuss the destinies of these two men in the book of Genesis. These two men were not men of righteousness, for they missed their destinies because of sin. Ishmael persecuted Isaac and Esau sold his birthright. However, it helps us to understand that God has blessed Ishmael and Esau because of Abraham although the seed of the Messiah and our redemption does not pass through their lineage. Prophecies were given to Ishmael and Esau by their fathers, and their genealogies testify to the fulfillment of these prophecies. There were six righteous men did fulfill their destinies in order to preserve a righteous seed so that God could create a righteous nation from the fruit of their loins. Illustration As a young schoolchild learning to read, I would check out biographies of famous men from the library, take them home and read them as a part of class assignments. The lives of these men stirred me up and placed a desire within me to accomplish something great for mankind as did these men. In like manner, the patriarchs of the genealogies in Genesis are designed to stir up our faith in God and encourage us to walk in their footsteps in obedience to God.
The first five genealogies in the book of Genesis bring redemptive history to the place of identifying seventy nations listed in the Table of Nations. The next five genealogies focus upon the origin of the nation of Israel and its patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
There is much more history and events that took place surrounding these individuals emphasized in the book of Genesis, which can be found in other ancient Jewish writings, such as The Book of Jubilees. However, the Holy Scriptures and the book of Genesis focus upon the particular events that shaped God’s plan of redemption through the procreation of men of righteousness. Thus, it was unnecessary to include many of these historical events that were irrelevant to God’s plan of redemption.
In addition, if we see that the ten genealogies contained within the book of Genesis show to us the seed of righteousness that God has preserved in order to fulfill His promise that the “seed of woman” would bruise the serpent’s head in Gen 3:15, then we must understand that each of these men of righteousness had a particular calling, destiny, and purpose for their lives. We can find within each of these genealogies the destiny of each of these men of God, for each one of them fulfilled their destiny. These individual destinies are mentioned at the beginning of each of their genealogies.
It is important for us to search these passages of Scripture and learn how each of these men fulfilled their destiny in order that we can better understand that God has a destiny and a purpose for each of His children as He continues to work out His divine plan of redemption among the children of men. This means that He has a destiny for you and me. Thus, these stories will show us how other men fulfilled their destinies and help us learn how to fulfill our destiny. The fact that there are ten callings in the book of Genesis, and since the number “10” represents the concept of countless, many, or numerous, we should understand that God calls out men in each subsequent generation until God’s plan of redemption is complete.
We can even examine the meanings of each of their names in order to determine their destiny, which was determined for them from a child. Adam’s name means “ruddy, i.e. a human being” ( Strong), for it was his destiny to begin the human race. Noah’s name means, “rest” ( Strong). His destiny was to build the ark and save a remnant of mankind so that God could restore peace and rest to the fallen human race. God changed Abram’s name to Abraham, meaning, “father of a multitude” ( Strong), because his destiny was to live in the land of Canaan and believe God for a son of promise so that his seed would become fruitful and multiply and take dominion over the earth. Isaac’s name means, “laughter” ( Strong) because he was the child of promise. His destiny was to father two nations, believing that the elder would serve the younger. Isaac overcame the obstacles that hindered the possession of the land, such as barrenness and the threat of his enemies in order to father two nations, Israel and Esau. Jacob’s name was changed to Israel, which means “he will rule as God” ( Strong), because of his ability to prevail over his brother Esau and receive his father’s blessings, and because he prevailed over the angel in order to preserve his posterity, which was the procreation of twelve sons who later multiplied into the twelve tribes of Israel. Thus, his ability to prevail against all odds and father twelve righteous seeds earned him his name as one who prevailed with God’s plan of being fruitful and multiplying seeds of righteousness.
In order for God’s plan to be fulfilled in each of the lives of these patriarchs, they were commanded to be fruitful and multiply. It was God’s plan that the fruit of each man was to be a godly seed, a seed of righteousness. It was because of the Fall that unrighteous seed was produced. This ungodly offspring was not then nor is it today God’s plan for mankind.
Outline Here is a proposed outline:
1. The Generation of the Heavens and the Earth Gen 2:4 to Gen 4:26
a) The Creation of Man Gen 2:4-25
b) The Fall Gen 3:1-24
c) Cain and Abel Gen 4:1-26
2. The Generation of Adam Gen 5:1 to Gen 6:8
3. The Generation of Noah Gen 6:9 to Gen 9:29
4. The Generation of the Sons of Noah Gen 10:1 to Gen 11:9
5. The Generation of Shem Gen 11:10-26
6. The Generation of Terah (& Abraham) Gen 11:27 to Gen 25:11
7. The Generation Ishmael Gen 25:12-18
8. The Generation of Isaac Gen 25:19 to Gen 35:29
9. The Generation of Esau Gen 36:1-43
10. The Generation of Jacob Gen 37:1 to Gen 50:26
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The Genealogy of Noah The third genealogy in the book of Genesis is entitled “The Genealogy of Noah” (Gen 6:9 to Gen 9:29), which gives us the account of the Noah’s fulfillment of the divine commission to be fruitful and multiply. Heb 11:7 reveals the central message in this genealogy that stirs our faith in God when it describes Noah’s obedience to God in building the ark. Noah’s destiny, whose name means “rest,” was to be fruitful and bear a righteous offspring. His genealogy opens with a divine commission to build the ark and save a remnant of mankind so that God could restore peace and rest to the fallen human race. Immediately after the Flood, Noah built an altar and God spoke to him and commanded him to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Gen 9:1). Heb 11:7 tells us how Noah fulfilled his divine commission by building the ark and saving his household.
Heb 11:7, “By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.”
Outline Here is a proposed outline:
1. The Lord Commands Noah Gen 6:9-22
2. The Destruction of the Flood Gen 7:1-24
3. Noah and His Family Leave the Ark Gen 8:1-22
4. Be Fruitful and Multiply Gen 9:1-7
5. God’s Covenant with Noah Gen 9:8-17
6. Noah Curses Canaan Gen 9:18-27
7. Conclusion to the Genealogy of Noah Gen 9:28-29
The Story of the Flood Within the genealogy of Noah we find the lengthy story of the Flood, by which God destroyed the earth. Jesus tells us that the story of the Flood reveals parallel events that will take place in the end times (Mat 24:37-39).
Mat 24:37-39, “But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”
The rapture of Enoch (Gen 5:24) could parallel the rapture of the spirit-filled saints, which takes place immediately before the Great Tribulation. The building of the ark could parallel the propitiation of Christ Jesus and His office of the High Priest, which will deliver many during the time of the Great Tribulation. ( Strong says that the Hebrew word “pitch” ( ) (H3722) in Gen 6:14 means, “to cover, purge, make an atonement, make reconciliation, [cover over with] pitch.”) Also, in the Scripture forty days represents a time of tribulation. Thus, the forty days of rain could represent the seven-year Tribulation Period. The one-year that Noah rested in the ark could represent the thousand-year Millennial Reign of Christ on earth (compare Gen 7:11 to Gen 8:13). Noah’s disembarkment from the ark and God’s renewal of His covenant with Noah and the earth could represent our entrance into eternity with the creation of a new heaven and a new earth under a similar renewal of covenant.
The story of Noah’s Flood refers to three dates in the life of Noah. It refers to his age of five hundred (500) years old when he bore his three sons (Gen 5:32), his age of six hundred (600) years old when he entered the ark (Gen 7:11) and his age of six hundred and one (601) years old when he disembarked from the ark (Gen 8:13). and of Jesus’ prophecies in Matthew 24-25 have a time of warning of God’s impending judgment, a time of judgment and the start of a new age. At the age of 500 he was a “preacher of righteous” warning others of God’s coming judgment. At the age of six hundred (600) the judgment of God came upon the earth. At the age of six hundred and one (601) the earth ended one age and entered into a new age for mankind. In a similar way, the disciples asked Jesus in Mat 24:3 three questions regarding warning signs, judgment and restoration. They wanted to know the warning signs of the end of the age, the time when judgment comes and the time when Jesus comes to usher us into a new age.
Many scholars suggest that the statement in Mat 24:34, which says, “This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled,” means that all of the events that Jesus predicted in Matthew 24-25 will take place within a man’s lifetime. If we find a parallel to this time frame in the story of Noah and the Flood, we know that he was “a preacher of righteousness” for one hundred and twenty (120) years according to Jewish tradition. Thus, it is possible that the signs and events of the end- times will last about one hundred and twenty (120) years and end with the Second Coming of Christ.
When God shut the door to the ark Noah did not know the day and hour that the flood would come. Noah knew the season of the coming of the Flood, but not the exact time. He was just being obedient. In the same way Jesus said, “Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.” (Mat 25:13)
Historical Evidence of the Flood Literally hundreds of accounts of a flood have been documented from every corner of the world. From North, Central and South America, Africa, Europe, the Near East as well as the Far East, historians have discovered some version of a flood in most of these societies. [122]
[122] Howard F. Vos, “Flood (Genesis),” International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 316-321; Mark Isaak, Flood Stores from Around the World, c1996-2002 [on-line]; accessed 14 March 2009; available from http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html; Internet.
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The Flood Subsides
v. 1. And God remembered Noah and every living thing and all the cattle that was with him in the ark; and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged. v. 2. The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained. v. 3. And the waters returned from off the earth continually; and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated. v. 4. And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. v. 5. And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
Gen 8:1
And God. Elohim, i.e. God in his most universal relation to his creatures. The supposition of two different accounts or histories being intermingled in the narrative of the Flood (Bleek, Eichhorn, Hupfeld, Kalisch, Alford, Coleuso) is not required for a sufficient explanation of the varying use of the Divine names. Remembered. From a root signifying to prick, pierce, or print, e.g; upon the memory; hence to remember. “Not that there is oblivion or forgetfulness with God, but then God is said to remember when he showeth by the effects that he hath taken care of man” (Willet). He remembers man’s sins when he punishes them (Psa 25:7; cf. 1Ki 17:20), and his people’s needs when he supplies them (cf. Neh 5:19). The expression is an anthropopathism designed to indicate the Divine compassion as well as grace. Calvin thinks the remembrance of which Moses speaks “ought to be referred not only to the external aspect of things (i.e. the coming deliverance), but also to the inward feeling of the holy man,” who, through grace, was privileged to enjoy “some sensible experience of the Divine presence” while immured in the ark. Noah,cf. the Divine remembrance of Abraham and Lot (Gen 19:29), the request of the Hebrew psalmist (Psa 132:1)and every living thing,chayyah, or wild beast (vide Gen 1:25; Gen 7:14)and all the cattle that was with him in the ark. A touching indication of the tenderness of God towards his creatures. As a proof that God remembered the lonely inmates of the ark, he at once takes steps to accomplish their deliverance, which steps are next enumerated. And God made a windruach. Not the Holy Ghost, as in Gen 1:2 (Theodoret, Ambrose, LXX.), nor the heat of the sun (Rupertus); but a current of air (), which “would promote evaporation and aid the retreat of the waters” (Murphy):the ordinary method of driving away rain and drying the ground (vide Pro 25:23); the special instrumentality employed to divide the waters of the Red Sea (Exo 14:21)to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged, or began to grow calm, after a period of commotion (cf. Est 2:1; Est 7:10)the first stage in the returning of the waters. , and the water grew tried (LXX.). Cf. , Mat 14:32; Mar 4:39; Mar 6:51.
Gen 8:2
The fountains also of the deep, and the windows of heaven were stopped. , from =, to surround, to enclose; literally, were shut up; (LXX.). Their opening was described in Gen 7:11. And the rain from heaven was restrained. , literally, was shut up, from , to close. Cf. , , , celo, occulo (Gesenius, Furst), (LXX). At the end of the forty days; at the end of the 150 days (Aben Ezra, Murphy).
Gen 8:3
And the waters returned from off the earth continually. Literally, going and returning. “More and more” (Gesenius). The first verb expresses the continuance and self-increasing state of the action involved in the second; cf. Gen 26:13; 1Sa 6:12; 2Ki 2:11 (Furst). Gradually (Murphy, Ewald). The expression “denotes the turning-point after the waters had become calm” (T. Lewis). May it not be an attempt to represent the undulatory motion of the waves in an ebbing tide, in which the water seems first to advance, but only to retire with greater vehemence, reversing the movement of a flowing tide, in which it first retires and then advancesin the one case returning to go, in the other going to return? The LXX; as usual, indicates the visible effect rather than the actual phenomenon: . And after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated. Literally, were cut off, hence diminished; imminsutae sunt (Vulgate); (LXX.). The first stage was the quieting of the waters; the second was the commencement of an ebbing or backward motion; the third was a perceptible diminution of the waters.
Gen 8:4
And the ark rested. Not stopped sailing or floating, got becalmed, and remained suspended over (Kitto’s ‘Cyclop.,’ art. Ararat), but actually grounded and settled on (Tayler Lewis) the place indicated by (cf. Gen 8:9; also Exo 10:14; Num 10:36; Num 11:25, Num 11:26; Isa 11:2). In the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month. I.e. exactly 150 days from the commencement of the forty days’ rain, reckoning thirty days to a month, which seems to confirm the opinion expressed (Gen 7:24) that the forty days were included in the 150. Supposing the Flood to have begun in Marchesvan, the second month of the civil year, “we have then the remarkable coincidences that on the 17th day of Abib the ark rested on Mount Ararat, the Israelites passed over the Red Sea, and our Lord rose again from the dead” (‘Speaker’s Commentary’). Upon the mountains. I.e. one of the mountains. “Pluralis numerus pro singulari ponitur”. Of Ararat.
1. It is agreed by all that the term Ararat describes a region.
2. This region has been supposed to be the island of Ceylon (Samaritan), Aryavarta, the sacred land to the north of India (Van Bohlen, arguing from Gen 11:2); but “it is evident that these and such like theories have been framed in forgetfulness of what the Bible has recorded respecting the locality” (Kitto’s ‘Cyclopedia,’ art. Ararat).
3. The locality which appears to have the countenance of Scripture is the region of Armenia (of. 2Ki 19:37; Isa 37:38; Jer 51:27; Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, Vulgate).
4. In Armenia three different mountains have been selected as the site on which the ark grounded.
(1) The modern Ararat, which rises in Northern Armenia, about twelve miles south of Erivan, in the form of two majestic cones, the one 16,254, and the ether 12,284 feet (Parisian) in height above the level of the sea (Hierony. mus, Furst, Kalisch, Keil, Delitzsch, and Lange). All but universal tradition has decided that the loftiest of these two peaks (called Macis in Armenian; Aghri-Dagh, i.e. the difficult or steep mountain, by the Turks; Kuchi Nuch, i.e. the mountain of Noah, by the Persians) was the spot where the sacred vessel first felt the solid land. Travelers describe the appearance of this amazing elevation as of incomparable and overpowering splendor. “It appeared as if the highest mountains in the world had been piled upon each other to form this one sublime immensity of earth and rocks and snow. The icy peaks of its double head rose majestically into the clear and cloudless heavens; the sun blazed bright upon them, and the reflection sent forth a radiance equal to other suns” (Ker Porters ‘Travels, 1.132; 2.636). “Nothing can be more beautiful than its shape, more awful than its height. All the surrounding mountains sink into insignificance when compared to it. It is perfect in all its parts; no hard, rugged feature, no unnatural prominences; everything is in harmony, and all combines to render it one of the sublimest objects in nature”. The ascent of the Kara Dagh, or Greater Ararat, which the Armenians believe to be guarded by angels from the profane foot of man, after two unsuccessful attempts, was accomplished in 1829 by Professor Parrot, a German, and five years later, in 1834, by the Russian traveler Automonoff. In 1856 five English travelers, Majors Stewart and Frazer, Roy. Walter Thursby, Messrs. Theobald and Evans, performed the herculean task. The latest successful attempt was that of Prof. Bryce of Oxford in 1876.
(2) An unknown mountain in Central Armenia between the Araxes and lakes Van and Urumiah (Vulgate, super mantes Armeniae; Gesenius, Murphy, Wordsworth, Bush, ‘Speaker’s Commentary’).
(3) A peak in the Gordyaean mountains, or Carduchian range, separating Armenia on the south from Kurdistan (Chaldea Paraphrase, Onkelos, Syriac, Calvin), near which is a town called Naxuana, the city of Noah (Ptolemy), Idshenan (Moses Chorenensis), and Nachid-shenan, the first place of descent (the Armenians), which Josephus translates by , or the place of descent. Against the first is the inaccessible height of the mountain; in favor of the third is the proximity of the region to the starting-place of the ark.
Gen 8:5
And the waters decreased continuallyliterally, were going and decreasinguntil the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month,chodesh, a lunar month, beginning at the new moon, from chadash, to be new; , LXX. (of. Exo 13:5). Chodesh yamim, the period of a month (cf. Gen 29:14; Num 11:20, Num 11:21)were the tops of the mountains seen. “Became distinctly visible”. Apparuerunt cacumina montium (Vulgate). The waters had now been subsiding ten weeks, and as the height of the water above the highest hills was probably determined by the draught of the ark, we may naturally reason that the subsidence which had taken place since the seventeenth day of the seventh month was not less than three hundred and fifteen inches, at twenty-one inches to the cubit, or about four and one-third inches a day.
Gen 8:6, Gen 8:7
And it came to pass, literally, it wasat the end of forty days. Delaying through combined fear and sorrow on account of the Divine judgment (Calvin); to allow sufficient space to undo the effect of the forty days’ rain (Murphy); probably just to be assured that the Deluge would not return. That Noah opened the windowchalon, a window, “so called from being perforated, from chalal, to bore or pierce” (Gesenius); used of the window of Rahab’s house (Jos 2:18); not the window (tsohar) of Gen 6:16, q.v.of the ark which ha had made: and he sent forth a raven. Literally, the orev, so called from its black color’ (Gesenius; cf. Son 5:11), Latin, corvus, a raven or crow; the article being used either
(1) because the species of bird is intended to be indicated (Kalisch), or
(2) because there was only one male raven in the ark, the raven being among the unclean birds (Le Gen 11:15; Deu 14:14; Lunge); but against this is “the dove” (per. 8); or
(3) because it had come to be well known from this particular circumstance (Keil).
Its peculiar fitness for the mission imposed on it lay in its being a bird of prey, and therefore able to sustain itself by feeding on carrion (Pro 30:17). To the incident here recorded is doubtless to be traced the prophetic character which in the ancient heathen world, and among the Arabians in particular, was supposed to attach to this ominous bird. Which went to and fro. Literally, and it went forth going and returning, i.e. flying backwards and forwards, from the ark and to the ark, perhaps resting on it, but not entering into it (Calvin, Willet, Ainsworth, Keil, Kalisch, Lunge, Bush, ‘Speaker’s Commentary’); though some have conceived that it no more returned to the ark, but kept flying to and fro throughout the earth (LXX; ” ;” Vulgate, “qui egrediebatur et non revertebatur;” Alford, “it is hardly probable that it returned;” Murphy, “it did not need to return”). Until the waters were dried up from off the earth. When of course its return was unnecessary. Cf. for a similar form of expression 2Sa 6:23. Whether it entirely disappeared at the first, or continued hovering round the ark, Noah was unable from its movements to arrive at any certain conclusion as to the condition of the earth, and accordingly required to adopt another expedient, which he did in the mission of the dove.
Gen 8:8, Gen 8:9
Also he sent forthper. 10 seems to Warrant the inference that this was after an interval of seven days (Baumgarten, Knobel, Keil, Lange)a dove. Literally, the dove. The Scriptural references to the dove are very numerous: cf. Psa 68:14 (its beautiful plumage); Le Psa 5:7; Psa 12:6 (its sacrificial use); Isa 38:14; Isa 59:11 (its plaintive notes); Psa 55:6 (its power of flight); Mat 10:16 (its gentleness); vide also the metaphorical usage of the term in So Mat 1:15; Mat 5:12 (beautiful eyes); So Mat 5:2; Mat 6:9 (a term of endearment). From him. I.e. from himself, from the ark; not (LXX.), post eum (Vulgate); i.e. after the raven. Lange thinks the expression indicates that the gentle creature had to be driven from its shelter out upon the wide waste of water. To see if the waters were abatedliterally, lightened, i.e. decreased (per. 11)from off the face of the ground; but the dove found no rest for the solo of her foot. The earth being not yet dry, but wet and muddy, and doves delighting to settle only on such places as are dry and clean; or the mountain tops, though visible, being either too distant or too high, and doves delighting in valleys and level plains, whence they are called doves of the valleys (Eze 7:16). And she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were upon (literally, waters upon; a much more graphic statement than appears in the A.V.) the face of the whole earth: then (literally, and) he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in (literally, caused her to come in) unto him into the ark.
Gen 8:10
And he stayed. , fut. apoc; Hif. of , to turn, to twist, to be afraid, to tremble, to wait (Furst); fut. apoc. Kal (Gesenius). Yet other seven days. , prop. the inf. absol, of the verb , to go over again, to repeat; hence, as an adverb, conveying the idea of doing over again the action expressed in the verb (cf. Gen 46:29; Psa 84:5). And again he sent forthliterally, he added to send (cf. Gen 8:12, Gen 8:21)the dove out of the ark.
Gen 8:11
And the dove came in unto him. Literally, to him. As the manner of doves is, partly for better accommodation both for food and lodging than yet he could meet with abroad, and partly from love to his mate (Poole). In the evening (of the seventh day). And, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off. Not as if “Deo jubente, uno die germinavit terra” (Ambrose), but because the olive leaves kept green under water (Chrysostom). Rosenmller, Lange, and Kalisch quote Pliny (13. 50) and Theophrastus (‘Hist. Plant; 4.8) to this effect. That the olive tree grows in Armenia is proved by the testimony of Strabo, Horace (Od. I. 7. 7), Virgil (Georg. 2.3), Diodorus Siculus (1. 17), &c. On this point vide Kalisch. The leaf which the dove carried towards the ark was “taraf,” freshly plucked; hence rightly translated by “viride (Michaelis, Rosenmller) rather than by “decerptum” (Chaldee, Arabic) or “raptum” (Calvin). (LXX.) is just the opposite of “fresh,” viz; withered. So Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.
Gen 8:12
And he stayed. ; Niph. fut. of (Gesenius); cf. . (Gen 8:10), Hiph. fut. of (Furst, Delitzsch). Tayler Lewis, following Jewish authorities, would derive both from ; with Aben Ezra making the first a regular Niphal, and with Rashi the second a contracted Piel. Yet other seven days. The frequent repetition of the number seven clearly points to the hebdomadal division of the week, and the institution of Sabbatic rest (vide Gen 2:1-3, Expos.). And sent forth the dove. “The more we examine these acts of Noah, the more it will strike us that they must have been of a religious nature. He did not take such observations, and so send out the birds, as mere arbitrary acts, prompted simply by his curiosity or his impatience; but as a man of faith and prayer he inquired of the Lord. What more likely then that such inquiry should have its basis in solemn religious exercises, not arbitrarily entered into, but on days held sacred for prayer and religious rest?” (T. Lewis). Which returned not again (literally, and it added not to return) unto him any more.
Gen 8:13
And it came to pass (literally, it was) in the six hundredth and first year (of Noah’s life; so LXX.), in the first month, , (LXX.); the word for month (expressed in Gen 8:4, Gen 8:14) being omitted in the Hebrew text for brevity,the first day of the month, the waters were dried upthe root signifies to burn up or become dry in consequence of heat (Furst); “it merely denotes the absence of water” (Gesenius)from off the earth: and Noah removed the covering of the arkmikseh, from kasah, to cover; used of the covering of the ark (Exo 26:14) and of the holy vessels (Num 4:8, Num 4:12), and hence supposed to be made of skins (Knobel, Bush); but “the deck of an ark on which the rain-storms spent their force must surely have been of as great stability as the ark itself (Lange)and looked, and, behold, the face of the ground was dry.
Gen 8:14
And in the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dried. The three Hebrew verbs employed to depict the gradual cessation of the floods express a regular gradation; (Gen 8:11), to be lightened, signifying their abatement or diminution ( , LXX.); (Gen 8:13), to be dried up, indicating the disappearance of the water ( , LXX.); (Gen 8:14), to be dry, denoting the desiccation of the ground ( , (LXX.). Cf. Isa 19:5, where there is a similar gradation: , and the river shall be wasted and dried up.
Chronology of the Flood
(Reckoning from the first day of the year.)
Mos.
Days
Days
I. Beginning of the flood
1
17 =
47
Continuance of Rain
=
40
Prevalence of Waters
=
110
II. The Ark touches Ararat
6
17 =
197
III. The Mountains seen
9
=
270
Raven sent after 40 days
=
310
Dove sent ” 7 “
=
317
Dove sent ” 7 “
=
324
Dove sent ” 7 “
=
331
IV. The Waters dried up
12
27 =
360
V. The earth dry
13
27 =
417
The data are insufficient to enable us to determine whether the Noachic year was solar or lunar. It has been conjectured that the year consisted of twelve months of thirty days, with five intercalated days at the end to make up the solar year of three hundred and sixty-five days (Ewald); of seven months of thirty days and five of thirty-one (Bohlen); of five of thirty and seven of twenty-nine (Knobel); but the circumstance that the period from the commencement of the Deluge to the touching of Ararat extended over five months exactly, and that the waters are said to have previously prevailed for one hundred and fifty days, naturally leads to the conclusion that the months of Noah’s year were equal periods of thirty days.
HOMILETICS
Gen 8:4, Gen 8:18
Mount Ararat, or the landing of the ark.
That disembarkment on the mountain heights of Ararat was an emblem of another landing which shall yet take place, when the great gospel ship of the Christian Church shall plant its living freight of redeemed souls upon the hills of heaven. Everything that Mount Ararat witnessed on that eventful day will yet be more conspicuously displayed in the sight of God’s believing people who shall be counted worthy of eternal life.
I. SIN PUNISHED. Mount Ararat was a solemn witness to the severity of Goad‘s judgments upon a guilty world. Never had the world looked on such a vindication of the insulted holiness and offended justice of Almighty God, and never will it look upon another till the hour strikes when “the heavens, being on fire, shall dissolve” (2Pe 3:10), and “the Lord himself shall be revealed in flaming fire” (2Th 1:7).
II. GRACE REVEALED. Mount Ararat saw Divine grace displayed to sinful mere. Pre-eminently Noah and his family were debtors to Divine grace that day when they stepped forth from the ark; add who can doubt that a sense of the richness of Divine grace in saving them will be one of the first feelings to take possession of the souls of the ransomed on reaching heaven?
III. SALVATION ENJOYED. Mount Ararat beheld salvation enjoyed by believing sinners. The deliverance of Noah and his family was a type of the salvation of the saints, which, however, is immeasurably grander than that of Noah.
1. In kind, as being a spiritual, and not merely a temporal, deliverance.
2. In degree, as being complete; whereas Noah’s was at the best an imperfect deliverancea deliverance from the Flood, but not from that which caused the Floodsin.
3. In duration. Noah’s deliverance was only for a timein the end he descended to the grave; the deliverance of the saints is for ever (Luk 20:36).
IV. GRATITUDE EXPRESSED. Mount Ararat heard the adorations and thanksgivings of a redeemed family. In Noah’s sacrifice was a wonderful commingling of ideas and emotions,
(1) faith,
(2) penitence,
(3) thanksgiving,
(4) consecration,
all of which will have a place within the bosoms of the ransomed host who yet shall sit upon the sea of glass. If not the offering up of sacrificial victims, as the expression of the soul’s faith, there will be
(1) in the midst of the throne a Lamb as it had been slain;
(2) the continual offering up of broken and of contrite hearts;
(3) the chanting of perpetual hosannas and hallelujahs; and
(4) the eternal consecration of our redeemed hearts to God.
V. SAFETY CONFIRMED. Mount Ararat listened to the voice of God confirming the salvation of his people. In two ways was it confirmed.
(1) By a voice, and
(2) by a signthe rainbow.
And so is the eternal happiness of God’s believing people secured
(1) by the sure word of promise (Rev 21:3) and
(2) by the covenant of grace (Rev 4:3).
Gen 8:10-12
Hoping and waiting.
I. The PATIENCE Of Noah’s hope.
1. Patience a characteristic of all true hope (Rom 8:25).
2. Faith in the Divine covenant is the secret of hope’s patience (Heb 11:1).
3. The patience of hope is always proportioned to the brightness of faith’s vision.
II. The EAGERNESS of Noah’s hope.
1. While waiting God’s time he kept a steady outlook for the coming of the promise.
2. He employed different methods to discover its approachthe raven and the dove.
3. He sanctified the means he used by devotion.
III. The REWARD Of Noah’s hope. In due time the dove returned with an olive leaf, which was
1. A timely answer.
2. An intelligible answer.
3. A joyous answer; and
4. A sufficient answer.
Gen 8:14
The returning of the waters, or the recall of Divine judgments.
I. GOD‘S JUDGMENTS HAVE THEIR SPECIFIC PURPOSES.
1. Separationthe elimination of the righteous from the wicked. Under the present condition of the world there is a strange intermingling of the good and the evil. The tares and the wheat, the draw-net with good and bad fish (Mat 13:1-58.) are suggestive emblems of this mixed state of society. The grand object contemplated by Christianity is the elimination of the saintly element from that which is corrupt. For this end it lays a special injunction on the former to withdraw themselves from the company and contagion of the latter (2Co 6:17; 2Th 3:6; 1Ti 6:5). Only it forbids men, under cover of real or pretended zeal for righteousness, to attempt any forcible separation of the commingled elements (Mat 13:30). Yet what the hand of man cannot do the hand of God canwinnow the chaff from the wheat. He did so by the Flood. He did so by the incarnation (Mat 3:12). He will do so at the second advent (Mat 13:30; Mat 25:32).
2. Condemnationthe infliction of retribution on the finally impenitent. Undisguised was this the design of the full catastrophe which overtook “the world of the ungodly” in the time of Noah. It was sent for the specific purpose of punishing their evil deeds. And so have all Divine judgments of a like kind, what we misname accidents,catastrophes, floods, famines, pestilences, &c.,a terrible on look of wrath and judicial retribution to them who forget to humble themselves -beneath the mighty hand of God. So certainly will the last great judgment, of which Noah’s flood was a prophetic symbol and warning, have as its specific purpose the complete destruction of the finally impenitent (Gen 2:5; 2Th 1:7; Heb 10:27; 2Pe 3:7).
3. Preservationthe salvation of the faithful. This may be said to be the aim of all those minor troubles and afflictions that befall God’s people on the earth (Rom 8:28; 2Co 4:17). It is specially so when on a larger scale he interposes to inflict his judgments on the world (Isa 26:9). When he overthrows the wicked (whether nation or individual) suddenly as in a moment, it is with an eye to the deliverance of his people. ExamplesPharaoh, Goliath, Haman, Herod, Belshazzar. It was so with Noah. The destruction of the antediluvian sinners was necessary, if the remnant of the primitive Church was to be saved. So may it be said that the future overthrow of the wicked is indispensable, if the eternal happiness of the redeemed is to be secured.
II. GOD‘S JUDGMENTS HAVE THEIR APPOINTED TIMES.
1. Their times of coming. The hour of the commencement of the Flood was both fixed and announced 120 years before the event. Though not revealed, as in the can of the Noachic Deluge, the date of every event is as truly predetermined (cf. Gen 18:14; Exo 9:5; Job 7:1; Ecc 3:1; Jer 8:7; Act 17:26). And God’s judgments always keep their set times of coming, as the Flood came in the predicted hour for its arrival.
2. Their times of continuance. The flood of waters lingered on the earth for a season, but not forever. From the moment when the first raindrop fell from the leaden sky, after the Lord had shut the patriarch with his family and living creatures into the ark, till it could be said the earth was dry, one year and ten days passed away. So have all God’s judgments, at least here, their limits. Upon sinful men his wrath is not poured out without measure.
3. Their times of recall. In the future world we do not read that there will be any recall of the Divine judgments; everlasting punishment (Mat 25:46), fire that never shall be quenched (Mar 9:43), everlasting destruction (2Th 1:9) are some of the expressions employed to depict the fire-deluge of eternity. But here on earth God’s judgments, being only for a set time, are subject to recall; and as they cannot anticipate the hour appointed for their coming, so neither can they linger beyond the moment assigned for their departure. Their recall too is, as in the case of Noah’s flood
(1) An act of grace (Gen 8:1). “God remembered Noah.” “It is of the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed”.
(2) An act of power (Gen 8:2, Gen 8:3). As in order to roll back the tide of waters he sent forth a wind and stopped up the flood-gates of the deep and the windows of heaven, so is he able to lay his hand upon all the powers and forces of the material universe, and make them cease their working as easily as he set them in operation.
III. GOD‘S JUDGMENTS HAVE THEIR APPROPRIATE SIGNS.
1. Signs of their approach, which are commonly
(1) The growing wickedness of man, as in the days of Noah (Gen 6:11, Gen 6:12). When an individual or a nation is becoming mature in sin, then that individual or that nation is becoming ripe for judgment. So it was with Pharaoh, and afterwards with Israel, with Babylon, Nineveh, Greece, Rome. So will it be in the end of the world (cf. Rev 14:15).
(2) Prelusive chastisements from God, again as in the days of Noah (Gen 7:10). The Deluge began with a rain-shower, which gradually became more violent as the days passed, and with the bursting forth of subterranean floods, which swelled the rivers, lakes, and oceans; all which must have been ominous indications that the long-threatened judgment was at last approaching. So the full outpouring of God’s wrath is commonly heralded by anticipatory inflictions.
2. Signs of their departure, which are usually
(1) The accomplishment of their mission. Immediately it could be said, “All in whose nostrils was the breath of life died” (Gen 7:22), it was added, “And God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged” (Gen 8:1).
(2) The mitigation of their violence. The quieting of the waters (Gen 8:1) was the first symptom of the passing of the storm to Noah; and so, when God’s retributive judgments are about to be withdrawn, their severity begins to relax.
(3) The removal of their causes. The second sign to Noah was the cessation of the rain and the retirement of the floods (Gen 8:2). So, when God’s judgments are about to disappear, the agencies that brought them are visibly recalled.
(4) The arrival of little foretastes of deliverance. Such was the grounding of the ark to Noah and his imprisoned family (Gen 8:4).
(5) The perceptible return of the previous condition of affairs. This was symbolized by the reappearance of the mountain-tops (Gen 8:5).
IV. GOD‘S JUDGMENTS HAVE THEIR INTERESTED OBSERVERS. Possibly the wicked are indifferent to the Divine judgments when they happen to be abroad upon the earth; but not so the righteous, to whom everything connected with them is of the utmost importance. Observers of God’s judgments should be like Noah
1. Hopefulexpecting them to pass. Had Noah not anticipated the complete removal of the waters, he had not made a single experiment to discover how that removal was progressing. Let the saints learn from Noah to cherish hope in God.
2. Prayerful. There is good reason for believing that Noah sent forth the raven and the dove on the day of weekly rest, and after solemn religious exercises (vide Expos.). The saint’s inquiries into God’s judgments should always be conducted in a spirit of devotion.
3. Intelligenti.e. capable of reading the signs of the times. When the dove came home to Noah with the fresh-gathered olive leaf, “he knew that the waters were abated from off the earth” (Gen 8:11). So God ever vouchsafes to devout souls, who seek them by faith, appropriate and adequate signs of his movements, which it becomes them to study and interpret.
4. Patientseeking neither to outrun God’s leading nor to anticipate God’s directing, but, like Noah, calmly waiting the Divine order to advance to the new sphere and the new duty which the passing of his judgments may reveal. Noah waited fifty-seven days after the drying up of the waters before he left the ark, and then he only did so at God’s command; wherefore, “be ye not unwise” by being over-hasty, “but understanding what the will of the Lord is” (Eph 5:17).
HOMILIES BY J.F. MONTGOMERY
Gen 8:1
God’s infinite care.
In the experience of Christians the joy of first believing is often followed by a time of discouragement. Freshness of feeling seems to fade. The “law of sin” makes itself felt. Yet it is just the training by which firmer faith and fuller joy are to be reached. Deep must have been the thankfulness of those in the ark; safe in the midst of the flood. But their faith was tried. Five months, and still no abatement. Noah may well have had misgivings (cf. Mat 11:3). But God had not forgotten him. He remembered not Noah only, but every creature in the ark (cf. Luk 12:6). He saves to the uttermost (Heb 7:25). The time of trial was a prelude to complete deliverance (cf. Act 14:22).
I. THERE ARE TIMES WHEN BELIEVERS ARE TEMPTED TO FEEL FORGOTTEN. When troubles gather, and prayers seem unanswered, it is hard to keep faith firm. The warning Heb 12:6, Heb 12:7 often needful. Christians would fain be led in smooth ways. And when their course is irksome and discouraging they sometimes see the wind boisterous, and begin to sink. Still more surely does the feeling follow sin. The disciple has forgotten to watch; has trusted to his own strength; has ventured into temptation, and fallen. Then God is felt to be afar off (cf. Exo 33:7). And there are times of discipline, when spiritual freedom seems denied, and the soul cannot cry Abba, and prayer seems choked (cf. Isa 49:14). Perhaps it is to teach humility; perhaps to show some root of evil; perhaps to excite more hunger for communion with God.
II. BUT GOD DOES NOT FORGET. A creature’s love may fail (Isa 49:15), a creature’s watchfulness may faint, but not God’s. He made us; can he forget our wants? His purpose is our salvation; will he neglect any step? He gave his own Son for us; is anything else too great for his goodness? Not even thy coldness and unbelief can make him cease to care.
III. GOD‘S CARE EXTENDS TO THE LEAST. Our Lord welcomed
(1) those of small account, and
(2) the undeserving (Luk 7:39; Luk 15:10; Luk 19:7). He cares also for small matters (cf. Luk 12:28-30). What treasures of wisdom and love surround us on every side! These are not beneath his care. Will he not fulfill? (Rom 8:28).
IV. FREEDOM THROUGH THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. God’s time not always what we should choose (cf. Joh 7:6). Noah a prisoner of hope. God showed that the hope was well founded. The agent of deliverance “a wind “the same word, both in Hebrew and in the LXX; as is used in Gen 1:2 for the Spirit of God. Doubtless the agent in drying up the water was a wind. But in the spiritual lesson we are reminded of the Holy Spirit. His work at first brought life on the earth; and his work prepared for repeopling it, and completed the work of Noah’s deliverance. And his work gives us freedom, showing us the work of Christ, and our position as children of God.M.
HOMILIES BY R.A. REDFORD
Gen 8:1-5
Grace and providence.
The powers of material nature are obedient servants of God, and those who are the objects of his regard, remembered by him, are safely kept in the midst of the world’s changes. “All things work together for their good.” There is an inner circle of special providence in which the family of God, with those whose existence is bound up in it, is under the eye of the heavenly Father, and in the hollow of his hand. “And the ark rested” (Gen 8:4). We speak of the cradle of the human race being set on Mount Ararat; is it not well to remember
1. The new world came out of an ark of Divine grace. Religion is the real foundation of society.
2. The waves of the flood bore the ark to its resting-place. So the waters of affliction, though they heave our vessel and trouble our hearts with fear, carry us onward to a new and often higher standpoint of knowledge and faith.
3. While the flood bore the ark, God himself chose out the spot where it should end its awful journey. The Ararat of the new world was like the paradise of the first manthe nursery of a rising humanity; but whereas in the state of innocence it is a garden, in the case of the redeemed man it is a mountain, with its steep, rough places, its heights and depths, its trials and dangers. The humanity which started from Ararat carried with it at once the good and the evil of the old world which had passed away, and the mountain symbolized the complex treasury of possibilities, mingled with liabilities, which were laid up in the rescued race.R.
Gen 8:6-12
The dispensations of righteousness and love.
The raven and the dove. While this passage has its natural, historical fitness, we cannot overlook its symbolical significance. It seems to set forth the two administrations of God, both of them going forth from the same center of his righteousness in which his people are kept safe. The one represented by the carrion bird, the raven, is THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUDGMENT, which goes forth to and fro until the waters are dried up from off the earthfinding a resting-place in the waters of destruction, though not a permanent rest; returning to the ark, as the beginning and the end of judgment is the righteousness of God. The dove is the emblem of DIVINE GRACE, spiritual life and peace. It cannot find rest in the waters of judgment until another seven days, another period of gracious manifestation, has prepared the world for it; then it brings with it the plucked-off olive leaf, emblem of retiring judgment and revealed mercy; and when yet another period of gracious manifestation has passed by, the dove shall return no more to the ark, for the ark itself is no more neededthe waters are abated from off the face of the earth. So we may say the raven dispensation was that which preceded Noah. Then followed the first sending forth of the dove unto the time of Moses, leading to a seven days’ period of the ark life, waiting for another mission of grace. The dove brought back the olive leaf when the prophetic period of the old dispensation gave fuller promise of Divine mercy. But yet another period of seven days must transpire before the dove is sent forth and returns no more to the ark, but abides in the earth. After the two sacred intervals, the period of the law and the period of the prophets, which were both immediately connected with a special limited covenant such as is represented in the ark, there followed the world-wide mission of the Comforter. The waters were abated. The “Grace and Truth“ took possession of man’s world, cursed by sin, redeemed by grace.R.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
Gen 8:1. God remembered Noahand made a wind to pass, &c. God had compassion upon Noah in his melancholy confinement: and this stupendous end of his providence being answered by the destruction of the iniquitous generation, which brought on this dissolution of the earth, he was pleased to make use of the same natural means for the separation of the waters again to their appointed places as he used at the beginning of the creation: he caused the wind or air to operate as at first in order to assuage the waters, or rather to cause them to subside, and retreat to their appointed places. See notes on Gen 1:6, &c. In consequence of this, Gen 1:3 the waters returned from off the earth continually, or, as the margin of our Bibles has it, in going and returning. The heathen poet Ovid, (First Book of Metamorph.) says, that Jove loosed the northern wind to restore the earth to its primitive state, &c.
REFLECTIONS.Since the work of vengeance was finished, it was time to remember mercy to Noah, now so long a prisoner in the ark, and perhaps by this time looking with some solitude for release from his confinement. It is said,
1. God remembered Noah; not that he had ever been forgotten of him. The eyes of the Lord are ever upon his children to do them good; if he tarry therefore, wait for him: none ever trusted on him, and was ashamed.
2. He remembered the cattle also. His mercies are over all his works: he careth for beasts that perish, and shall he forget or forsake his people? that be far from him.
3. We have also the evidence of his remembrance. He stayed the waters from flowing. (1.) He sent a wind to dry up the floods. He hath winds in his treasures, as well as waters, to dry up, as well as to deluge. All things serve him. (2.) He stopped the windows of heaven, and the fountains of the deep. Note; When afflictive providences have accomplished their ends, they shall be removed. (3.) He caused the waters to return from off the earth continually; part shut up within its bowels, in the vast abyss, part exhaled by sun and wind, and re-ascending into the clouds. (4.) It was a work of time, a hundred and fifty days, before they were considerably abated. Note; When our trials are long, and our deliverance slow, we had need pray: hold out, faith and patience.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
THIRD SECTION
The Ark, and the Saved and Renewed Humanity
Gen 8:1-19
1And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark; and God made a wind to pass over the earth and the waters assuaged.1 2The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained. 3And the waters returned2 from off the earth continually [to go and return, ]; and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated. 4And the ark rested3 in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the4 mountains of Ararat. 5And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen. 6And it came to pass at the end of forty days that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made. 7And he sent forth a raven which went to and fro5 until the waters were dried up from off the earth. 8Also he sent forth a dove from him to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground [, had become light or shallow, not had disappeared, as Lange says]. 9But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth; then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark. 10And he stayed () yet other seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark. 11And the dove came in to him in the evening; and lo, in her mouth was an olive-leaf plucked off; so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. 12And he stayed [ Niphal] yet other seven days6 and sent forth the dove; which returned not again to him any more. 13And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth; and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry. 14And in the second 15month, on the seven-and-twentieth day of the month was the earth dried. And God 16[Elohim] spake unto Noah, saying, Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons wives with thee. 17Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl and of cattle, and of every creeping thing, that creepeth upon the earth; that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful and multiply upon the earth. 18And Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons wives with him. 19Every beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl, and whatsoever creepeth upon the earth, after their kinds, went forth out of the ark.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. Stages of the Flood as taken in their Order. a. To its highest point: 1. Seven days, the going in to the ark; 2. forty days of the flood-storm; 3. one hundred and ten days, thereupon, of steady rain, and of the steady rising of the floodso in general one hundred and fifty days. Threefold grade of advance: 1. The ark is lifted up from the ground; 2. the arks going upon the face of the waters; 3. its rising fifteen cubits high above the mountains, b. To the disappearance of the waters: In the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, that is, after five months, or one hundred and fifty days, just as the waters begin to fall, the ark rests on Ararat. On the first day of the tenth month, that is, after two months and about twelve days (Knobel: seventy-two days after the settling of the ark), the mountain-peaks project7 above the surface of the water. After forty days Noah opens the window and lets fly the raven. Next goes forth the dove. It is not directly said how long after the flight of the raven was the first flight of the dove. The second flight of the dove, however, was seven other days after the first, and therefore it is inferred that there were seven days between the flight of the raven and that of the dove; the third flight, again, was seven days after the second. We must either reckon in here an unnamed portion of time, or the time between the flight of the raven and the flight of the first dove must have been longer than seven days. Hereupon follows the last section of time, from the first day of the first month to the seven-and-twentieth day of the following, or the period of the full drying of the earth. In the six hundred and first year, etc. Luther, following the Septuagint, and by way of explanation, adds, of Noahs age.
2. Gen 8:1-4. The first Decrease of the Flood to the Resting of the Ark upon Ararat. And God remembered Noah and every living thing.Gods remembering must be understood in an emphatic sense. God has always remembered Noah; but now he remembers him in a special sensethat he may accomplish his deliverance. There comes a turn in the flood, and the ground of it lay in the government of God. To the rule of judgment upon the human world, succeeds the rule of compassion for the deliverance of Noah and humanity, as also of the animal-world. It is his compassion, not simply his grace. For God remembered also the beasts. Thus did he remember them all, as Elohim, in his most universal relation to the earth. Had there been a longer continuance of the flood, there would not only have been want in the ark, but the ark itself would have been destroyed. A wind must blow to disperse and dry up the flood, whilst, on the other side, the fountains of the flood were closed. With the shutting of the fountains of the deep, or with the restoring of the continental tranquillity of the earth, and of the equilibrium of the atmosphere, there ceases also the extraordinary rain; and besides, the windows of heaven were closed. It is an inexactness of the narration, but which gives it an unmistakable historic character, that the time of the floods advance is given as one hundred and fifty days, and that the point of time when the ark settles, and when, therefore, the actual sinking of the waters must have commenced, falls in like manner at the end of the one hundred and fifty days. For Noah, indeed, the first turning-point in the sinking of the waters, which had commenced already before the running out of the one hundred and fifty days, could not have been a matter of observation. For him, the first sure sign of the sinking of the waters was the grounding of the ark.And the waters returned.Here is the whole process preliminarily describedhow the waters, in their undulations here and there, kept steadily settling more and more. Then follows the indication of the first decrease.Upon the mountains of Ararat. is the name of a territory (2Ki 19:37) which is mentioned Jer 51:27, as a kingdom near to Minni (Armenia),probably the middle province of the Armenian territory, which Moses of Chorene calls Arairad, Araratia. The mountains of Ararat are, doubtless, the mountain-group which rises from the plain of the Araxes in two high peaks, the Great Ararat, 16,254 feet, and the Lesser, about 12,000 feet, above the level of the sea. This landing-place of the ark is of the highest significance for the development of humanity, as it is to be renewed after the flood. Armenia, the fountain-land of the Paradise rivers, a cool, airy, well-watered, insular mountain-tract, as it has been called, lies in the middle of the old continent. And so, in a special manner, does the mountain of Ararat lie nearly in the middle, not only of the Great African-Asiatic desert tract, but also of the inland or Mediterranean waters, extending from Gibraltar to the sea of Baikal,at the same time occupying the middle point in the longest line of extension of the Caucasian race, and of the Indo-Germanic lines of language and mythology, whilst it is also the middle point of the greatest reach of land in the old world as measured from the Cape of Good Hope to Behrings Straitsin fact, the most peculiar point on the globe, from whose heights the lines and tribes of people, as they went forth from the sons of Noah, might spread themselves to all the regions of the earth (compare Von Raumer, Palestine). Keil. See also Delitzsch, p. 266. The Koran has wrongly placed the landing-place of Noah on the hill Judhi8 in the Kurd mountain-tract; the Samaritan version locates it on the mountains of Ceylon; the Sybillme books in Phrygia, in the native district of Marsyas. The Hindoo story of the flood names the Himalaya, the Greek Parnassus, as the landing-place of the delivered ancestor. Knobel. Delitzsch and Keil agree in the supposition of the Armenian highlands.
3. Gen 8:5-12. The time of the Signs of Deliverance, and of the increasing Hope, from the first Decrease until the Disappearance of the Flood. The first sign of deliverance was the resting of the ark upon Ararat. Now it continues still until the first day of the tenth month (Tammuz), or from seventy to seventy-three days, when there appears the second sign: the peaks of the Armenian highlands become visible; at all events, the ark, on their summit, had become free from the influence of the water. Noah, however, is not satisfied, until after forty days more, that the flood will not return; and then he opens the window () of the sky-light (). Fresh light and air awaken, or rather gradually reanimate, the torpid animal-world, and Noahs longing desire sends forth the raven through the opened window. (It is to be remarked that the ark had only one male raven, because from the unclean animals there was taken but one pair. From the staying out or returning of the raven Noah might, at all events, draw inferences; but this bird is noted for his appetite, that which makes all life in the ark strive for freedom. The raven, therefore, may be first ventured on this craving flight, since he can find food from the dead bodies left by the flood upon the mountains. In the ancient world, the raven was regarded as a prophetic bird, and was therefore held sacred to Apollo. Something of this appears (1Ki 17:4; 1Ki 17:6) in his connection with the prophet Elias. He was thus esteemed among the Arabians, who assumed to understand the voice and flight of the birds. Especially was he regarded as a prophet of the weather, as inferred from his flight and cry. Pliny describes him as a wild and forgetful bird,9 who forgets to come back to his nest. And so he came not back to the ark; but Noah could know from this that the earth was no longer wholly covered with water. Knobel. We may refer here to the two ravens on the shoulders of Odin. Without returning into the ark, he flew here and there between the ark (to which he was bound by fear and sympathy, the attraction of his mate perhaps, and on the outside of which he could rest) and the emerging mountain-tops, where he found food and freedom.And he sent forth the dove.The raven lights everywhere; therefore his remaining out furnishes no proof of the drying of the lower places. But the dove lights upon the plains, and not in the slime and marsh; therefore does its flying abroad give information whether or no the plains are dry. The Septuagint translates by , the Vulgate, post eum, Luther correctly, from himself. (So the English translation, from him.) It is perhaps indicated that he had to drive it from him. The time of sending away is reckoned by Baumgarten, Knobel, and others (after Aben Ezra and Kimchi), as being seven days after the sending of the raven; because it is said, Gen 8:10, he waited other seven days. The delicate dove finds no place fit for her lighting, because all the lower lands are yet covered, and so she turns back. And Noah drew her back again into the ark. The question may be asked: Since the top of Ararat was free from water, why did not Noah go out with the beasts? It is, however, a truthful characteristic that he did no such thing; since a hasty disturbance of the beasts might have yet brought the whole in danger of destruction. But the second sending forth of the dove, after seven other days, brings to him the fourth and fairest sign of deliverance: the dove returns with a fresh olive-leaf in its mouth. fut. Hiphil from ,10 to be in trouble, to wait painfully and longingly. Delitzsch. The olive-tree has green leaves all the year through, and appears to endure the water, since Theophrastus, Hist. Plant. 48, and Pliny, Hist. Nat. 13, 50, give an account of olive trees in the Red Sea. It comes early in Armenia (Strabo), though not on the heights of Ararat, but lower down, below the walnut, mulberry, and apricot tree, in the valleys on the south side (Ritter, Geography, 10. p. 920). The dove must, therefore, have made a wide flight in search of the plains, and on this account have just returned at evening time. This olive-leaf,which was not something picked up on a mountain-peak, where it might have been floated by the water, but () something torn off, and, therefore, fresh plucked from the tree,taught Noah what was the state of things in the earth below. It was the more fitting here, since the olive-branch was an emblem of peace (2Ma 14:4; Dion., Halic., Virg., Liv.), and yet in the text it is not an olive-branch (Symm, Vulg.), but only an olive-leaf. Knobel.The sign gave intelligence that at least the lower olive-trees, in the lower ground, were above the water; the olive-loaf, moreover, in the mouth of the dove, was a fair sign of promise.Yet seven other days.This time the dove returns no more. The attraction of freedom and the new life outweighs the desire to return; in which it is presupposed that it is an attraction which the others will follow. The dove is found also in the classical myths. According to Plutarch (De Solert. Animal. 13), Deucalion had a dove in the ark, which indicated bad weather by its return, and good weather by its onward flight. Knobel. It was, in like manner, a prophetic bird at Dodona, according to Herodotus and others; and the ancients were also acquainted with its use as a letter-carrier, according to lian and Pliny. On the significance of the dove in the New Testament, see the account of the baptism of Jesus.In the six hundred and first year.This reckoning completes the old life of Noah. His seventh hundred is the beginning of his sabbath-time.In the first month, in the first day, etc.This date looks back to the beginning of the flood, in the second month of the previous year, on the seventeenth day. Now Noah removes the covering of the ark, and takes a free look around and upon the new earth. The waters, no longer flowing back, were evaporating from the earth, and the ground was in the process of becoming dry. Yet still he waited a month and twenty-seven days, that he might not too hastily expose to injury the living seminarium of the ark, the precious seed of the new life that had been entrusted to his care. But he waited only for the clear direction.And Noah removed the covering of the ark.. Because this word is used elsewhere only of a covering made of leather and skins with which they covered the holy vessels on the march (Num 4:8; Num 4:12), and of the third and fourth covering of the ark of the testimony (Exo 26:14, etc.), it does not follow, as Knobel supposes, that the author had in view a similar covering. The deck of an ark on which the rain-storms spent their force, must surely have been of as great stability as the ark itself.And God (Elohim) spake to Noah.It is Elohim, because this revelation belongs to the universal relation of God to the earth. The time of the flood, according to verse 14, amounted to twelve months and eleven days, that is, three hundred and sixty-five days, or a full solar year; consequently in the course of one full circuit of the natural change or period (), does the earth become destroyed and renewed. In the fact that Noah might not leave the ark from his own free, arbitrary will, there is expressed his preservation of the seal of the divine counsel, and of the divine work. Baumgarten. New blessings upon the creatures, similar to those which were pronounced at the creation, are connected with his going forth at the divine command; it is the beginning of a new world. As in creation the beasts were blessed before man, so is it here. Baumgarten. In the beasts going out of the ark in pairs there is given to us a clear idea of the stability of the new order in nature, and of the security for its continuance.
[Note on the Week, and on the Seventh Day Observance in the Ark.And he waited seven days, Gen 8:10. And he waited seven other days. Dr. Lange gives little attention to the important question connected with this language, as he passes over, with a very few remarks, the whole question of the sabbath in Genesis 1. There is certainly indicated here a sevenfold division of days, as already recognized, whatever may be its reasons. Of these, no one seems more easy and natural than that which refers it to the traditionary remembrance of the creation, and its seventh day of rest, although some of those who claim to be the higher school of criticism reject it. Had such a reference to a sevenfold division been found in some ancient Hindoo or Persian book, and along with it, or in a similar writing closely connected with it, an account of a hexameral creation with its succeeding day of rest, they would doubtless have discovered a connection between the ideas. But here they do not hesitate to violate their own famous canon, that the Bible is to be interpreted like any other ancient writings. Now it may be regarded as well settled that such a division of time existed universally among the Shemitic and other Oriental peoples. (See this clearly shown in the article Week, in Smiths Dictionary of the Bible.) It is a fact, too, well established, that a similar division existed among the Egyptians, as is particularly stated, with the names given to the days of the week, by Dion. Cassius (Hist. Rom. xxxvii. 18). They are the names of the seven celestial bodies, and yet there are no astronomical phenomena that could of themselves have given rise to it. It is evidently an after-thought. The things named must have been known before, and when the original reason of the division was lost, the planetary series was adapted to it, although it had to be taken in an irregular and disproportioned manner. This was to give it mystery and interest, and to accommodate it to the astrological superstition, which early came in, of lucky and unlucky days. The same names came into the Roman (ecclesiastical) and Saxon calendars. They could not so readily have found place, had there not been some previous ground in the Occidental heathen ideas (Roman and Scandinavian), although they do not appear in classical literature.
But how shall such a division be explained? The reference to the lunar phases seems plausible, but will not bear close examination. It is true that a lunation (about twenty-nine and one-half days) is approximately divisible into four parts, of nearly seven days each, but the beginnings and endings, especially of the second and fourth quarters, are so obscure, and incapable of easy determination, that it could never have been adjusted with the required practical precision to any settled weekly reckoning of definite days. Besides, in that case, the week would have had its series commence and end with the divisions of the lunation. But we find nowhere any such reckoning. The week has no reference to the month. Such a day, of such a month, is in all calendars, but first or second week, of such a month, is nowhere found. Again, there were adjustments of the months to the solar year by admitted inequalities and intercalations, but there is no trace anywhere of any such attempts to regulate the days of the week with reference to the month. A seventh portion of time computed from an ever-shifting beginning would have been of no use, or would only have introduced confusion. The week, therefore, must have had, and did have, its reckoning from some point entirely independent of any annual, monthly, or even astronomical calculus. It must, too, have been from some remote period, fixed in itself (or supposed to be so fixed), just as we reckon our weeks from the day of Christs resurrection, in a series continuing steadily on, though there has been, since then, repeated rectifications of the month (or moons), and even a change of style in respect to the year. The weekly series has been unbroken.
The Jewish reckoning of the seven days, and of the sabbath, we know, was thus independent. In Exo 16:23, we find the particular sabbath there mentioned as coming on the sixteenth day of the second month (the day after they came to the Wilderness of Sin), and on the twenty-third following, as reckoned without reference to any monthly or annual beginning. It comes on such a day, but computed by itself, and seems to have been thus known as something dating from some ancient, remote period, and kept in remembrance even during the ignorance and debasement of a servile bondage. It must have come by tradition from their patriarchal ancestors, and was probably the same seventh day which was recognized by the Egyptians (their day of Saturn, Remphan, Hebrew , Arabic see Amo 5:26, Septuagint version, and Act 7:43), although with them the observance may have lost its original idea and reason, and become wholly idolatrous or superstitious. Therefore does Moses tell the Jews to remember, and keep it holy, calling back their minds to the primitive ground of its institution. So Kimchi and Aben Ezra, in their comment on Amo 5:26, say that (Kiyun) is the same with , Shabbatai (Saturn, or the sabbath-god), for they made tohim an image, whilst another interpretation makes it to be , the star of Saturn, and so is he called , Khivan, in the tongue of the Arabians and the Persians. In the earliest Egyptian mythology, as in the most ancient Greek derived from it, the dynasty of Saturn ( = , time), or the old creative, generative power, was before that of , the light, or the Sun; that is, his day (dies Saturni) was before the dies Solis, or, sun-day, the primitive dies Jovis.11 So does the darkened mirror of heathenism give to all these early things both a pantheistic and a polytheistic hue. The Hebrew revelation alone preserves them truthful, pure, and holy. The silence of the Scriptures in respect to the patriarchal observance of the sabbath, religiously or otherwise (unless this that is said of Noah be an exception), furnishes no answer to the strong inference to be derived from Exodus 16, 20. See remarks on this in Note on the Sabbath, page 197.
The more we examine these acts of Noah, the more it will strike us that they must have been of a religious nature. He did not take such observations, and so send out the birds, as mere arbitrary acts, prompted simply by his curiosity or his impatience. God had shut him in, and as a man of faith and prayer he looks for the divine directions in determining the times of waiting. Every opening, therefore, of the ark, and every sending forth of the birds, may be regarded as having been accompanied. or preceded by a divine consultation. He inquired of the Lord, as the Scripture records other holy men as having done. What more likely, then, than that such inquiry should have its basis in solemn religious exercises, not arbitrarily entered into, but on days held sacred for prayer and religious rest. When this was done, then the other, or more human means of inquiry that were in accordance with it, would be resorted to. In this point of view, the sending forth of the raven and the dove may be reverently regarded as divine auspications. (See remarks in marginal note, p. 310.) They immediately followed such stated religious exercises, and hence his periods of waiting would, in the most natural and appropriate manner, be regulated by them. On any other view, his proceedings would seem wholly reasonless and arbitrary. The idea gives an interest to the life of this lonely, righteous man, during his long sojourn in the ark. He did not forget God, nor Gods ancient hallowing of a certain day in seven, and, therefore, is there the stronger emphasis in what is said Gen 8:1, that the Lord remembered Noah. See Langes most striking and beautiful remarks on this expression, p. 309.
There must be reasons for such a seven-days waiting, and what more natural and consistent ones could there be than those here stated? It amounts to nothing to say that seven is a sacred or mystic number. How came it to be such? Though afterwards thus used in Scripture, there could have been nothing of this sacredness at that early day, unless it had come from the still earlier account of the creation. It must have been founded on some great fact; for, of all the elementary numbers, seven may be said to have the least of any mathematical or merely numerical interest, such as gave rise to peculiar speculations in the earliest thinking. There was a mystery about the number one, as the fountain of the infinite numerical series, or as representing a point, the principium of all magnitude. Two had an interest as representing the line, and as the root of that most regular of all series, the binary powers. Three was the binding of unity and duality, and represented the triangle, the simplest or most elementary plane figure in space. Four (the tetractys of Pythagoras) represented the tetraedron, or the most elementary solid. Five was the number of the fingers on the hand, and thus became the origin of the universal decimal notation. Six was the double triad, and so on. But it is not easy to find any such mathematical or numerical peculiarity in seven that could have drawn special attention to it, as having, in itself, anything mystical or occult. It is not a square, nor a power of any kind; it is not what is called an oblong number, or one that can be divided into factors. It represents no figure that, like the hexagon or pentagon, can be geometrically produced. Its sacredness, or mystery, therefore, could only have arisen from some great historical truth, or institution, supposed to have been connected with it; and if we interpret the Hebrew books like other ancient writings, this origin could have been no other than a belief in the great events mentioned Genesis 1, as laying the foundation for all subsequent veneration of the hebdomadal number and period.T. L.]
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. The great turning. As the first half of the flood pictures especially the judgment of death, so the second half presents the redemption from judgment, as it goes forth in its gradual development, with its redemptive and anticipatory signs.
2. God remembered Noah. Everything (every affliction of the pious) endures its time; the goodness of God endureth forever. Gods remembering in a special sense. His righteousness makes a special knowledge, and a special beholding, inside of his general omniscience and omnipotence; so his mercy and his compassion make a special remembrance within his consciousness, wherein there are known to him all his works from the beginning. That is, God is a living, personal God, showing himself to be such in his government, and in his revelation which makes joyful again the believers in his grace, after they had been exposed to temptation. Each deliverance, each help, especially each experience of salvation, rests upon a remembrance of God. Gods remembrance of man and mans remembrance of God meet each other, as eye meets eye, in the actual manifestation of saving acts. The compassion of God embraced also the animal-world, but conditions itself through the grace that embraces believing men.
3. As the spirit of God moved over the waters at the beginning of creation, so goes forth here, over the floods of the deluge, the wind that saved, as an emblem of the same divine spirit. It was a wind of lifea vernal windfor the new earth.
4. As the fountains of the deep were broken up before the windows of heaven were opened, so also were they closed before them. In order that the rain might cease at Ararat, it was necessary that before this the evaporation in the opposite regions of the earth should have come to an end.
5. Ararat. The home of Adam, the home of Noah. Our first home the heights of Paradise, our second home the salvation hills of Ararat, our third home Golgotha, our everlasting home the highest heavens.
6. The salvation is unfolded gradually, and announced in a gradual series of saving signs: 1. The resting of the ark; 2. the appearance of the mountain-tops; 3. the flying forth of the raven; 4. the olive-leaf of the dove; 5. the doves not returning. Thus it is that the time of deliverance is a time of patience, and of alternate desire and hope. Blessed in hope (Romans 8).
7. The raven and the dove. The sympathy and the co-operation of the beasts in the kingdom of God. The unity of the raven and the dove, and at the same time their contrast, denotes the community of creaturely interests, as well as the contrast between the interests of the creature generally, and the kingdom of God in particular; for the raven is a figure of the universal life, the dove an emblem of the church.
8. The signs of hope increase from seven to seven daysan indication of the idea of the Sabbath and of Sunday.
9. The fresh leaf from the olive-tree is the first sign of life from the buried earth. A significant sign: for the oil, as a gentle yet penetrating substance, is the symbol of the anointing of the Holy Spirit. This is brought by that purest bird of the heavens, which even among the heathen is held sacred (see Herod. 2. 55). The green olive-leaf in the mouth of the dove is a sign that the earth is not merely laid waste (we may rather say purified), but also consecrated by the waters. Baumgarten. And yet we must distinguish between the symbolic significance of the oil, of the olive-tree, and of the olive-leaf. The oil denotes the spirit, the olive-tree (1114; Rev 11:3-4) denotes spiritual men, the holy Israel; and in correspondence with this the olive-branch denotes the partakers of the spirit (Romans 11), the blossoms of the spirit, the signs of love and peace.
10. If we take the human race and the earth as a totality, the flood is the dividing of the old from the new. The old earth, with the humanity that had become flesh, the o ,12 is destroyed, but even this destruction is the preservation of the righteous man, of Noah, in that he is delivered from the corruptive community of the flesh. On this account is it said, 1Pe 3:20, eight souls were saved by water, and even there (Gen 8:21), the flood is named a type of baptism. The water of the flood is, therefore, the baptismal water of the earth, which drowns the old whilst it preserves and quickens the new. This view of the flood, moreover, has passed over into the consciousness of the Church. In the prayer for the consecration of the baptismal water in the Sacramentarium Gregorianum it is said: Deus qui nocentis mundi crimina per aquas abluens, etc. Baumgarten.
11. As baptism makes a distinction between the old and the new man, so did the flood make a distinction between the old and the new humanity, which were, therefore, types on both sides. So did the Red Sea divide the children of Israel from the Egyptians, who were drowned in the same (1Co 10:2).
12. As Noah went into the ark at the command of God, so also must he, at the same command, go out. That be was in no perturbation, did not wilfully and hastily go forth from the ark, is a sign that we must not anticipate the hour of Gods help, nor throw ourselves hastily out of the ark of the church in sectarian impatience, but wait the Lords time in which to go out of the ark into a new world.
13. The renewal of the blessing of propagation upon the creature is a confirmation of the first blessing (Genesis 1), a repeated expression of Gods goodness, and of his complacency in life. Contrast as against dualism and a sickly asceticism.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
See the Doctrinal and Ethical. The figures of the coming salvation. 1. The resting of the ark, the firmly grounded church; 2. the emerging of the mountain-tops, the mountains of God as the sign of heaven; 3. the flight of the dove, the longing of the creature; 4. the dove with the olive-leaf, the spirit of life, with the announcement of peace; 5. the remaining out of the dove and the opening of the ark, the free intercourse between the church and the consecrated world; 6. the going forth from the ark, the passing over of the church into the new world.
Starke: It is certain that God had not forgotten Noah; but the Scripture is wont to speak after the manner of men, namely, as man, sometimes, represents to himself God as speaking. According to this, Gods remembrance denotes the revelation of his gracious will and pleasure, according to which he reveals to the wretched that help which before was hidden (Hieronymus). A life of faith is the most difficult of all,such a life as Noah and his sons must have lived, who could only cling to the hope of aid from heaven, since the earth was covered with water, so as to give them no ground of trust. It was, therefore, no vain word when the Holy Spirit says that God remembered Noah. For it shows that from the day in which he first went into the ark, God had not spoken to him, nor made to him any revelation. He could see no ray of the divine mercy, but must sustain himself alone upon the promise he had received, whilst, in the meantime, the waters of death are raging all around him, as though God had indeed forgotten him (Luther). The leaf represents the gospel, for oil denotes compassion and peace, of which the gospel teaches.Bibl. Wirt: O, my Christian friend, hast thou been a long time confined in a wearisome ark, whether it be of some difficult calling, or some painful state; ask not counsel of the charmer, but wait with patience until God, through righteous means, shall bring thee help therefrom.
Gerlach: God does, indeed, remember all his works, in all times, and in every way, but the prayer remember me (Psa 25:7; Luk 23:42) goes forth from the image of God in man; and by reason of this we have no rest until we can rejoice in all the attributes of God through an inward, personal communion with him. The word here denotes the trials of Noah, when God hid himself, and the enjoyment of his gracious favor, when he again reveals himself.
Calwer Handbuch: The olive-leaf has been ever held as a symbol of peace.
Schrder: God had exercised Noahs faith and patience (Calvin). What is said of the raven, Luther makes to correspond, allegorically, with the office of the law. [In the blackness of the raven is a sign of sorrow, and its voice is unlovely. So, therefore, are all preachers of the law who teach the righteousness of works; they are ministers of death and sin, as Paul names the ministry of the law (2Co 3:6; Rom 7:10). Nevertheless, Moses was sent out with this doctrine even as Noah sent forth the raven. And yet such teachers are nothing else than ravens that fly round the ark, bringing no certain sign that God is reconciled. But what Moses says of the dove is a very lovely figure of the gospel.]
[Excursus on the partial extent of the Flood, as deduced from the very face of the Hebrew text.13This account of the flood furnishes a happy illustration of what may be called the subjective truthfulness of the Scripture narratives. There is meant by this that the language is a perfect representation of an actual, conceptual, and emotional state in the mind of the author. By the author is meant the one in whose soul such emotions and conceptions were first present, from whatever cause, outward or inward, they may have been derived. Whether this was ecstatic vision, or a conviction in the mind supposed to come from a divine influence, or an actual eye-witnessing, it is all faithfully told, just as it was conceived in vision, impressed upon the thought, or seen by the sense. The words are in true correspondence with such a state of soul, an honest imprint of it, according to the influences felt, and the degree of knowledge by which those influences might be affected, or the choice of language controlled. In either case, too, may the term inspiration be applied to it, if we admit the idea of a divine purpose as specially concerned in the communication. It is a special series of divine acts in the physical world, and in the souls of men, that makes revelation strictly, or in that higher sense to which the term is limited in connection with the scriptural narrations. It is this extraordinary doing, whether in nature or above nature, commencing with creation and continued in a series through the whole history of the Church, which constitutes the real manifestation of the divine in the human, of the infinite in the finite, in distinction from that ordinary course in nature and history which cannot thus reveal God personally, because it is merged in the totality, or the one general movement, of the universe. This common movement may be called a revelation, but it is addressed to the universal reason, and reveals only a general intelligence having nothing special for man, either as a race or as individuals. The other is a special epistle to humanity and to individual men, having our name throughout, attested by chosen witnesses taken from a chosen people who are the spiritual first-born, or representatives of the race. But still it is this extraordinary doing which is the revelation properly, whilst the biblical writings are only the human record of it, sharing in the finity of the medium, or more or less imperfect according to the necessary imperfections of knowledge, conception, and language, in those to whom such recording is given. Had writing never been invented, it might have been a purely oral or traditional account, and then it would have been still more imperfect, but the actual revelation would have remained the same, to be ascertained in the best way we could amidst the deficiences and obscurities of such oral or monumental modes of transmission. Surely the absence of writing could no more have prevented Gods having his witness in this world, than the absence, for so many centuries, of the art of printing; and the want, neither of types nor of alphabets, could have been an absolute bar to that witnessing being in the human, and through the human, as well as to the human. Now in such record of revelation the great thing required for the satisfaction of our faith is a conviction of this perfect subjective truthfulness on the part of the human media. It is a far higher thing, a much more precious thing, than any scientific correctness, or any outward verbal accuracy, which, even if it could be secured through human language and human conceptions, could only be by a mechanical, automaton-like process, or with the loss of all that is truly human in the transmission. It would not be a revelation, or the history of a revelation, given to men through men, and so it would not be truly God speaking in humanity. The element of most value, through which we most truly draw nigh unto God, and He unto us, would be lacking in the process. With this distinction between the revelation strictly, and the record of such revelation, we are the better prepared to understand the import of that third term which is so often confounded with them. Inspiration has respect to the manner and means by which such human conceptions are called out and employed, whilst still remaining strictly human. This may be in various ways, and we may apply the terms higher and lower to them, but with danger of error, if in so doing we make any one of them to be less a true inspiration than the other. All the faculties of man may be used for this purpose. God may employ the imagination (the ecstatic imagination, for that is still human, and in another state may be ordinary and normal), the mental convictions impressed by a divine power, or, when no other means are required, the sense and memory of holy, truthful men, whose holiness and truthfulness, in such case, are as much an effect of divine inspiration as any afflatus more immediately affecting what are called the higher or deeper faculties of the soul.
Thus may we believe that all the Scripture is inspired, that it everywhere has this subjective truthfulness, whether it appears in holy visions of the past and future, or in rapt devotional exercises, or in the sublime doctrinal insight of souls drawn heavenward, or in the pictures it gives us of musing, soliloquizing minds, presenting now their exulting faith, and then again their fears and sad despondencies in view of the dark problems of life. It shows itself in its plain, unpretending, unsuspicious narratives of events, whether it be the supernatural, the great natural, or that filling in of the ancient home-life which, though so far from us, we recognize as so true and so consistent, calling out the feeling that it is indeed a reality that lies before us, and that these words represent actual scenes and actual emotions as true and vivid as any that now occupy our own minds. Thus may we believe all Scripture to be an honest record from beginning to end, from the most astoundingly marvellous to its minutest historical, geographical, biographical, and genealogical details. This view, although admitting human imperfections of language and conceiving, is very different from that theory of partial inspiration that assumes to choose what portions it shall accept, rejecting others as fabricated, false, and legendary. It is all faithful, all , all given to us for our instruction in righteousness, constituting in its totality the plenary word of God, the honest human record of that great series of divine doings in the world, in nature, in history, and in the souls of men, to which we give the special name of a divine revelation. Thus received and firmly held in its truthful human aspect, the belief in a great objective truth corresponding to it is irresistible for all sober, thoughtful, truly rational souls. The human in the Bible compels the acceptance of the divine; the ordinary and the natural in its life-like narratives demands the supernatural as its complement. We are forced thus to believe or to admit that the very existence in the world of such a record so kept, so attested through the ages, so lying in the very heart of human history, is as great a marvel for the reason, as any supernatural or miraculous which it contains for the sense.
It is this subjective truthfulness of the Scriptures that furnishes the matter of interpretation. The great end is to get at the conceptual and emotional states which the words originally represented in the minds of the first narrators. The objective truth they represent in the natural or supernatural belongs to the theological reasoning as guided in its inferences by the general truths of the Scriptures, or other knowledge we may have of nature and of God. The one interpretation is to be according to the laws of rhetoric and language in their widest sense, the other according to the analogy of faith, in all by which God makes himself known to the human mind.14
Thus should we aim at interpreting the Scripture narrative of the flood. We have, as an outward ground, the world-wide tradition of such an event far greater than any inundation of waters, or change in nature, recorded in any later or more partial history. The classical story, the Indian, the Persian, etc., are well known; but it is found everywhere. In the remotest and most isolated region to which the traveller penetrates, there meets him this tradition of a great catastrophe by water, and of a righteous man who was saved in an ark. It is told with the same general features, and often with a surprising similarity of detail, whether it be in the wilds of Siberia, by the rivers of southern Africa, or in the isles of the Pacific. No other event ever made such an impression on the ethnological memory; and hence it has survived through wastes of historical silence in which other facts, however great their local or tribal interest, have utterly perished. One of two conclusions is inevitable: either the catastrophe was of vast extent, reaching almost every portion of the globe as now known, or it took place in the earliest times of the human existence, when men were confined to a comparatively small part of the earth, whence each wandering people carried it, localizing it afterwards in their own history, their own geography, and ascribing the deliverance, each one, to the ancestral head of their own race.
There is a ground of truth in all these stories. No rational mind can doubt it. The most sceptical of the German critics have felt themselves compelled to admit its substantial verity. Now let any one compare them all with this sublime scriptural narrative, and then let his reason, his rhetorical taste, his judgment of the truthful in style, the subjectively real in conception, and the life-like in narration, determine which is the original, severely simple in its chasteness and grandeur, and which are the legendary copies,which is the editio princeps, preserved (by some strong influence in opposition to the ordinary human tendency) from grotesque exaggeration, from mythical indistinctness and confusion, from false embellishment, from interpolated deformities, from all that characterizes the story-telling, wonder-making styleand which are the spurious addenda, betraying, by all these marks of their secondary character, that they are the far-off, dimly-seen, and monstrously disproportioned impressions of what, to the scriptural narrator, was an actual scene full of a soul-awing and fancy-restraining emotion.
The Bible story has nothing of the wonder-making about it. It is too full of the overpowering real to allow of such a secondary excitement of the mind and the imagination. The emotion is too high to admit of any play of fancy. It is contemplation in its most exalted state, having no room for anything but the great spectacle before it, and that as seen in its grandest features. Hence so calm and yet so full of animation, so severely chaste yet so sublime. It is a telling from the eye, and it speaks to the souls eye of the thoughtful reader, giving the impression of an actual spectacle. The style throughout is adapted to produce such impression. It is a truthful effect, or the narrative is to be regarded as a most skilful fiction, a most ingenious forgery, exhibiting a life-like power of painting and invention utterly inconsistent with any antiquity to which it can be ascribed. The writer or relator is one who stands in mediis rebus. The awful spectacle is present to his absorbed sense or to his vivid memory. He is startled by it to abruptness of description. Though long expected, the catastrophe is sudden in its coming. Torrents descend from the heavens like bursting clouds; chasms are seen in the opening earth, and floods issuing from their subterranean reservoirs. A writer less interested, less awed by the actual scene, would have used comparisons here, or indulged in redundancy of language. The Scripture historian gives it all in one brief verse: The fountains of the great abyss (the tehom rabba) were broken (, were cloven), the windows of heaven were opened. The attempt to reconcile this with any scientific correctness is worse than trifling. To resolve it into a poetical metaphor, or any rhetorical artifice of language, takes away all its emotional power. He speaks according to his conception as grounded on the state of his knowledge. He evidently had the old idea of waters above the firmamentum, now descending through the parted barrier. How ill-judging the interpretation that, for any fancied reconciliation with present knowledge, would obliterate the marks of this precious subjective truthfulness, so full of evidence for the great antiquity of the account, and the actuality of the scene as conceived and described. One all-absorbing image of power is before him. The deluge from above and the eruptions from the earth, whatever may have been their cause, have an awful rapidity of effect; and with what graphic touches is this set forth in the vivid Hebrew idioms! The ark is lifted clear from the earth ( ), and goes forth ( walks forth), , on the face of the waters. , the floods prevail exceedingly, , stronger, strongerhigher, higher , go and increase constantly waxing, gradual but irresistible, steadily visible in their rise as measured by the submerged plains, the disappearing hills, until to the remotest extent of the visible horizon, , under the whole heavens, it is water everywhere as far as eye can see, one vast sky-bounded waste, shoreless and illimitable as it appeared to the absorbed and wondering gaze of the one from whose sense and memory this story has come down to us. This is what he saw, and this is all that the interpreter can get from his language. What he may have thought, we know not. He may have supposed the flood to be universal. Probably he did so; but then his universality must have been a very different thing (in conception) from the notion that our modern knowledge would connect with the term. He knew of no land that was not covered by water; he had been told that God meant to destroy the human race, and so far as the extent of the flood was necessary for that purpose, he doubtless supposed the judgment executed.15 But we have only to do, as interpreters, with what he actually saw, the language in which he has recorded it, the necessary conceptions which it suggests, and by which it was itself suggested. We have no right to force upon him, and upon the scene so vividly described, our modern notions, or our modern knowledge of the earth with its Alps and Himmalayas, its round figure, its extent and diversities, so much beyond any knowledge he could have possessed or any conception he could have formed. It may be said that such idea of terrestrial universality is included in his words, such as earth,under the whole heavens, ,all the high mountains under the whole heavens; but then the question arises, On what scale of knowledge are they to be interpreted? If we say the modern, calling it the absolute sense (on the supposition that such absolute scale has even yet been reached), then we make him a mere mechanical utterer of sounds whose intended meaning lay not in his understanding, or a writer of words representing, in their truthfulness, neither the emotions felt, nor the spectacle that lay before his eye. A very slight change in our English translation, and that a very justifiable one, greatly affects this impression of universality. Read land for earth wherever the word occurs, as, for example, the whole land, or the face of the whole land, and the scale, to our imagination, is at once reduced. Thus we actually have, in one place, Gen 7:23, instead of , and yet nothing is more evident than that in the previous chapters the first word is used of the Eden-territory and the region adjacent. In like manner is this word used in the account of the general corruption of the race by the intermarriages of the Sethites and the Cainites, Gen 6:1 : When men began to multiply upon the face of the adamah, . It is not only without any warrant from Scripture, but in the face of the fair inferences to be drawn from its artless language, that some have regarded the antediluvian human race as spread over the wide surface of the earth according to our present knowledge. Equally, too, against the impression to be fairly derived from the account, is the idea of a vast population as in any way to be compared with that which has since existed and now exists. We know nothing of any physical or moral reasons that may have accelerated or retarded it. The Scripture simply says, in its introduction to the account of the flood, that men began to multiply, , evidently implying that they had not been very numerous before in either line, and that the mixture and the multiplication were, at the same time, cause and effect of the corruption. The fair inference, therefore, is, that it took place, together with the judgment that followed, whilst they were yet confined to this tract, whatever may have been its extent. It was the open, easily cultivated part of the earth (though it had already become sterile in the days of the Sethite Lamech), to which the early men in their gregarious habits yet adhered. There had not come the roving, migrating, pioneering impulse which was first given after the flood, and for the very purpose of breaking up the gregarious tendency which again manifested itself in the plain of Shinar. This reluctance to leave the adamah, or the old homeland of the race near Eden, shows itself in Cains language, Gen 4:14 : Behold thou art driving me forth this day, , from the face of the adamah, that I may become a wanderer in the (wide) earth, as distinguished from the fatherland where the protecting divine presence () was supposed still to dwell. Cain, bold and evil as he was, felt this. The thought, even though coming from his own vengeance-haunted imagination, was a terror to him, and we may rationally suppose that the feeling was still more strongly shared by his descendants, whom the account represents as still living near the Sethites and corrupting them by their vicinity. All great movements in the world have come from a superhuman impulse, breaking up previous habits, and strangely changing those fixed conditions of human society into which races, when left to themselves, are ever tending; sometimes even when their talk is loudest of progress and change as ever coming from themselves. The course of history is marked by such new movements, unaccountable in their beginning from anything in the previous human (which may probably have been tending strongly in the opposite direction), yet afterwards, from the very fact of sequence, seeming to fall inductively into the natural flow of events. At all events, if we take the Scripture text for our guide, there is no reason to believe that any of the antediluvians (with the exception, perhaps, of a few solitary rovers), had ever crossed the deserts, or ventured upon the seas, or scaled the mountains, or penetrated far into the dense wildernesses that separated the primitive adamah from the vast unknown of earth around them. We may fairly suppose, too, that it was one of the designs of the deluge-judgment to prevent a race which had so dehumanized themselves, or, in the language of Scripture, corrupted its way, from spreading over the surface of the globe. But how different was it when the movement came which is recorded Gen 11:8, whether we regard the confounding of languages there mentioned as the cause or the effect of the dispersion. It was, in either view, equally supernatural, or, if the term is preferred, an extraordinary divine intervention, deflecting the course of the human movement from what it would have been had it been left solely to the antecedent human tendency. They were settling down into the old adamah gregariousness, to be followed by the same impieties, not only (for that could be borne with), but by the dehumanizing vices that demanded extinction. Wherefore the Lord scattered them from thence over the face of all the earth. The Hebrew verb is a very strong one, , He drove them asunderHe sent them far and wideHe broke them up. Compare Deu 32:8, Act 17:26. Their reluctance to leave the old home-land, like that of Cain in the earlier time, is shown by the same word, and that strong particle so expressive of caution and alarm; Gen 11:4, , lest we be scattered over the face of the whole earth,the wide earth, the unknown, unbounded earth. We must take the language according to the feeling and knowledge of the day. It was der unabsehbare Bann, as Lange expresses it, No. 15, p. 264, the illimitable exile in space which had something of the terror des endlosen Bannes, of the endless exile in time. But though the pioneering effort needs something extraneous to start it, it is afterwards carried on by its love of novelty, which, when once excited, ever feeds the impulse, overcoming the sense of insecurity until it becomes a passion instead of a dread. Thus, as the terror of the unknown gives way, the new impetus soon acquires a rapidity more strange even than the former reluctance, as is attested by other and more modern examples in the worlds history. In the long stagnation of the middle ages geographical knowledge, at least among the Europeans, had actually receded. Less was known of the world in the days of Bede and Alcuin than in those of Ptolemy. But how soon after the start given to Di Gama and Columbus, and by these to others, was the state of things, in this respect, wholly changed! The orbis terrarum immediately began to expand, and so rapidly was the horizon extended, that less than half a century added more to the knowledge and civilized occupation of the earth than a thousand years had done before. In less than thirty years after Columbus had seen the light upon the shore of the first West India isle, Magellan had advanced to the southern extremity of the American continent and accomplished the circumnavigation of the globe. It was not because the men of the tenth and twelfth centuries lacked vigor of body or mind, but because Gods time had not yet come.
So was it when the first great dispersion of mankind commenced. Before the flood, there is no evidence that even Egypt was known or inhabitedwe mean scriptural evidence; and notwithstanding the assertions of Bunsen and others, we think it can be shown (in its proper place) that there is no reliable evidence of any other kind. Dwelling as they did, mainly, in the region between the Euphrates and the Indus, the antediluvians had never ventured upon the wide desert that intervened, nor attempted the long way up the rivers and by the mountains of the North. But now the tribes of Ham are streaming down the Persian Gulf, following the Gihon as it winds round Southern Arabia, until they reach the narrow part of the Red Sea. The new impulse soon carries them over into upper Egypt or the ancient thiopia, whence they find their way down into Mitzraim (the Narrows), the country of the lower Nile, whilst others start off again for the vast regions of Central Africa. One branch of the sons of Japheth direct their course to the dense Northern wilds, and thence dividing, begin their long march through Middle and Northern Europe in the one direction, or through Middle Asia and towards the American continent in the other. Another branch of the same family roam through Asia Minor, one part crossing at the Bosporus ( , as the Greeks afterwards translated the old name, in accordance with one of their fables), the ancient Ox-ford, or cattle-passage, whence they proceed into the Thracian and Danubian forests; whilst another host of pioneers make the gean isles their stepping places to Greece, Italy, and Spain. The bold sons of Canaan have ventured upon ships, and are making their way to the extremities of the Mediterranean and even to the Atlantic. In the mean time the descendants of Shem keep nearer to the old homeland, barely diverging into Elam (Persia) and Assyria, moving mainly up the Euphrates to Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, and thence to Northern Arabia. There is every reason to believe that under this mighty impulse that drove them from Shinar, more was done in two or three centuries towards settling the earth than had been accomplished in the 1,600 or 2,000 years of the antediluvian period; and this fact alone, when taken in connection with its divine causality, is a sufficient answer to those who think that the Hebrew chronology does not give time enough for the great historical beginnings that so soon made their appearance. The world has ever moved by starts, and races, like individuals, oftentimes do more, and live more, in very short periods than they do in others comparatively long.
This is dwelt upon here as having a bearing upon the position of the human race, and the spread of its population, before the flood. The emphasis with which the new movement is announced in the 11th chapter, and more fully described in the 10th (see especially Gen 8:32), furnishes the strongest reason for believing that nothing of the kind, or on such a scale, had ever taken place upon the earth before. From these () were parted (were divided, , isolated), the nations in the earth after the flood.
In the antediluvian period there seems to have been a distinction between and , but the former word had not acquired the greater definiteness of after usage. In fact, it must have been utterly indefinite. This is safely inferred from the views we are compelled to form of the primitive territorial notions of mankind. In the earliest times the conception of the earth must have been that of unlimited extent, and of an undivided wild or waste. Nothing to the contrary had been made known, either by experience or by revelation. It was simply the contrast of the sky above and the ground beneath, like the conception presented in the earliest Greek antithesis of and . We must ever bear this in mind when we attempt, as we ever ought to do in interpreting, to get back into the conceptions of the ancient narrator. In no other way shall we get the image of which the language is the necessary as well as the only adequate reflexion. There had not even come in the greater definiteness which belongs to the Greek , although the Noachian conception, with its heaven above and its abyss below, resembles very much that which is presented in the Homeric oath, Odyss. v. Genesis 184:
,
still less was it (in conception, at least, whatever may have been the speculative thought), the tellurian idea (see Ciceros use of the word tellus, Repub. vi. 17, tellus media et infima et in quam feruntur omnia), of a body, whether spherical or otherwise, lying in a limited space with space all around it. This is not rationalizing against the authority of Scripture. We must judge of this old writers conception by his knowledge, real or supposed, which we have no reason to think was in any way changed by that divine afflatus of truth and holiness which made him the faithful recorder of this wonderful scene. This is the very ground on which we trust its graphical correctness, as representing, not a mechanical knowledge (connected with no sense-experience or actual memory in the narrator), but a vivid seeing, with a corresponding vividness of emotion.
The same may be said of other parts of the account, which carry an air of absolute universality, simply because we interpret them by the absolute or scientific notion of our own day. Thus the expression already referred to, under the whole heaven, is the primary optical language for the visible horizon.16 It might have been regarded as the real horizon, but if so it would only be the writers thought, his speculative notion, and we have no right, as interpreters, to substitute this for what he actually sees and evidently means to describe as seen. If any will insist upon this language as denoting an absolute tellurian universality (as Wordsworth, Keil, and Jacobus have done), let them turn to the same words, Job 37:3, where they are applied to the thunder and the lightning, and connected with other language still more suggestive of extent in space. Hark, the trembling of his voice, and the deep muttering () that goeth forth from his mouth; under the whole heavens, , he directeth it, and its lightning, , to the wings (or extremities) of the earth. It is the long reverberating roar that is heard all round the sky, and the vivid flash which for a moment lights up the whole horizon. There are other passages where the expression would seem to take in more than the immediate sense, but it never goes beyond the conceptual limit which is determined by the knowledge, real or supposed, of the utterer, or of those to whom it is addressed. As in Deu 4:19 : it means there generally the nations far and near, according to the geographical ideas of the times. Its absolute universality would require us to believe that there is not an island in the Pacific, nor a region in the Arctic or Torrid Zone, to which the Jews were not to be dispersed. And so in Deu 2:25, where the same wide words, under the whole heavens, are used in a still more limited sense of the nations immediately surrounding the Jews, though in every direction,around them on all sides.
In a similar manner are we justified in interpreting the seemingly universal terms which relate to the animals. They were all that the narrator knew. He receives the divine command as measured by his knowledge and convictions, and executes it accordingly. They were the familiar animals by which he was surrounded in the district where he lived. In the terror produced by the great catastrophe, they instinctively come to the ark; as in all great commotions of nature the most ferocious beasts are known to seek the protection of human shelter. Or we may rationally suppose (taking the supernatural as an essential part of the account), that they were determined by a peculiar divine instinct, which would be, to the lower nature, in analogy with the prophetic insight given to the higher. So far as mere natural signs are concerned, their keener and more instinctive senses would discern the coming on of the deluge in its terrestrial and arial symptoms sooner than it would become manifest to the human cognition, and as they crowd towards the ark or flutter around its protecting roof, there would be given just that impression of universality which the language conveys. The conviction he had upon his mind of the divine command, though from the very nature of the case limited by his knowledge of the living things immediately around him, would express itself in the same general terms. He was directed to take of the , the cattle, the common or domestic animals, clean and unclean.17 It was to be from all, , a term general instead of distributive, and those taken of the were to be in pairs of species. Thus regarded, the language is all truthful in the highest sense of the word truthfulness. It is subjectively truthful, that is, it gives the fact and the spectacle as it is seen and felt,not as calculated, or with that logical and arithmetical precision whose tendency, in a matter of such indeterminateness, would have been to produce distrust rather than the confidence of faith. Greater precision would have betrayed the mere wonder-maker, or the mere story-teller, not speaking from any conceptual experience; whilst, on the other hand, the largeness of the terms, even where it looks like hyperbole, is evidence of the actuality and truthfulness of the emotion that produced them. Thus the impression made on the mind of the beloved disciple by his constant contemplation of the person and the acts of his adored Master: And there are many other things which Jesus did, the which if they were written every one, I suppose that not even the world would contain the books that should be written. What words could more truthfully convey this inward state of soul! And all Judea, , went out to him, and all the country round about Jordan, , and were baptized. Mat 3:5. And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation, , under the heaven. Act 2:5. The language in these cases is the true and natural expression of emotion produced by a vast and exciting spectacle. How much more worthy of our trust it ishow much stronger a conviction of an eye-witnessed actuality does it produce, than it would have done had the writers been more guarded and exact in their numerical proportions. So is it in the mode of representation that we find in the account of the flood. There is something in this subjective truthfulness far more precious for our faith in the old document than any objective or scientific accuracy could have been; whilst, at the same time, it leaves us perfectly free to draw, from other ideas connected with the event, such inferences of universality, or of partiality, as its relation to other theological truth, as well as to later knowledge, may demand.
Again: those parts of this account which relate the prophetic knowledge, or the prophetic conviction, present, indeed, something different from the optical representations, but are nevertheless to be interpreted substantially on the same principle of their subjective truthfulness, leaving the higher objective truth for which they stand, or of which they are the human language, to be interpreted by what we have called the higher method of theological exegesis. Now this is what we truly gather from the words given to us: A righteous and holy man, living in the midst of a profane and sensual generation,a lonely man, holding high communion with God, and constantly in spiritual conflict with the earthly and the vile around him,has impressed upon his soul a conviction that the end of the world, or of the race, is near. It is so strong, so deep, and constant, that he feels it to come from God. It does come from God. It is so vivid, that it is to him the actual divine voice to his inmost soul. It comes so near, that he recognizes in the sharp impression which it makes the very times in which the great catastrophe is to come, and has impressed upon his soul, as by a divine direction, the way and the means through which he and his family are to be preserved. Thus warned of God in respect to things not as yet seen, he prepares an ark for the salvation of his house (Heb 11:7), by which he condemned the world, and became an heir of the righteousness which is by faith. These divine convictions are all truthfully told, just as they are truthfully felt, and given to us from the sense or memory of the first narrator. We cannot doubt that he was thus impressed, that he thus felt, that he thus acted, that the events following corresponded to this vivid impression, and that they are most faithfully narrated. Thus believing in the subjective, the conviction of an objective supernatural, and of a divine objective reality, and of a great divine purpose connected with the history of the world and the Church, comes irresistibly to the spiritual mind having faith in a personal God constantly superintending the affairs of earth through a constant superintending providence, both general and special.
As compared with other stories of the great flood, it is the very simplicity of the account which furnishes the convincing evidence of its having been an actual telling from the eye. Myths, so called, are never told in this way. There is no conceptual lying back of them, presenting the appearance of having ever come from any sense or memory. They arise, we know not how, like national songs that never had any individual composer. They represent ideas, notions, strangely combined, rather than conceptions having their ground in any sense-spectacle, real or supposed. In poetical picturing, on the other hand, or in rhetorical description, there is, indeed, a distinct conceptual, but it is one for the most part artificially made by the writer or narrator himself. However accurate its limning may be, it carries with it its own testimony that it never came from any actual or even possible seeing. Thus Ovids description of the flood is most vivid, and in some respects most true to nature, or what may, very probably, have been the actual state of thingssuch as fishes swimming among the branches of the elm, or the sea-calves sporting in the vineyards; but no eye ever saw this; it is wholly imagined, whilst the power of thus imagining, and of thus painting it in language, is wholly inconsistent with that emotion which belongs to the actual spectacle of such an event. Especially is this true of the more labored, or artistically poetical, in such descriptions. Ovids picture of the south wind is, indeed, most admirable, but we recognize in it only the highest style of art, wonderful, indeed, in its grouping and in its coloring, yet without feeling, and producing no impression of reality.
Madidis Notus evolat alis,
Terribilem picea tectus caligine vultum;
Barba gravis nimbis, canis fiuit unda capillis;
Fronte sedent nebul, rorant pennque sinusque.
Metamorph. i. 264.
The south wind flies abroad with humid wings, his dreadful face covered with pitchy darkness; his beard is loaded with showers; the flood pours from his hoary hairs; clouds sit upon his brow; his wings and robes are dripping with the rain. We know at once that a man who writes thus never saw the flood, or anything like it. It is all poetry, not in the Bible style, as the name is applied to the more emotional portions of the Scriptures, but in the Greek sense of , , something made, a fictitious composition artificially colored and invented. Some have regarded the language, Gen 7:11the windows of heaven and the fountains of the great deep, as of this poetical or rhetorical kind. Thus Jacobus compares the first to an eastern expression denoting that the heavens are broken up with storms, and even Murphy speaks of it as a beautiful figure; but all such views detract from the real grandeur, as they also do from the truthfulness, of the account. This opening of the heavens, and breaking up of the deep, were realities to Noah, so conceived by him, and as honestly related as the lifting up of the ark and the disappearing of the mountains. The awful scene itself would never have called out such imagings as those of Ovid, or suggested such language. The Syrian tradition, as given by Lucian in the Syria Dea, comes nearest to the simplicity of the scriptural narrative; but even there, there are parts of the representation which we feel instinctively could never have come from any actual eye-witnessing. The rising of the rivers, for example, on which this tradition dwells, must have been a very insignificant part, if any part at all, of so sudden and terrific a spectacle, as it is set forth in the Bible, and as it must have been, from the very nature of the case, when the floods from above came like bursting clouds or water-spouts, and the breaking and sinking of the earth made a scene so different from anything that could have been produced by a freshet, even of the most extensive kind. So, too, in the Arabian tradition, though in most things closely resembling the scriptural, we find the same tendency to embellishment. See it as given in the Koran, Surat xi. 40. There is also a mingling with it of the romantic or sentimental which shows the legendary or mere story-making style of perversion. It represents Noah as having a fourth son who is an unbeliever, and it attempts to make an affecting scene between this lost child, who flies to the mountain, and his imploring father, as the ark is borne past him by the separating waters. The Chaldan is evidently a magnified copy of the Hebrew narrative, but in its enlargement all proportion is lost sight of. The ark is represented as a stadium, or furlong, in length. It is in the same way they have treated the modest Hebrew chronology, keeping its genealogical division in the account of the ten generations before Xisuthrus, but running its decimals and hundreds into thousands and hundreds of thousands to agree with the excessive antiquity of their fabled annals. It is the Bible record swelled out by the inflated Oriental imagination, which everywhere, except in the case of the Hebrews, was unrestrained by any divine check upon the tendency of each nation to give itself a mythical antiquity.
There is one point in the Scripture narrative of the flood which would seem to establish the fact of its limited extent, had it not been for that prejudgment of universality which has influenced so many commentators. In Gen 8:19 the narrator seems to hurry towards the climax of the scene: And the waters prevailed exceedingly, ,, and all the high hills under the whole heaven wore covered. The verse following explains and confirms this by an additional particular: Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail (, they were fifteen cubits strong, or, as we say, fifteen cubits deep), and the hills (the same word, , thus rendered Gen 8:19) were covered. Now take this in connection with Gen 8:4 of Genesis 8 : And the ark rested () in the seventh month, the seventeenth day of the month (at the end of five months, one hundred and fifty days, or at height of the flood) upon the mountains of Ararat ( in the pluralor one of the mountains of Ararat taken as the name of a range or mountainous country, one of whose peaks afterwards obtained the name by way of eminence.18 Here we evidently have the place from which these fifteen cubits were reckoned, and it furnishes the key to the right understanding of what the writer meant to convey as the extent of his knowledge and experience, whatever might have been his opinions as to anything beyond. There is no evidence that this was the high peak of Ararat; the impression (from the use of the plural) is all the other way. Taking all these things into consideration, the explanation is most natural and easy. The ark had drifted up the basin of the Euphrates and Tigris until it grounded on the highlands that formed its northern bank or border, and that, too, not far from a land of the olive and the vine. The surrounding mountains, or high hills, had previously been in sight, but at this time, or just before it, they disappeared. These are the same mountains under the whole heaven mentioned Gen 8:19. Fifteen cubits strong were the waters, and the mountains were covered. When the ark rested, there was no land anywhere in sight. Noah ascertains the depth by measurement, or by his knowledge of the arks draught of water, and as it did not float again, he takes this time as the summit of the flood. He may have supposed the whole earth covered, as far as he knew anything about the earth as a whole; but we must take what he saw, what he knew, and what he describes as coming evidently from his experience. Without some such view we have no standard. It may be said, too, that this mountain on which the ark rested could not have been the high peak of Ararat, nor one from which that peak was in sight; since, in the one case, the surrounding mountains must have disappeared much earlier, and, in the other case, the declaration of their disappearance would not have been true. Again, had it been the high peak of Ararat, then, in the going down of the waters, a very large part of it must have been wholly bare before the others became visible (), as is said Gen 8:5; but this is contrary to the whole impression derived from that part of the account. All these difficulties (difficulties, we mean, on the face of the account) become greatly increased, if we suppose that the flood was not only above Ararat, or one of the mountains of Ararat, but also covered the whole globe, and mountains known to be twelve thousand feet, or more than two miles, higher than any in Armenia. In such case, besides there being no standard of measurement for the fifteen cubits, there would be a strangeness and inconsistency in the language, since this highest mountain would be as much covered by a rise of one cubit above its summit as by fifteen. The expression implies excess, as measured from some known condition, or it has no meaning. How did the describer know it?
This may be answered by saying that Noah knew it divinely, that is, by a knowledge and a memory having no basis in any actual knowing or sense-experience. It was an impression made upon his mind. Now, had it been so related, it would have been perfectly consistent with that subjective truthfulness on which we insist. Other things are thus stated among the immediate antecedents of the flood, but this appears in the midst of the vividly optical, and in direct connection with facts having every appearance of being described from sense. As a thing utterly unknown and unknowable without such divine intimation, or as a fact that might have been, but which sense necessarily failed to reach, it would be like Ovids dolphins in the subaquean woods, or his sea-calves swimming in the vineyards, except that it has an air of statistical particularity, which, as thus given, affects its credit, either as prose or poetry. There are other things that, on the supposition of universality, must have been utterly beyond experience, but which are very confidently stated, and vividly described, just as things would be that fall directly under the observation of the eye.19 A sphere of water covering the entire globe would have left no means of determining the time of greatest elevation, or the period of abatement before the hills again appeared. The Jewish commentators maintain the universality as essential to the honor of their Scriptures. But they are critics who overlook nothing, and they therefore keenly see these difficulties. In order to avoid them, they distinguish between what was known from the spirit of prophecy, , and what is narrated from sense, , or experience. Our Rabbins, says Maimonides, were led to this from the knowledge (afterwards obtained) that there were mountains in Greece (Europe, he means) higher than Ararat, which, he tells us, was in the lower part of the earth-sphere (), not far from Babylon. To overcome the objection, he adopts the singular view,that the resting on Ararat, though at the height of the flood when the waters became even, was sometime after the highest mountains were submerged. This submersion, or rather supermersion, came from the great commotion, the tossing or boiling of the waters (),the violent eruption from the earth causing them to dash and surge over the highest parts, thus covering them, but not as an even mass or quor. He makes a distinction, which has some ground, between , the calming of the waters, and , their abating. It was after the going down of this wild commotion, or when the waters came to a level, that the ark happened to be ( ) over the region of Ararat, and settled down upon it. It was also a part of this singular view that the ark, in consequence of its load and its great specific gravity, did not truly float, but was lifted up by the great force of the up-pouring waters, and this, he holds, is what is meant by the words Gen 7:18, , it went upon the face of the waters,wherever the waters drove it. Such views, from so sober a commentator, are only of value as showing the immense difficulties attending this opinion of universalitydifficulties that come not more from outside objections than from the face of the account itself, if we depart from the plain optical interpretation.
The whole argument may be briefly summed by a careful consideration of the three main aspects of the Noachian account: 1. The divine communications warning Noah of the impending judgment, and directing him to prepare an ark for the saving of himself and his house. Whether these were made in vision, or by vivid impressions upon the mind, they are truthfully received and truthfully related, that is, translated into human speech as representing the conceptions and knowledge of the relator in respect to the subjects of such divine communication. The human race were to be destroyed, and the earth, or land, they inhabited, was to be covered with water. In such warning, God did not teach him geography, nor give him the figure of the earth, nor the height of the unknown, far-distant mountains. 2. The directions in respect to the animals. These are to be interpreted in the same way, and with the same limitations of knowledge and conception. He was to take of the living thing (or the animals) under the threefold specification of the behma (the cattle), the fowl, and the creeping thing. They were the animals with which he was familiar, as belonging to the region in which he lived. He was aided by a divine instinct in the creatures, supernaturally given in the beginning, and now supernaturally excited. But God did not teach him zology, nor the vast variety of species, nor is there any evidence that animals came from the distant parts of the unknown earth, such as the giraffe from Southern Africa, the elephant from India, or the kangaroo from Australia. 3. The actual event itself, and this under two aspects: a. The flood as optically described by some one in the ark (Noah or Shem). Here we have certain data which seem unmistakable in the inferences to be deduced from them. If we look steadily at the connections of events as they are most artlessly narrated, the conclusion appears almost unavoidable, that the mountains mentioned, Gen 7:20, as covered by fifteen cubits, and that come again in sight, Gen 8:5, as seen from the same place whence they disappeared at the height of the flood, and when the ark grounded on the seventeenth of the seventh month, are the game high hills under the whole heaven, that are mentioned Gen 7:19. We have here what Noah saw, or knew from sense,the visible objects around him, the grounding, the disappearing, the reappearingall referring to the same phenomena, one part being as much optical as another, and the knowledge of any one of these facts, as they appear on the face of the narrative, as much referrible to experience as that of any other, b. The inferred extent. Noah had no means of measuring the distance to which the ark drifted. We judge of it from what can be ascertained of its termini. It started from a place near the old Eden-land (in the neighborhood of the Persian Gulf), and it struck on one of the mountains of Armenia in the north. This could not have been the high Ararat, for then the lesser Ararat, which is only seven miles distant, and four thousand feet, or nearly a mile, lower, must have been long under water, contrary to the vivid impression made by what is said Gen 7:20 and Gen 8:5. It could not have been the lesser peak, for then the higher (only seven miles distant) would have been clearly visible, and four thousand feet above the water during the whole time of the arks resting. It must, therefore, have been some high land on the borders of the mountainous region, and at quite a distance, S. or E., from either. This distance of the arks sailing before it grounded (taking into view the fact that there was no land then visible from it in any direction, although there had been just before) would give a flood which probably covered the old adamah, together with Babylonia, Assyria, the neighboring parts of Persia and Media, Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Arabia, and a good portion of. Asia Minor, with peaks, perhaps, here and there, projecting above its surface. Subsequent events seem to confirm this view. From the unknown, rugged, mountainous region where the ark rested, the Noachid soon found their way back (at a time, too, when, as appears from Gen 11:4, the flood was in fresh remembrance) to the plain of Shinar. To this they were led by the primitive gregarious tendency (see remarks, p. 317), and their aversion to being driven into the unknown, until there came that remarkable divine impulse which, for the first time, sent them far and wide to the remotest regions of the earth. Each pioneering family carried with them the story of the terrible judgment, locating it in different lands according to the traditions of their ancestors, and each distorting or embellishing it after their own mythical or legendary fashion. The Bible alone gives us the veritable account, truthfully and vividly told, carrying every mark of being an actual eye-witnessing, and furnishing the best data for determining its locality, its probable extent, its true chronology, and, what is of greater value than all else, its theological bearing, as one of the great divine interventions in the history of the world and of the church.T. L.]
Footnotes:
[1][Gen 8:1.. E. V. assuaged. It differs from , to ebb or fail (as used in Gen 8:3). refers to the quieting, or becoming calm, of the waters after the ebullition that followed their eruption from the earth, and the heavy pouring of the water-spouts (LXX. ) from above. Its primary sense appears Est 2:1; Est 7:10, , the wrath of the king was calmed. So in Hiphil, Numb. 17:20, where it denotes the quieting of popular commotion. LXX. , and the water grew tired. The Vulgate confounds it with , imminut sunt aqu. The Syria , the waters rested; the late Arabic Translation (Amer. Bib. Soc.), very beautifully and significantly, , the waters became quiet. The distinction between this word and is important in determining the stages of the floodT. L.]
[2][Gen 8:3.. Began to turn, or to return. It denotes the turning-point after the waters had become calm. At first this turning was very slight, and the whole decrease for 73 days (compare Gen 8:4-5) was only fifteen cubits, of from the grounding of the ark, when the hills disappeared (as is evident from Gen 7:20), and their coming in sight again or the first day of the tenth month. This may be called the turn of the flood; so that we have three stages, 1. the becoming calm of the waters, 2. a period almost stationary, 3. the more perceptible, but still gradual subsiding expressed by the peculiar Hebrew idiom T.L.]
[3][Gen 8:4.. The arks grounding on one of the mountains of Ararat in the very height of the flood (whether one of the lower, or on its highest peak), is so inconsistent with the idea of the floods having covered mountains known to be more than two miles higher, that some have maintained that here must mean resting over, as though it were suspended quietly, and remained stationary at that distance, directly above the top of Ararat. If there were no other objection, the decisive answer to this is that the word, as it appears in every such connection, means resting upon, like the lighting of a bird. Thus it is followed by , which cannot here be rendered over or above. Comp. Exo 10:14; Num 10:36; Num 11:25-26; Isa 11:2. There is an example of the noun thus used immediately following, Gen 8:9 : and the dove found no rest () for the sole of her foot.T. L.]
[4][Gen 8:4. . The subject here being in the singular, this can only be rendered, among the mountains of Ararat, or upon one of the mountains of Ararat. The force of the language, if there were no other objection, is against the idea of its having been upon that high peak of Ararat that towers so much above everything around it. The diversity in the old Versions is also opposed to so definite and marked a view. The Vulgate has, super montes Armeni; LXX. ; Targum of Onkelos, , upon the mountains of Kardu, or the Karduchian; the Syriac the same, , as also Arabs Erpen. . The Koranic Arabic has it constantly , Al Judi. The Samaritan Version (not the Hebraico-Samaritan) has the strangest of all. It says the ark rested on the mountains of Serendib, which is in the island of Ceylon. These various renderings are only important as showing, that anciently the place was regarded as in a measure unknown and indefinite. The old translators did not consider themselves as bound by the Hebrew to confine it to the peak which afterwards solely acquired that title. The name might have been transferred to Armenia, or to other countries, just as the story of the flood itself was transferred, and located in different parts of the earth, according to the ancestral traditions of the various migrations. The place where the ark grounded could not, at the time, have had a name to Noah and his sons, since, before this, there are no geographical distinctions recognized in the Bible except Eden, the names of the Paradise rivers (if they are not subsequent), and the land of Nod, or of the wanderer, which is clearly metaphorical. It is to be noted, that of all proper names in the Bible, there is no one that has less of the Shemitic form than this word . As it occurs 2Ki 19:37; Jer 51:27, it may have been a much later transfer, just as the old Pelasgi carried certain names through Asia Minor, Greece, and even Italy, or as the early sons of Gomer left traces of their ancestral name through Europe. In like manner the names of the old ark-mountain, like the story itself, may have been transferred to different countries; so that, if we had nothing to guide us but the literal face of the Hebrew account, the direction of the arks moving, and the place where it rested, would be as indeterminable, geographically, as the land of Nod. The Samaritan Serendib would have as good a claim to be regarded as a right translation of , as the Armenia of the Vulgate, and the Kardu (or Karud) of the Targums and the Syriac. The argument, however, for the region now commonly lecognized, has a good support in the concurrence of the Chaldan and Syrian traditions.T. L.]
[5][Gen 8:7. . And it went back and forth. The LXX., Vulgate, and Syriac, render it, and did not return, as though they had read . There can be, however, no doubt of the Hebrew text, fortified as it is by the Targums, the Samaritan Codex, and the Samaritan Version. The LXX., etc., may have derived the negative paraphrasticallythe going back and forth being regarded as evidence that it did not re-enter the ark. Bochart, in his Hierozoikon, vol. 2. pp. 209, 210, makes a labored attempt to reconcile them.T. L.]
[6][Gen 8:12.And he waited yet seven days. , as here pointed, is the regular Niphal of , whereas. , Gen 8:10, has the form of the Hiphil of or , and is so regarded by the modern commentators and lexicographers generally. From , doluit, they get the sense of waiting anxiously, painfully. It seems strange, however, that where the connection is so precisely similar, the word should be assigned to two distinct roots, though they are of forms that sometimes interchange senses. It is safer, therefore, to follow the Jewish authorities, who make them both from . The first, says Rashi, is Piel (), as though he regarded it as equivalent to (contracted into ), and the second Hithpahel () or , becoming by assimilation , like for . Aben Ezra, however, makes the second a regular Niphal, which is to be preferred, since there is a passive or deponent sense in the idea of waiting, as is seen in the Latin moror, demoror, prstolor; Greek, , . In regard to the first, it is easy to see how would become (yy-hel = y-hel), since to the ear there is hardly any perceptible difference in the pronunciation (the sounds ia, iya, and ya, being organically the same). So Rabhi Judah would read , Isa 15:2-3; Isa 16:7, for (or y-lil for yy-lil), as stated by Jona ben Gannach in his Hebrew Grammar (lately edited in Hebrew), p. 28.T. L.]
[7][The Hebrew here, in Niphal, would seem to have a more emphatic sensebecame distinctly visible. It is another example of the remarkably optical style of this whole narrative. The Vulgate beautifully renders it, apparuerunt cacumina montium. They might have projected before, but now, on this dayperhaps the first clear day that afforded Noah an opportunity for taking an observationthey stood forth as conspicuous objects, in open sight.T. L.]
[8][There is no evidence of any hill so called among the Kurd mountains, or in any other region. In a note on the Koran, 11:46, Sale regards it as a corruption for Jordi, or Giordi, but there is no trace of this in the Arabic. In the Koran and elsewhere, wherever the Arabian tradition appears, it is constantly written , and is evidently a descriptive name from , prstans, bonus fuit. It is, therefore, an epithet denoting goodness, liberality, or mercy: , the hill of Mercy, or mount Mercy, as we say, the cape, of Good Hope. Compare the Hebrew appellative, Deu 3:25, , and especially such epithets as we find in Gen 22:14, , Mount Jehovah Jiraeh, Mount in which the Lord appears. On Al-jude, see Herbelot, Bib. Orient. 375. A. He calls it Giouda, and finds a difficulty in locating it, but conjectures it to be near a village called Thamanin, from the eight persons saved in the ark, as is supposed.T. L.]
[9] [This is rather from Servius, in his Note on Virg. Georgic. lib. i. 410, and who incorrectly ascribes it to Pliny. See Bochart, Hieroz. ii. 207. B. The idea, however, may have come from the tradition of the ravens not returning to the ark, as the story is told in other accounts than that of the Hebrew. There was another wide-spread ancient belief respecting him, which is given by Pliny, x.12, by Aristotle, Hist. Nat. ix. 31, and mentioned by the Rabbins, as well as the Christian Fathers, that this bird is cruel to its young, and early ejects them from the nest before they are prepared to gather food for themselves. Whether true or false, it seems to have furnished the ground for one of the most touching illustrations of the divine care for the helpless to be found in the Scriptures. See Psa 147:9, who giveth to the young ravens when they cry, Job 38:41, who provideth for the raven his food, when his young ones cry unto God, they wander for lack of meat. The Arabians had the same tradition, and employ it in a similar illustration of the divine compassion, giving it in almost the very words of the Hebrew. Thus in a verse to be found in Hariri, Seance 13. p. 151 (De Sacy ed.),
O Thou that providest for the young raven in his nest. On which the Scholiast makes a very singular comment: When the young raven, he says, or the naabu, breaks the egg, it comes out white, which so frightens the parents that they fly far away; for the raven is the most timid and cautious of birds. When this takes place Allah sends to it the flies that fall into the nest. And so it lives for forty days, until its feathers are grown, and it becomes black, when the parents again return to it, etc. The truth or falsehood of such a belief, or of the fact of abandonment in any way, does not affect the force or beauty of the illustration drawn from it. Our Saviour most tenderly makes use of it, Luk 12:24. On the prophetic powers, or the weather-foretelling powers, of the raven, see the striking passage, Virg. Georgic. i. 410, and the philosophic explanation the poet there attempts to give of the animal signs of the weather in general.
It might be a question worth studying: how far the whole science of bird-divination, so prevalent in the ancient world, may have had its origin, like that of other perverted beliefs, in the use Noah made of the raven and the dove in determining (divining, we might say) the natural signs of safety for himself and the ark, and so the gracious signs of the divine mercy and promise. So prevalent was the belief and the practice, that (bird) in Greek becomes a name for omen, or fortune, good or bad. So the Latin auspicium (avispicium)our words auspice, auspicious, though the latter is generally taken in a favorable sense. The Hebrew words , part. , (denoting divination by clouds,) as used Lev 19:26, Deu 18:10, et al., show the prevalence of a precisely similar superstition, and furnish some proof of such an origin, in the perversion of what were originally holy and believing acts. Just so they perverted the memory of the brazen serpent. There may, however, have been another, or a concurrent, ground of these bird-divining practices of the Greeks and Romans, in a primitive notion that the inhabitants of the air (the birds of heaven, as Scripture calls them) were nearer to the divine, or that from their super-earthly position they may have had a superhuman sight and knowledge of things on the earth. Comp. Job 28:7, a path which no fowl knoweth, which the eagles eye hath not seen. Also Gen 8:21, where of the mysterious wisdom it is said: it is hid from the eyes of all living, and concealed from the birds of the heavensa poetical mode of saying, it is beyond all human divining, or human investigation.T. L.]
[10][See remarks on this derivation in the textual notes, No. 6, page 308.T. L.]
[11][This name was also given to Thursday, as ruled by the planet Jupiter, but in the most ancient mythology it must have come directly after Saturn, as dies Solis.T. L.]
[12][This word , as used by Peter, does not necessarily denote the earth as a whole. It means a former state of things as distinguished from the present. As employed, it has the same generality, and the same limitation, as , when used for the inhabited world, real or supposed.T. L.
[13][The great importance of the question, and the fact that Dr. Lange fails to give a decided view, form the plea for the length of this Excursus. Delitzsch also seems undecided, though he presents some views strongly favorable to the theory of limitation.T. L.]
[14][In respect to the first kind, the famous canon of the rationalist, undoubtedly holds true: the Scriptures, in their human language, are to be interpreted as other books. When, however, it is applied to the second, or what may be called the theological exegesis, it ignores and denies what is most peculiar in the Bible as a book composed during two thousand years, by different writers, in widely different styles, and embracing a vast variety of ideas, yet preserving, from beginning to end, a holy aspect, and a religious unity, that no other writings possess, and which have given it a place in the very core of human history, such as no other book, no other literature, or literary series, can lay any claim to. Not less absurd would it be than to interpret Homers Iliad as an accidental or arbitrary series of fragmentary unconnected ballads, after the profoundest criticism, grounded on the truest Homeric feeling, has decided it to possess an epic unity and an epic harmony worthy of the high poetical inspiration from which it flows.T. L.]
[15][Delitzsch, though undecided in the main, presents the whole case, or the whole ground of argument for and against, when he says, page Genesis 262: The Scripture demands the universality of the flood, only for the earth as inhabited, not for the earth as such; and it has no interest in the universality of the flood in itself, but only in the universality of the judgment of which it is the execution.T. L.]
[16][It is the appearance so graphically described, though in other language, Job 26:10 : , The circle he hath marked upon the face of the waters, at the ending of the light in the darkness,or where the visible disappears in the invisible.T. L.]
[17] [There is no mention of the wild animals as included in the , as that judicious commentator, Murphy, well observes (p. 211). There were the fowl, and the creeping thing. The first included the birds in general (who would be most defenceless, and who would most naturally, of themselves, resort to the ark for shelter), and the smaller well-known animals, who would come under the general denomination. There is no evidence of its here including insects or reptiles. And then again, it must be ever borne in mind how our view of the universal terms in respect to the animals is affected by the prejudgment of the absolute universality of the flood as covering all the globe. The all in the one case is very much modified by the all in the other. If the flood was confined to the basin of the Euphrates and Tigris, it would have swept away the then existing human race, but not the animal races who had roamed farther into the wildernesses and deserts. There is not a syllable to show that lions came from Africa or bears from Siberia. The generality of the terms, then, cannot be carried farther than the ends intended, which were the preservation of Noah and his family, as the seed of a new human race, and of the animals in the district where he lived as the seed of other animals that would be wanted for the new population, either in their immediate, or their more remote and indirect, utilities.
On the question of the universality of the flood, the reader is referred to the Commentary on Genesis by James G. Murphy, LL.D., Professor of Hebrew, Belfast. On this subject especially is he learned and judicious, yet with a reverence far removed from latitudinarianism.T. L.]
[18][See the marginal note on those words, , page 308.T. L.]
[19][Such, for example, as the , Gen 8:5, a peculiar Hebrew idiom, denoting most graphically a gradual yet constant subsidence (Vulg., ibant el decrescebant aqu), or, the period of highest water, which could have had no mark for the eye, if they covered the highest land upon the earth, twelve thousand feet, or more than two miles, above the high peak of Ararat itself.T. L.]
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
The last Chapter concluded with the melancholy relation of the world destroyed, and the church brought within very narrow limits. This opens with an account of the renewals of mercy, in restoring the former and enlarging the borders of the latter. The fountains of the great deep, which were broken up, are stopped; the windows of heaven, for the out-pouring of the rain, are closed; the whole earth recovers its verdure: and Noah and his family are brought forth from the ark, after inhabiting it for the space of a year and ten days. Noah erects an altar, and offers sacrifice. God accepts the oblation, and promiseth never more to drown the world, but that the seasons of the year shall have their appointed weeks, while the earth remaineth.
Gen 8:1 And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged;
By God’s remembrance, we must suppose is meant, only some fresh instance of grace. Luk 12:6 ; Isa 49:15-16 . Pious believers may learn from hence, that every renewed manifestation of divine love, is among the remembrances of their God.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Noah Saved in the Ark
Gen 8:1-22
Traditions of the Flood linger among all branches of the human race except the black. Remember from the Greek story of Deucalion, when Zeus had resolved to destroy mankind, after the treatment he had received from Lycaon, Deucalion built an ark in which he and his wife Pyrrha floated during the nine days’ flood which destroyed Greece. When the waters subsided, Deucalion’s ark rested on Mount Parnassus.
Ten buildings the size of Solomon’s temple could have been stowed away in Noah’s Ark. In 1609 a Dutchman, Peter Jansen, built a vessel in the exact proportions of the ark, only smaller. Every one laughed at him, but he kept sturdily on. When his vessel was launched it carried more freight and sailed faster than any other ships of the same size.
Reference. VIII. 1-22. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Genesis, p. 55.
God’s Remembrance of Noah
Gen 8:1
The beautiful simplicity of this language goes home to the heart of every reader. We picture Noah in his isolation, in his apparent desolateness and hopelessness, his ark alone upon the wide-spreading waters, and no living soul to hail him and to cheer him with good news. Had he thought himself forsaken and forgotten, his ark ‘alone on a wide, wide sea,’ we could not have wondered. But ‘God remembered Noah’. When the Scriptures speak of the remembrance of God, it is usually remembrance ‘for good’. So it is here.
I. The Purpose of God’s Remembrance.
( a ) To deliver him from danger. The provision of the ark, into which God had appointed that Noah and his family should enter for refuge, was a measure of safety; but it now seemed as though the very refuge was itself a source of danger. How long could such a captivity with its attendant privations be endured? Were the members of this rescued family to be left to drift upon the waters and to perish? These questions were answered by the Lord remembering Noah. Let such as are placed in circumstances of peril, hardship, and anxiety be assured that whilst they remember and call upon God He will remember and will not forsake them.
( b ) To reward him for his piety. Noah had been ‘faithful among the faithless,’ had maintained the true religion amidst prevailing corruptions. And God did not forget His servant’s justice and devout-ness, but treated him with a discriminating favour. As Nehemiah afterwards entreated God to remember him for good, and to remember his works, so now doubtless the second father of the race called upon the Lord God. And his cry was not unheeded, for the Lord remembered him in mercy.
( c ) To establish with him an unchanging covenant. ‘God remembered Noah’ to such good purpose as to undertake on his behalf, and on behalf of his posterity, engagements which have proved most advantageous and beneficial to the race. The promise was given that the waters should no more submerge the earth, that the seasons should pursue their regular and uninterrupted course; and these promises were confirmed by a sign, the bow in the clouds, at the sight of which the heart is still cheered and the hope is still inspired.
II. The Character of God’s Remembrance.
( a ) It is individual. ‘Noah, and every living thing.’ Man has the power of generalizing; but it is his imperfection that necessitates the expedient; imperfection of memory and general intellectual power; imperfection of sympathy. Every thing and every heart is present to God in its distinctiveness of individuality and condition. The very hairs of your head are numbered; He hears the young ravens when they cry.
( b ) It is universal. The ark was then the living world, and He remembered all in it. ‘We are also His offspring.’ The meanest thing that lived is cared for, loved, remembered by God. Be kind to dumb animals. Also, have wide sympathy and large hope. Rejoice not that you are the members of a small family, a pet few, for you are not; but that you are the child of a Father of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.
( c ) It is not lessened by the terrible judgments which He executes. The floods that drown a world do not quench His love, or obliterate His remembrance. The ark tossing helmless on the wide waste, and every living thing in it, is remembered by God. God remembers every living thing. He has the destinies of all creatures in His hand and on His heart. After the seemingly helpless, hopeless drifting of the ark, it will rest at last; and new heavens will smile upon a renovated earth; and a ‘rainbow’ will be ‘about God’s throne, in sight like unto an emerald’.
References. VIII. 1. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, God’s Heroes, p. 1. VIII. 4. C. D. Bell, Hills that Bring Peace, p. 23. Bishop Browne, Sermons on the Atonement, p. 67. VII. 9. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xi, No. 637; ibid. vol. xl. No. 2373.
Noah’s Sacrifice
Gen 8:20-21
I. What was the first employment which Noah set his hand to when he came out of the ark? His soul was full of thanks and praise; as he knew the way that God had appointed, by which he and all sinful men should express their praise, he complied at once with that service of thanksgiving which God had ordained, the offering up a sacrifice.
II. But how could he afford to spare the animals which were requisite for a sacrifice? Noah had in his possession but a little stock. But Noah was a man of faith and piety: his faith led him to believe God’s promise, that the fowl and the cattle should increase abundantly, and his piety led him to feel that he would sooner lose every sheep or bullock he possessed than leave his God unthanked and unacknowledged in the way that was appointed.
III. And how did God regard it? To him Noah’s motives, faith, thankfulness, and obedience were as a secret refreshing scent to ourselves. Noah’s faith looked above the lamb or bullock which he offered to Him whose death upon the cross they represented, and God therefore was well pleased with the faith and the obedience.
IV. What did it lead Him to promise and engage for? Such a promise that we may consider ourselves indebted to it, for God’s forbearance even now, for the regularity with which our spring succeeds to winter, and our harvest to the seedtime, and our day to night. It is not because man has become a better object of God’s bounty now than in the old days before the Flood. It is because God had respect to Noah’s sacrifice, because in it he regarded that better sacrifice which it represented and set forth.
E. J. Brewster, Scripture Characters, p. 11.
The Figurative Element in Bible Language
Gen 8:21
There is a saying of the rabbis, which, if its full significance be understood, and wisely applied, is worth the whole folios of their formal exegesis. It is that ‘The law speaks in the tongue of the sons of men’. If the rabbis had taken to heart this saying of their own famous Rabbi Ishmael, the greater part of their exegetic system would at once have been shown to be nugatory. For that system, as it gained vogue in spite of some strong protests, is founded on the principle that Scripture language is so mysterious, so unearthly, so little accordant with the ordinary tongue of men, that it may be distorted into the most monstrous meanings, and pressed into the most exorbitant inferences. It has been a terrible disaster to the Christian Church that she accepted without challenge the vicious principles of Talmudic interpretation. Out of many dangers which have resulted from the error of literalism let me choose two.
I. Language and thought can no more exactly coincide than two particles of matter can absolutely touch each other. No single virtue, no single faculty, no single spiritual truth, no single metaphysical conception, can be expressed without the aid of analogy and metaphor. Now if this be true in general, how much more true is it of any language in which we speak of God. The untrained imagination of the world’s childhood could not conceive of a bodiless and omnipresent Spirit. It was necessary, therefore, for the sacred writer to speak of God as if he bad a human body; and this is what is called anthropomorphism.
II. But if harm was done by the crude errors of the heresy which insisted on exact literalism, and declared that the Trinity wore a human form, perhaps even deadlier evil arose from the imperfection of language which is technically called anthropopathy; namely, the attribution to God of human passions. When we speak of God’s wrath, and fury, and fierce jealousy, and implacable rage, and describe His awful majesty, the ‘Tartarean drench’ of many modern sermons, or in the tempestuously incongruous language of many modern hymns, we ought to beware lest we are talking with too gross a familiarity of Him ‘whose tender mercies are over all His works’. It is then most necessary to carry with us into the study of the Scriptures the perpetual sense of the shadows, the imperfection, the uncertainties of human languages. There are hundreds of passages of the Bible which have been misunderstood by millions, misunderstood for ages, misunderstood at times by perhaps nearly every living representative of the Church of God. All that we can now do is to gather up the significance of these considerations in a few general rules. ( a ) There is no basis whatever for the allegorical system of interpretation, in plain passages or ordinary narratives. To admit such a style of exegesis is to forget the very meaning and purpose of ordinary language. ( b ) Even where we have to deal with professed metaphor, or with allegories and parables, theological conclusions may never be based on isolated expressions or collateral inferences.
F. W. Farrar, British Weekly Pulpit, vol. iii. p. 892.
References. VIII. 21. J. Burnet, Penny Pulpit, No. 1485, p. 17. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xi. No. 615. C. S. Robinson, Sermons on Neglected Texts, p. 258.
Harvest Thanksgiving
Gen 8:22
Why is it that we are grateful? Why is it that we like to express this when we realize benefits that we have received? I think we shall find that the fact of this quality of gratitude and this expression of thankfulness is implanted in us by our instincts, and that it is also a definite revelation of God, that He requires it at our hands, that a grateful, thankful disposition Is that which goes to make up the character of man as God would have it.
We like when we have done a kindness to know that it has touched the heart of him to whom it has been done. We like ourselves to recognize gratitude in others. So then it is the same with our heavenly Father. That which I have read as our text is perhaps one of the first examples of it. God is accepting there the offering of thanksgiving after the Flood which overwhelmed the earth, or that portion at least which was inhabited by man. We look to the New Testament. We find that our blessed Lord especially emphasized His acceptance of gratitude and the expression of it, as in the case of the ten lepers. We might multiply instances, but we realize that God Himself has distinctly made us know that the spirit of gratitude is a spirit that He desires to see as a part of human character.
I. Why is this Harvest especially a Cause of Thanksgiving?
( a ) It is the fulfilment of a Divine promise. We remind ourselves of the goodness of God in the fulfilment of that promise that these things that go to make our lives bright and happy, the morning and the evening, the day for labour and the night for rest, the summer and the winter, and the seedtime and the harvest, they shall never cease while the earth remaineth, as they once ceased in the days of the Flood of Noah.
( b ) We regard it also as a fulfilment of a desire on our part as the granting of prayer. It is a very curious thing that our blessed Lord, Who came on earth, as we have said, to reveal God’s mind with regard to men’s life, when asked how to pray, taught those pattern supplications which are contained in what is called The Lord’s Prayer, and if we offer these supplications day by day, and very thoughtfully, we shall quite understand how all through the year we have been crying to God for a certain thing, ‘Give us day by day our daily bread,’ or, ‘our bread today for tomorrow,’ as some translators would have it. We have been crying to God so to bless the earth that it may produce its fruits for our use. How far this Divine miracle would cease, were the human cry to cease, we do not know. But we know that, in answer to that Divine command, daily, a great stream of intercession goes forth to God. And so, at the end of the year we gather together, in order to return our thanks for the giving of the gift for which we have prayed; for, after all, it is by Divine arrangement that the want of one part of the earth is supplied by the plenty of the other, that means of locomotion increase as men’s needs increase, so that we are fed not only by the produce of the land on which we live, but by the whole great world of which we are a part.
II. How are we to Return Thanks?
( a ) By the service we offer. It is a very striking thing, is it not, that in the Old Testament, when God prescribed great festivals for the Jews, He prescribed three of them, as distinctly in connexion with the ingathering of the fruits of the earth the sowing, the first fruits, and the ingathering. So it was in the mind of God especially then, that thanksgiving should be offered by people united in the act of worship and praise, as it were, making beautiful the thankoffering that they sent up to heaven.
( b ) And then there is that further act of worship by which we most specially and signally mark our festivals of thanksgiving, the great thankoffering in the holy communion which our blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ gave us, the great thankoffering, as it used to be called in the early Church, the Eucharist, as we call it, which signifies the great service of thanksgiving.
( c ) We should offer ourselves, our souls and bodies, to the service of our God. That which God would have at our hands in the time of our thanksgiving is that which we can give an offering of ourselves.
Harvest Festival
Gen 8:22
I. This passage is one of what are usually called the ‘Jehovistic’ sections of the book of Genesis. Specific portions of the narrative are characterized by the constant recurrence of the name ‘Lord,’ which is the translation in our Revised Version for ‘Jehovah,’ whilst other and more lengthy parts are usually distinguished by the exclusive use of the appellation ‘Elohim’ which is invariably rendered ‘God’. This word is generic, and is in Scripture applied to the heathen divinities as well as to the true God, whilst the title ‘Jehovah’ or ‘Lord’ is specific, or rather essentially personal, and denotes the national or covenant God of Israel.
II. It is an important fact that the God of the seasons, the God of Nature, is the ‘I am,’ the self-existent one of Jewish worship, and that fact gets explicit statement in the earlier pages of the Revelation. An intelligent personal will is thus perceived to be the guiding force or principle in all changes and development, whether of nature or of providence. Nothing comes to pass by chance or an inexorable necessity, as some of the more thoughtful heathen supposed; the more destructive forces of the universe, storms and floods and earthquakes, are not diabolic, the sad and malignant work of evil supernatural spirits as others thought, but, however, inexplicable, are the issue of the Almighty fiat of Him who ruleth all things according to the counsel of His own will, ‘the Lord’.
III. The unchangeable faithfulness of the Lord under all His successive dispensations is one main truth and lesson of the passage now before us, the rainbow in the domain of nature being no less a visible and sure sign or token of it, than the water or the bread or wine of the Sacraments in the sphere of grace. Salvation is all of grace from beginning to end; but our special business usually is to trace the Hand which wrought it out in the bounties of nature, in the joyousness of the harvest home and the vintage.
J. Miller, Sermons Literary and Scientific, p. 179.
References. VIII. 22. D. J. Waller, Preachers’ Magazine, vol. xix. p. 415. R. S. Candlish, The Book of Genesis, vol. i. p. 140. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxii. No. 1891. IX. 1-7. R. S. Candlish, The Book of Genesis, vol. i. p. 140. IX. 4. A. G. Mortimer, The Church’s Lessons, vol. ii. p. 1. IX. 8-17. A. Maclaren, Expositions Genesis, p. 60. R. S. Candlish, The Book of Genesis, vol. i. p. 151.
Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson
XV
GOD’S COVENANT WITH NOAH
Genesis 8-9
I want to put a general question: How long was Noah in the ark? In answering that question you may consult Gen 7:1-11 , and Gen 8:14 . I call your attention in the next place to a suggestion in the Speaker’s Commentary on Gen 8:4 , which tells us that the ark rested on Mount Ararat, and gives the date. According to the Jewish year observed in this account, the ark rested on the seventeenth day of the seventh month. On that very day later, the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, and on that day later Christ rose from the dead. We might investigate any connection between the resting of that ark, the passage of the Red Sea and the resurrection of Christ.
The next thought presented is with reference to the raven. Dr. Fuller of England, in his exposition of Genesis, compares the sending out of the raven to a man’s getting out of the church who was never a Christian. He never wants to go back. He pictures that raven flying around, resting on some dead body floating on the top of the water, and never desiring to return to the ark of the covenant. On account of the naming in this chapter of the raven, the dove, the olive branch, and the rainbow, these four names have gone into all languages and all literature as indicating certain things. The raven is regarded as a croaker and a bird of ill omen; the dove is regarded as the symbol of innocence; the olive branch as the symbol of peace; and the rainbow as the symbol of hope. I was once asked the question where that dove got ‘ the olive branch, since the whole earth had been flooded with water. The olive tree lives under water. In the lakes of the Black Forest you can see olive trees growing under the water and never blossoming until in dry weather when the lakes sink down and the tops of the trees come up and immediately the tree blossoms. Pliny in his Natural History said that the olive tree grew under water in the Red Sea; that it grows in salt water. It is a very hardy plant. So it is not a miracle that the dove found an olive branch, but quite in accordance with the nature of this particular plant that it could live and retain its vitality many months under water, and when the waters subsided go to flowering and blooming.
We now come to the most significant thing in this part of Genesis, and that is the covenant between God and the second head of the human race, Noah. I will give this general question: What is the meaning of “covenant” based on the Greek word? In very general terms a covenant is an agreement or compact between two or more parties having its stipulation binding on both parties. There is said here to be a covenant between God upon the first part and Noah on the second part representing himself and the whole animal world. So Noah stands there representing all earth life.
We want to note in the next place what was the basis of the covenant, the meritorious ground of agreement. I will read that to you from the eighth chapter and twentieth verse: “And Noah builded an altar unto Jehovah, and took of every clean beast, and every clean bird, and offered burnt-offerings on the altar. And Jehovah smelled the sweet savour; and Jehovah said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake.” Now that was the meritorious ground or basis of the covenant. In other words, Noah comes before God as a sinner, making an offering. In the letter to the Hebrews we are told that wherever there is a covenant there is a shedding of blood. There must be a death. The basis of this covenant which God himself appointed is that animal sacrifice typifying a greater sacrifice to come, which shall be sacrificed on an altar. It must be complete. The next thing is that the word “altar” appears here in the Bible for the first time. I will give a general question: From what language is the word “altar” derived and what is its literal meaning? I am calling your attention to these new names in the Bible. The stipulation that God requires of man is that he shall come before him and be justified through an atonement, and the man’s faith in that atonement constitutes the ground of God’s entering into covenant with him.
Let us notice some of the other stipulations of this covenant: Gen 9:1 , “And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.” There you see is a renewal of the covenant with Adam when he said, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.” You must not only come before God as a sinner, but your obligation is to go out and subdue this earth and fill it up with inhabitants. “And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every bird of the heavens; with all wherewith the ground teemeth, and all the fishes of the sea, into your hands are they delivered.” This is a renewal of the dominion of man as given originally in Adam.
We now come to an enlargement of the Adamic covenant, Gen 1:29 : “And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed; to you it shall be for food; and to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for food; and it was so.” Now, let us see the enlargement on that, Gen 9:3 : “Every moving thing that liveth shall be food for you; and the green herbs have I given you all.” God now gives animal food in addition to the vegetable. The animal food embraces any animal creature whatsoever. When we get to the Mosaic covenant we will see that this food will be restricted to clean animals, to those that divide the hoof and chew the cud. I want you to notice that Noah stands as the head of the human race like Adam stood and that he has a larger privilege than Adam had as to animal food added, where before there was only vegetable. When we come to the New Testament we will hear Paul arguing for the broadness of the privilege of the covenant of Noah when he says, “Every creature of God is good and to be received with thanksgiving.” The covenantwith Noah is very much broader than the covenant with Moses, because that covenant was with a single nation only, and this was with the whole human race.
We notice now another thing entirely new: “But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.” You may eat an animal, but you must not eat him with the blood in him. When we come to Exodus, Moses renews that law that a thing that is strangled, merely choked to death, cannot be eaten because the blood is in him, and anything that merely dies cannot be eaten. In Act 15 you will find that James insists that that restriction be put upon the Gentile Christians. Somehow I have always sympathized with this restriction. I knew a man once, and held him in considerable esteem until one day he told me that his favorite dish was blood pudding. I never did like him as much afterward because that seems to me to be such a horrid dish. People who eat blood are brutal and ferocious. Caesar said that the Belgians, the bravest of men, lived on milk, showing that animal food itself is not necessary. But the English believe that their superiority over all nations in fighting arises from the great quantity of beef that they eat. God gives permission to eat any animal creature, and I have known people who would eat rattlesnakes and polecats and snails, and with some people bird’s nests are regarded as a delicacy. Savage nations show you the highest compliment when they offer you a dish of grub worms. An African woman who wanted to show a kindness to one of our missionaries who had been kind to her went out and got him a dish of grub worms. There is no law against it except taste. I would not prefer, for my part, the grub worms, nor the snails, nor the polecats.
We now come to a new prohibition: “And surely your blood, the blood of your lives, will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it; at the hand of man, even at the hand of every man’s brother, will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddest man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made he man.” Here is something we have not fallen in with before. You remember when Cain killed his brother he was afraid that whoever found him would kill him. God protected him from death by human hands. Now, on this side of the flood God here instituted civil government and makes murder punishable with death and makes it right for man in the capacity of a civil government to take the life of a murderer. This is a very old law. It goes back of the Mosaic law. This is not a Jewish law; it is a race law.
Upon this point I want to call your attention to the teaching of the Jewish synagogues. The Jewish synagogue which was established just after the Babylonian captivity has held that there were seven ordinances of Noah. They call them the primal ordinances. I am going to give you these seven as the synagogue gave them and see how many we can find here:
Abstinence from blood
Prohibition of murder
Recognition of civil authority
Idolatry forbidden
Blasphemy forbidden
Incest forbidden
Theft forbidden
The first three we find in this chapter. Idolatry and blasphemy are implied in the offering. But I do not know where those Jews got the other two, incest and theft.
We were discussing the stipulations that God required upon man’s part. First, he must come as a sinner with a sacrifice. Second, he must eat no blood. Third, he must do no murder. Fourth, civil government should have charge of the murderer and punish him with death. That far it is very clear as to the stipulations that God requires of man. Another was that he was to replenish the earth and exercise dominion over the beasts. Now, let us see what God’s part was. God blessed Noah. That means that he graciously accepts him in that sacrifice that he offers, forgiving his sins if he through faith can see to what that atonement points. The great blessing is the blessing of forgiveness of sins through the atonement offering. Second, God promises that there shall never be another flood of water. Third, that the laws of nature shall be uniform, Gen 8:22 : “While the earth remaineth, seed time and harvest and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” How necessary it is that there should be a uniformity of law in nature. Some of you have read the piece in the old third reader about a man living in the world of chance. That man lost his wife and children because they unthoughtedly ate poison and died. There was an inflexible law. In his despair he wished that he lived in a world without law. He fell asleep and dreamed that he was in a world of chance, where there was no uniformity. You could not tell what time of the year winter would come, nor how long it would stay, nor what time of the year summer would come. A man might have Just one eye and that on the top of his head. His hands might be growing out from under his arms. His ox might have wool like a sheep. When he had a toothache he put some coffee on to boil, thinking that would help his tooth, but by chance it turned into ice instead of boiling, and when the ice hit that bounding tooth, how it must have hurt! Are you clear now about the things that God promised? (1) He will graciously accept man through the offering. (2) He promised not to send another flood. (3) He will give regularity of seasons. When a man goes to plant a crop he may know what to expect.
We now look at the extent of this covenant. It is said to be a perpetual covenant. Just as long as this dispensation lasts that will be true, and the last thing is the token of that covenant. What indicates that a covenant has been made between God and man? The rainbow is selected as a token. The people who had passed through the flood, or had recently heard about such a big rain, would be very much frightened every time they saw a cloud coming. Now, when you see a cloud, when you are at a certain angle you will also see a rainbow and that is a sign to you that God will never allow this earth to be destroyed by water, and when God looks on it he will remember what he has promised. I here give a quotation from Murphy on Genesis:
For perpetual ages this stability of sea and land is to last, during the remainder of the human race. What is to happen when the race of man is completed is not the question. At present God’s covenant is the well-known and still-remembered compact formed with man when the command was issued in the garden of Eden. So God’s bow is the primaeval arch, coexistent with the rays of light and the drops of rain. It is caused by the rays of the sun on the falling raindrops at a particular angle. A beautiful arch of reflected and refracted light is in this way formed for every eye. The rainbow is thus an index that the sky is not wholly overcast since the sun is shining through the shower and thereby demonstrating its partial extent. There could not, therefore, be a more beautiful or more fitting token that there shall be no more a flood to sweep away all flesh and destroy the land. It comes through its mild radiance only when the cloud condenses into a shower. It consists of heavenly light variegated in hue, mellowed in lustre, filling the beholder with an involuntary pleasure. It forms a perfect arch. It connects heaven and earth and spans the horizon. In these respects it is a beautiful emblem of mercy rejoicing against judgment, of light from heaven irradiating and beautifying the soul, of grace always sufficient for the needy, of the reunion of earth and heaven, of all the universality of the offer of salvation.
In Rev 4:3 , the rainbow about the throne of mercy, and in Rev 10:1 , the angel with a rainbow about his head, we have again the New Testament symbolism of the rainbow. In Science Made Easy for All are some of the most beautiful illustrations of the rainbow that I have ever seen. Three years ago I was in Comanche, Texas. The sun had gone down, the full moon was shining. We were sitting down at the supper table and somebody called out, “Run out here and look at the moon.” And there was a complete rainbow, a perfect circle around the moon, a lunar rainbow, of course, fainter than a solar rainbow, not so Conspicuous, and yet anybody could see it. I have seen two others since.
I have one other observation to give you. I was on the train going from McGregor down the Sante Fe toward Galdwell and talking with a man who saw no evidence of God’s loving care anywhere. “Why,” I said, “if you will just look out of the car window you will see one that keeps up with us.” And there was a rainbow keeping right up with the train, made from the sun shining on the steam from the engine. It kept along with us about fifty miles. Wherever water falls and the sun shines, and you are at the right angle of vision you can see a token of God’s infinite mercy. I said, “Now if you cannot see any of these things, it is because of your angle of vision.” As Paul puts it, “If our gospel is veiled, it is veiled in them that perish: in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not dawn upon them” (2Co 4:3 ).
We now take up the prophecy concerning Noah’s sons. Some of it is very difficult, not so much for me to’ tell as for you to remember. The closing paragraph in the ninth chapter is not only the connecting link between what goes before and what comes after, but all the future references throughout the Bible connect with this passage that is inserted here.
I will read and comment. “And the sons of Noah, that went forth from the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth.” I call attention to the relative ages of these sons, and why their names do not appear in relative order. Japheth was the oldest and Ham the youngest. “And Ham is the father of Canaan.” That expression is put in out of its proper connection in order to explain something that will appear immediately after. “These three were the sons of Noah: and of these was the whole earth overspread. And Noah began to be an husbandman and planted a vineyard and drank of the wine and was drunken.” The word here used for wine contains the idea of fermentation. “And he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. And Shem and Japheth took a garment upon both their shoulders and went backward and covered the nakedness of their father, and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness.”
We have just commenced the new race probation after the flood. How long it had been after the flood we do not know exactly, but some years, because no children were born to Shem, Ham, and Japheth until after the flood, and at this time Canaan, the son of Ham) is grown. We see the great man that was perfect in his generation, just and walked with God, this new head of the race that had such faith, a preacher of righteousness, as he falls into sin, the sin of drunkenness. This teaches that no man) however exalted in character or position, is absolutely safe from a fall. I don’t mean that a Christian may fall away and be forever lost, but I do say that the most exalted Christian in the world must exercise watchfulness and prudence, or he will bring shame upon the name of religion. We have had some most remarkable cases of this kind besides the case of Noah.
This sin of Noah acted as a revelation, that is, it brought out the character of his three children. When the youngest one looked upon the shame of his father’s drunkenness, he was inspired with no such feelings as those which animated Shem and Japheth. He not only scorned his father, but went and published it to the others. We sometimes find children who have not been well raised, who go around to the neighbors and tell the little troubles that occur in the family. It is always an indication of a bad heart and an untrained character. The world has never had much respect for the taleteller and the gadabout. They may listen to what you say, and may make use of it, but they will not respect you for it. The filial piety and reverence of Shem and Japheth is one of the most impressive lessons in history, and their action, walking backward and holding the mantle on their shoulders so that when they got to their father they could cover him without seeing him, originated the proverb: “Charity covereth a multitude of sins.” That means that love is not disposed to point out the sins of others and talk about them. Love is more disposed to cover them up.
“And Noah awoke from his wine, and he knew what his youngest son had done unto him.” How he found out I don’t know. Perhaps it was told unto him. Now we come to the first recorded prophecy, so far as the Old Testament is concerned, that was ever spoken by man, though the New Testament tells us of a prophecy that preceded this, the Lord himself having given a prophecy in the third chapter of Genesis that “the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head.” That was God’s prophecy, and Enoch, the seventh from Adam, made a prophecy, but it was not given in the Old Testament. This remarkable prophecy of Noah consists of two divisions. First, the curse, and then the blessing. “And he said, Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be to his brethren.” The question naturally arises whether that curse extends to the other children of Ham, and if so, why Canaan alone is specified. My opinion is that the curse extends to the whole of the descendants of Ham from the fact that there was no blessing pronounced on him or any of his children in the whole prophecy, and I think that Canaan was specified instead of the others because Canaan is the one with which God’s people will have to do when they go to the Promised Land. They will have to rescue it from the Canaanites, the descendants of Ham. That curse can be traced in history. The Canaanites when they were conquered by Joshua and by David and by Solomon were either destroyed or enslaved. They became the servants of their conquerors, and it is certainly true that the other descendants of Ham became largely the slaves of the world.
Let us look at the blessing: “And he said, Blessed be Jehovah, the God of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant.” Or, as Jamieson translates it: “Blessed of Jehovah, my God, be Shem.” That seems to make the better reading, that Jehovah shall be the God of Shem, and Shem shall have religious preeminence. In the line of Shem come all the oracles of God during the Old Testament times, and in the New Testament times all of the Bible we have, with the possible exception of one book, comes from the descendants of Shem. The Semitic races seem to have taken the lead in religious matters, whether for good or bad.
Notice the blessing on Japheth: “God enlarge Japheth.” That part has been fulfilled to the letter, as we will see later, that the children of Japheth occupy the greater part of the world. Not only have they been enlarged as to the territory that God allotted to them, but as leaders in intellectual development and inventions, and in the government of the world. The second blessing is: “And let him dwell in the tents of Shem.” That means that Japheth will get his religion from Shem. We are Gentiles, the children of Japheth. Isa 60:9 , says, “Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish first, to bring thy sons from afar, their silver and their gold with them, for the name of Jehovah thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel, because he hath glorified thee.” That shows the coming of the Gentiles. This prophecy shows that the distinction among men or peoples is not accidental, but that the world was divided among the descendants of three men. It shows how far-reaching on the children is the consequence of a father’s action. It is always best for a man, if he is going to be a bad man, to remain a bachelor and not throw a shadow over his descendants. The iniquities of the fathers are visited upon the children as consequences.
Noah lived after the flood 350 years. That would bring him to Abraham’s time, so that Abraham could talk with the man who had witnessed the overthrow of the old world, and who himself had only one man between himself and the first Adam, who was Methuselah. Adam could talk to Methuselah, and Methuselah to Noah, and Noah to Abraham, and so you see how easily tradition could be handed down.
QUESTIONS 1. How long was Noah in the ark?
2. What suggestion from the Speaker’s Commentary, and what connection between the resting of the ark, the passage of the Red Sea and the resurrection of Christ?
3. What do the raven, dove, olive branch, and rainbow symbolize? What their impress on subsequent literature?
4. Was the dove’s finding an olive branch a miracle? Explain.
5. What is the most significant thing in this part of Genesis?
6. What is the meaning of “covenant,” and what does Noah represent in this covenant?
7. What was the meritorious ground of this covenant and New Testament testimony on this point?
8. What is the first Bible use of the word “altar” and the etymology of the word?
9. What covenant renewal do we find here?
10. What enlargement of the Adamic covenant?
11. How does this covenant with Noah compare with the one later with Moses and why?
12. What one food restriction?
13. Cite the first establishment of civil government and criminal law.
14. What seven ordinances does the synagogue derive from the Noachic legislation and how many of these do you find in the text?
15. What were the terms of the covenant with Noah on man’s part?
16. On God’s part?
17. What was the extent of this covenant?
18. What the token of the covenant?
19. What New Testament references to the rainbow and what its symbolism?
20. What the importance of the closing paragraph of the ninth chapter of Genesis?
21. What the relative ages of the sons of Noah, and why the expression, “And Ham is the father of Canaan,” out of its proper connection?
22. What is the first case of vine culture and drunkenness?
23. What the lesson, of Noah’s drunkenness?
23. What the lesson of Noah’s drunkenness?
24. What the distinction of filial piety and reverence in the sona of Noah?
25. What proverb seems to be based on Shem’s and Japheth’s covering the nakedness of their father?
26. Was Ham’s sin the cause or the occasion of Noah’s curse? Ana.: The occasion.
27. Was the curse from God or Noah?
28. Was it punitive on the person or consequential on his descendants?
29. Show historic fulfillment of the curse.
30. What was the meaning and historic fulfillment of the blessing on Shem?
31. What was the meaning and historic fulfillment of “God enlarge Japheth”?
32. What was the meaning and historic fulfillment of Japheth dwelling in the tents of Shem? 33. What was the significance of Noah’s long life after the flood?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Gen 8:1 And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that [was] with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged;
Ver. 1. And God remembered Noah. ] He might begin to think that God had forgotten him, having not heard from God for five months together, and not yet seeing how he could possibly escape. He had been a whole year in the ark; a and now was ready to groan out that doleful Usquequo Domine :Hast thou forgotten to be merciful? &c. But forgetfulness befalls not the Almighty. The butler may forget Joseph; and Joseph, his father’s house: Ahasuerus may forget Mordecai; and the delivered city the poor man that by his wisdom preserved it. Ecc 9:15 The Sichemites may forget Gideon; but “God is not unfaithful to forget your work and labour of love,” saith the apostle. Heb 6:10 And there is “a book of remembrance written before him,” saith the prophet, “for them that fear the Lord”. Mal 3:16 A metaphor from kings that commonly keep a calendar or chronicle of such as have done them good service: as Ahasuerus, Est 6:1 and Tamerlane, b who had a catalogue of their names and good deserts, which he daily perused, oftentimes saying that day to be lost wherein he had not given them something. God also is said to have such a book of remembrance. Not that he hath so, or needeth to have; for all things, both past and future, are present with him: he hath the idea of them within himself, and every thought is before his eyes, so that he cannot be forgetful. But he is said to remember his people (so he is pleased to speak to our capacity) when he showeth his care of us, and makes good his promise to us. We also are said to be his “remembrancers” Isa 62:6 when we plead his promise, and press him to performance. Not that we persuade him thereby to do us good, but we persuade our own hearts to more faith, love, obedience, &c., whereby we become more capable of that good.
God made a wind.
Though our ark be driven in a tempestuous sea, saith one, yet it shall neither sink nor split, whiles we sail in the thoughts of Almighty God.
a Fuit in arca per annum integrum et decem dies. – Piscator.
b Turk. Hist., p. 227.
c D
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Genesis
‘CLEAR SHINING AFTER RAIN’
Gen 8:1 – Gen 8:22
The universal tradition of a deluge is most naturally accounted for by admitting that there was a ‘universal deluge.’ But ‘universal’ does not apply to the extent as embracing the whole earth, but as affecting the small area then inhabited-an area which was probably not greater than the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris. The story in Genesis is the Hebrew version of the universal tradition, and its plain affinity to the cuneiform narratives is to be frankly accepted. But the relationship of these two is not certain. Are they mother and daughter, or are they sisters? The theory that the narrative in Genesis is derived from the Babylonian, and is a purified, elevated rendering of it, is not so likely as that both are renderings of a more primitive account, to which the Hebrew narrative has kept true, while the other has tainted it with polytheistic ideas. In this passage the cessation of the flood is the theme, and it brings out both the love of the God who sent the awful punishment, and the patient godliness of the man who was spared from it. So it completes the teaching of the flood, and proclaims that God ‘in wrath remembers mercy.’
1. ‘God remembered Noah.’ That is a strong ‘anthropomorphism,’ like many other things in Genesis-very natural when these records were written, and bearing a true meaning for all times. It might seem as if, in the wild rush of the waters from beneath and from above, the little handful in the ark were forgotten. Had the Judge of all the earth, while executing ‘terrible things in righteousness,’ leisure to think of them who were ‘afar off upon the sea’? Was it a blind wrath that had been let loose? No; in all the severity there was tender regard for those worthy of it. Judgment was discriminating. The sunshine of love broke through even the rain-clouds of the flood.
So the blessed lesson is taught that, in the widest sweep of the most stormy judgments, there are those who abide safely, fearing no evil. Though the waters are out, there is a rock on which we may stand safe, above their highest wave. And why did God ‘remember Noah’? It was not favouritism, arbitrary and immoral. Noah was bid to build the ark, because he was ‘righteous’ in a world of evil-doers; he was ‘remembered’ in the ark, because he had believed God’s warning, obeyed God’s command as seeing the judgment ‘not seen as yet,’ and so ‘became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.’ They who trust God, and, trusting Him, realise as if present the future judgment, and, ‘moved with fear,’ take refuge in the ark, are never forgot by Him, even while the world is drowned. They live in His heart, and in due time He will show that He remembers them.
2. The gradual subsidence of the flood is told with singular exactitude of dates, which are certainly peculiar if they are not historical. The slow decrease negatives the explanation of the story as being the exaggerated remembrance of some tidal-wave caused by earthquake and the like. Precisely five months after the flood began, the ark grounded, and the two sources, the rain from above and the ‘fountains of the deep’ that is, probably, the sea, were ‘restrained,’ and a high wind set in. That date marked the end of the increase of the waters, and consequently the beginning of their decrease. Seven months and ten days elapsed between it and the complete restoration of the earth to its previous condition. That time was divided into stages. Two months and a half passed before the highest land emerged; two months more and the surface was all visible; a month and twenty-seven days more before ‘the earth was dry.’ The frequent recurrence of the sacred numbers, seven and ten, is noticeable. The length of time required for the restorative process witnesses to the magnitude of the catastrophe, impresses the imagination, and suggests the majestic slowness of the divine working, and how He uses natural processes for His purposes of moral government, and rules the wildest outbursts of physical agents. The Lord as king ‘sitteth upon the flood,’ and opens or seals the fountains of the great deep as He will. Scripture does not tell of the links between the First Cause and the physical effect. It brings the latter close up to the former. The last link touches the fixed staple, and all between may be ignored.
But the patient expectance of Noah comes out strongly in the story, as well as the gradualness of God’s working. Not till ‘forty days’-a round number-after the land appeared, did He do anything. He waited quietly till the path was plain. Eager impatience does not become those who trust in God. It is not said that the raven was sent out to see if the waters were abated. No purpose is named, nor is it said that it returned at all. ‘To and fro’ may mean over the waste of waters, not back and forward to and from the ark. The raven, from its blackness, its habit of feeding on carrion, its fierceness, was a bird of ill-omen, and sending it forth has a grim suggestion that it would find food enough, and ‘rest for the sole of its foot,’ among the swollen corpses floating on the dark waters. The dove, on the other hand, is the emblem of gentleness, purity, and tenderness. She went forth, the very embodiment of meek hope that wings its way over dark and desolate scenes of calamity and judgment, and, though disappointed at first, patiently waits till the waters sink further, discerns the earliest signs of their drying up, and comes back to the sender with a report which is a prophecy: ‘Your peace shall return to you again.’ Happy they who send forth, not the raven, but the dove, from their patient hearts. Their gentle wishes come back with confirmation of their hopes, ‘as doves to their windows.’
3. But Noah did not leave the ark, though ‘the earth was dry.’ God had ‘shut him in,’ and it must be God who brings him out. We have to take heed of precipitate departure from the place where He has fixed us. Like Israel in the desert, it must be ‘at the commandment of the Lord’ that we pitch the camp, and at the commandment of the Lord that we journey. Till He speaks we must remain, and as soon as He speaks we must remove. ‘God spake unto Noah, saying, Go forth . . .and Noah went forth.’ Thus prompt must be our obedience. A sacrifice of gratitude is the fit close of each epoch in our lives, and the fit beginning of each new one. Before he thought of anything else, Noah built his altar. All our deeds should be set in a golden ring of thankfulness. So the past is hallowed, and the future secure of God’s protection. It is no unworthy conception of God which underlies the strongly human expression that he ‘smelled the sweet savour.’ He delights in our offerings, and our trustful, grateful love is ‘an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable’ to Him. The pledge that He will not any more curse the ground for man’s sake is occasioned by the sacrifice, but is grounded on what seems, at first sight, a reason for the very opposite conclusion. Man’s evil heart the reason for God’s forbearance? Yes, because it is ‘ evil from his youth .’ He deals with men as knowing our frame, the corruption of our nature, and the need that the tree should be made good before it can bring forth good fruit. Therefore He will not smite, but rather seek to draw to repentance by His goodness, and by the faithful continuance of His beneficence in the steadfast covenant of revolving seasons, ‘filling our hearts with food and gladness.’
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Gen 8:1-5
1But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the ark; and God caused a wind to pass over the earth, and the water subsided. 2Also the fountains of the deep and the floodgates of the sky were closed, and the rain from the sky was restrained; 3and the water receded steadily from the earth, and at the end of one hundred and fifty days the water decreased. 4In the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat. 5The water decreased steadily until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains became visible.
Gen 8:1 God This is the term Elohim. See notes at Gen 1:1 or SPECIAL TOPIC: Names for Deity .
remembered This term (BDB 269, KB 269, Qal IMPERFECT) is used in the sense of God taking appropriate and personal action towards someone (cf. Gen 8:1; Gen 9:15-16; Gen 19:29; Gen 30:22). The covenant God is about to act again because of who He is. Noah will be the source of a new humanity.
Noah This name (BDB 629) may mean rest, a popular etymology based on sound, not philology.
God caused a wind The VERB (BDB 716, KB 778) is a Hiphal IMPERFECT. God used a natural means in an accelerated way to dry up the flood waters, Gen 8:1 b, as He did in the Exodus (cf. Exo 14:21).
It is also possible to see God’s acts in Genesis 8-9 as paralleling God’s acts in Genesis 1. This is a new beginning for mankind. If so, the wind here parallels the Spirit hovered of Gen 1:2.
subsided This same term (BDB 1013, KB 1491, Qal IMPERFECT) is used for the anger of the King in Est 2:1.
Gen 8:4 the mountains of Ararat This has been explained in three ways: (1) a mountain on the Turkey/Russian border; (2) a mountain to the north of Mesopotamia near Lake Van; and (3) the term itself refers to a whole mountain range (Assyrian urartu, BDB 76), not specifically a peak (notice the plural mountains).
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
God = Hebrew. ‘Elohim = the Creator, because every living creature is included. Compare Gen 7:16.
remembered. Figure of speech Anthropopatheia.
wind. Hebrew. ruach. See App-9.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
The eighth chapter begins with the words,
And God remembered Noah ( Gen 8:1 ),
Let me tell you this, God never forgot him. It is important that we realize that in the Bible, there are terms that are used for God that are anthropomorphic type terms; in other words, describing God in human language. Really it’s impossible to do but we don’t have anything else. We don’t have the divine terms to describe God’s divine character. Thus, we must define or describe God’s actions and God’s character in all that we have human language, but there’s no way that human language can really portray the truth of God. And so we just have to do the best we can using terms that are familiar with us to describe the activities or the actions of God because we really don’t have any other terms.
Paul when he was caught up into heaven said, “I heard things that would be unlawful for me to try to describe”( 2Co 12:4 ). In other words, there isn’t language that can do it justice. Anything I would try to describe would be so much less than what it actually was. It’d just be a crime. I’m not going to even try and describe it because it’d be a crime to try to reduce it to human language.
Now we do oftentimes experience the weakness of human language. Looking at the surf of Waikiki, how do you describe it? Looking at an Arizona sunset. Looking at the Grand Canyon. Looking at the marvels of God’s creation we’re bound with human language, but oh my, how beggarly it is to adequately describe the glory, the beauty, the sensation that you feel within. And so we have to do our best with what we’ve got.
And so “God remembered Noah.” Not that He ever forgot Noah, but now the activity of God with Noah picked up again so that God was really watching over that ark for all of those days that it was floating there upon the water. God remembered Noah, began His activity with Noah once more.
and every living thing, and all the cattle that were with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged ( Gen 8:1 );
And so for the first time, probably there began the strong wind current. Prior to the flood, with all of the waters suspended in the atmosphere, there was much less water surface upon the earth at that time. The earth was probably, as a result, far more jungle-like everywhere. There wouldn’t have been the arid desert regions. There would have been a more of an earth-water kind of a balance and would have meant that there would have been actually a much greener effect. This water suspended in the atmosphere kept a moderate climate around the world. There weren’t ice caps at the Polar Regions. In fact, the Polar Regions were jungles also.
But now that this moisture blanket has been removed, and there is not nearly the amount of moisture in the atmosphere as there was prior to the flood, there was the beginning then of the ice caps and the beginning of the glacial movements. And with the development now of the ice caps at the Polar Regions and the hot zone of the equator, you have then the making for these wind currents that began. And so God caused a strong wind.
Now winds can be developed by the heat and the cold areas, the contrast between them, something that didn’t exist before the flood. Prior to the flood there weren’t really violent windstorms at all. There could not have been. The climate was moderated to the extent that any breeze at all would have been just a very gentle breeze of air movement, but not great violent winds. And now the wind blowing and the water receding, actually draining off into ocean beds. Now as it was doing this, the earth, as the pressure of the water begins to settle in the lower areas, the seabed, the crust of the earth began then to have tremendous pressures and there were these great uplift movements.
So Mount Everest and the Himalayas began to push upward. The Andes began to push upwards. And there is evidence of this movement there in the mountain ranges of these upward thrusts as there were these tremendous pressures being created by the weight of the ocean, settling in some areas and pushing and thrusting upwards, great volcanic action, volcanic action around the world at this particular time. The development of the mountain ranges; the establishing of the sea in their present order, and of course, the dramatic geographical changes that took place then after the flood.
So while Noah was there sitting atop Mount Ararat, there were all kinds of activities that were taking place in the geographical surface of the earth around him, as you have the settling of the seas and these upward thrusts of the mountains. Again, I might suggest the little book, Earths in Upheaval by Emmanuel Villakosky where he thoroughly documents the upward thrust of the Andes as having taken place about five to six thousand years ago. Where he documents the upward thrust of the Himalayas taking place about the same time as the Andes were going upwards. And his book is an excellent documentary of the upward thrust of the mountain ranges within historic times. And so you might find that very interesting indeed.
We have found in the Andes the remains of cities that are now high up in the Andes where the people grew corn and so forth in areas that are far above the level of growing corn. And the indication is that the people were living at a lower altitude. But with this upward thrust, they were thrust so high in this upward thrust that no longer could they cultivate and develop the area in the same type of agriculture. And they finally just left the area and moved to lower climate. And there’s plenty of evidence for these things. And these are part of the upheaval of the earth after the flood period.
The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained ( Gen 8:2 );
And so the deluge is over. And now drying out time.
And the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fiftieth day the waters were abated. And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat ( Gen 8:3-4 ).
The mountains of Ararat are the highest mountains in that region. They go up to seventeen thousand feet, which means that they are higher than anything in the continental United States except for McKinley up in the area of Alaska.
Now here is another interesting thing, Noah went into the ark on the seventeenth day of the second month, and now it is the seventh month and also again the seventeenth day when the ark rested. And so it had been laboring in this great ocean of flood. Now it is settled and resting. It is believed that the ark has been discovered. There are several books on the subject about the fourteen thousand-foot level at Mount Ararat. There have been a lot of stories concerning it dating back historically to the time of, or even before Marco Polo. But Marco Polo does also mention it in his writing.
But the interesting thing is that five months equaling a hundred and fifty days shows that originally the year was calculated at three hundred and sixty days a year, twelve thirty-day months. And in all of the ancient-type records and calculations, they all calculated the year at a three hundred and sixty-day year. Now of course, we in our modern calculations know that the earth revolves around the sun every three hundred and sixty five days, nine hours, fifty-six minutes and four six hundredths of a second, I think is what it’s supposed to be, or nine and six hundredths of a second. And it’s right on time. Every time it makes its orbit it, you know, you can set your watch to it.
Now this five and a quarter days in just ten years will show your seasons completely out of kilter. So they could not have made a mistake of five and a quarter days in their calculation of the earth’s rotation, or else their whole seasons would have been out in just a few years’ time. So in calculating the year at three hundred and sixty days, they were probably accurate in their calculation. That was probably the length of the earth’s orbit around the sun in those days.
But the change of the earth’s orbit around the sun was probably about the time of Joshua when, as the Scriptures record it, God caused the sun to stand still. And from that time, historically the calendars began to change and they began to calculate the year at three hundred and sixty five days, putting in their leap years. Some of the nations adjusted in other ways for awhile but ultimately all of the calendars began to move towards the three hundred and sixty five-day year. Some would adjust for a holiday at the end, they still calculate the thirty-day years and then put a little holiday at the end of no time, while they were waiting for these five and a quarter days to catch on.
But it is interesting that Biblical prophecy is predicated on the original three hundred and sixty-day year. Again, Emmanuel Villakosky in his book, Worlds in Collision, thoroughly documents the three hundred and sixty-day year in the Egyptian, Indian, Chinese records, Babylonian-of course, is Babylonian calendar carried on the three hundred and sixty-day year for a long time-the Incas, but there has been that change of the earth’s orbit.
And of course, it is his theory that the change was wrought through the introduction of the planet Venus into our solar system. And he accounts that for the plagues of Egypt and then later on, when it returned again and was then caught in its own orbit around the sun that it created a change in the earth’s orbit at that time. And that there were great happenings upon the earth.
Joshua describes how God threw rocks from heaven at their enemy and he believes that that was caused by debris from the planet Venus that was scattered upon the earth. And he believes that the long day was actually caused by this near approach to Venus and he has a very interesting theory that has come into recent attention again by the scientific world.
But here in Genesis, five months, a hundred and fifty days. So the years were calculated at this time at a three hundred and sixty-day year. And as I say, all prophecy in the Bible is predicated on that three hundred and sixty-day year which is interesting because that really puts us out to just about the year six thousand at the present time.
And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: and in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen ( Gen 8:5 ).
So the water is now draining off. They are beginning to settle in the-in the sea beds, and of course there begins this upward thrust of the mountainous regions and the tops of the mountains are now beginning to come into view above the water by the tenth month.
And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made: And he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth. So he sent forth a dove to see if the waters were abated from the face of the earth; And the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth: and then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark. And he stayed yet or waited another seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark; And the dove came to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth there was an olive leaf that was plucked off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. And he stayed yet another seven days; and sent forth the dove; which returned not again unto him any more. So it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year ( Gen 8:6-13 ),
That would be the six hundred and first year of Noah’s life. He entered the ark in the six hundredth year of his life and so this would be the six hundredth and first year of Noah’s life.
in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth: and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and, behold, the face of the ground was dry ( Gen 8:13 ).
But still he did not come out.
For in the second month, on the seventh twenty-seventh day of the month, was the earth dried. And God spake unto Noah, saying, Go forth out of the ark, thou, and thy wife, thy sons, thy sons’ wives with thee. Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of all the flesh, both of fowl, and cattle, every creeping thing that creepeth on the earth; that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth. And so Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him: every beast, every creeping thing, every fowl, whatsoever creeps on the earth, after their kind, went forth out of the ark ( Gen 8:14-19 ).
So they were in the ark for ten days over a year or three hundred and seventy days. Oh, I imagine they were stir crazy by that time. They’re in the ark for three hundred and seventy days, so it causes you to realize really a little bit of some of the problems that must have existed. Taking all of those animals in, you would have taken food supplies for all of those animals and there are just a lot of sanitation things that had to be taken care of during that period of time. So I imagine when we get to heaven Noah would have quite an interesting story to tell us.
And Noah built an altar unto the LORD; and he took of every clean beast ( Gen 8:20 ),
Now you remember he took the clean beast by sevens, that is seven pairs of the clean beast. The others just one pair of each but of the clean or domesticated type animals he took seven pairs. And so “Noah built an altar unto the LORD; and he took of every clean beast,”
and every clean fowl, and he offered a burnt offering on the altar ( Gen 8:20 ).
Now later on when we get into Leviticus and we discover the various types of offerings, we find that the burnt offering was the offering of dedication or sacrifice or commitment unto God. There was the peace offering, which was the communion offering, the fellowship. There was the sin offering, but the burnt offering was one of consecration to God. And so the first thing that Moses did, I mean Noah did in coming out of the ark was to establish now this commitment to God, the burnt offering, the offering of consecration, commitment.
And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done ( Gen 8:21 ).
“The LORD smelled a sweet savour.” In other words, the Lord smelled that meat barbecuing. God likes the smell of barbecued meat. So do I. But God’s declaration and God’s evaluation of man “that the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth”. Isn’t that something? Why is that? That’s from youth, imagination of the heart is evil. It is because we have been born with a sinful nature, so from our youth, the wicked imaginations.
Now the Bible speaks about God in His dealing with us and it says, “He knows our frame; that we are but dust” ( Psa 103:14 ), an understanding that we are but dust. Knowing our weaknesses He has made provisions to make us strong. We’re never to just excuse ourselves and say, “Well, my imaginations are wicked from my youth and I’m just dust”. And so I just, you know, will give in to my fleshly impulses and so forth. Never. The fact that God knows we’re but dust and He knows that the imagination of our minds are evil continually, it doesn’t mean that then God condones the evil. But he has made the provisions that we might have a spiritual birth and that we might enter into that power and dimension of power that He has for us.
And while the earth remains, there will be seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease ( Gen 8:22 ).
Now this was God’s declaration. It’s getting nighttime so God’s word is still true. They just recently planted the seeds and the beans are starting to come up across the street. Seed time. The wheat that they planted, the winter wheat crops are about ready to harvest. So there’s seedtime, harvest. Now there is the cold and the heat. Of course, here in Southern California we get mixed up sometimes and we get cold in May, and it gets warm in July, in January. But basically we have our seasons-summer and winter, day and night, planting and harvesting. The cycles of God, the covenant of God.
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Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
Gen 8:1. And God remembered Noah,
Noah had been shut up in the ark for many a day, and at the right time God thought of him, practically thought of him, and came to visit him. Dear heart, you have been shut out from the world now for many days, but God has not forgotten you. God remembered Noah, and he remembers you.
Gen 8:1. And every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark:
Does God remember cattle? Then he will certainly remember men made in his own image He will remember you, though you think yourself the most worthless one on the face of the earth: God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark.
Gen 8:1. And God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged;
Winds and waves are wholly under Gods control. I suppose that this was a very drying wind, so the waters began to turn to vapor, and gradually to disappear. It is God who sends the winds; they seem most volatile and irregular, but God sends them to do his bidding. Blow it east, or blow it west, the wind comes from God; and whether the waters increase or are assuaged, it is Gods doing. Are the waters very deep with you, dear friend? God can dry them up, and, singularly enough, he can stop one trouble with another, he can dry up the water with the wind. I have known him very strangely with his people, and when they thought they were quite forgotten, he has proved that he remembered them, and both the winds of heaven and the waters of the sea have had to work their good. There is not an angel in heaven but God will make him to be a servant to you if you need him; there is not a wind in any quarter of the globe but God will guide it to you if it is necessary; and there are no waves of the sea but shall obey the Lords will concerning you.
Gen 8:2. The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained;
God works upwards, and stops the windows of heaven. He works downwards, and stays the breaking up of the fountains of the deep.
He everywhere hath sway,
And all things serve his might.
Be not afraid; he can open the windows of heaven, and pour down abundant blessings for you, and he can let down the cellar-flaps of the great deep, and stop its flowing fountains.
When he makes bare his arm,
What shall his work withstand?
Gen 8:3-5. And the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated. And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.
God told Noah when to go into the ark, but he did not tell him when he should come out again. The Lord told Noah when to go in, for it was necessary for him to know that; but he did not tell him when he should come out, for it was unnecessary that he should know that. God always lets his people know what is practically for their good. There are many curious points on which we should like to have information, but God has not revealed it, and when he has not revealed anything, we had better not try to unravel the mystery. No good comes of prying into unrevealed truth. Noah knew that he would come out of the ark one day, for was he not preserved there to be a seed-to keep the race alive? Noah was not told when he should be released, and the Lord does not tell you when your trouble will come to an end. It will come to an end; therefore wait, and be patient, and do not want to know the time of your deliverance. We should know too much if we knew all that will happen in the future. It is quite enough for us if we do our duty in the present, and trust God for the rest. Still, I think that Noah must have been very pleased when he felt the ark grating at last on the mountains of Ararat. He could not build a cook for his big ship; but God had prepared a berth for it on the mountain side Now, as he looked out, he could see, here and there, a mountain top rising like an island out of the great expanse of water.
Gen 8:6-7. And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made: And he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro,
Sometimes alighting on the ark; then flying away again.
Gen 8:7-10. Until the waters were dried up from of the earth. Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from of the face of the ground; But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth: then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark. And he stayed yet other seven days;
I wonder whether Noah sent out these creatures on the Sabbath mornings. The mention of seven days, and the resting in between seems to look like it. Oh, dear friends, sometimes people send out a raven on the Lords day morning, and it never brings them anything. Send out a dove rather than a raven; come to the house of God with quiet, gentle, holy expectation, and your dove will come back to you. It may be that it will bring you something worth bringing one of these days, as Noahs dove brought to him.
Gen 8:10-11. And again he sent forth the dove out of the ark; And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.
The waters were abated as far as the fruit trees; not only the tallest forest trees, but some of the fruit trees were uncovered from the water. The dove had plucked off an olive leaf. Perhaps you have seen a picture of the dove carrying an olive branch in its mouth, which, in the first place, a dove could not pluck out of the tree, and in the second place, a dove could not carry an olive branch even if she could pluck it off. It was an olive leaf, that is all. Why cannot people keep to the words of Scripture? If the Bible mentions a leaf, they make it a bough; and if the Bible says it is a bough, they make it a leaf.
Gen 8:12. And he stayed yet other seven days; and sent forth the dove; which returned not again unto him any more.
Noah could read something from that leaf that the dove brought to him, but he learned more when she did not return to him. He knew that she had found a proper resting-place, and that the earth was clear of the flood.
Gen 8:13. And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth:
That was a happy New Years day for Noah. He was glad to find himself at rest once more, though not yet at liberty.
Gen 8:13. And Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and, behold, the face of the ground was dry.
Why did not Noah come out? Well, you see, he had gone in by the door, and he meant to come out by the door, and he that opened the door for him, and shut him in, must now open the door for him, and let him out. He waits Gods time, and we are always wise in doing that. You lose a great deal of time by being in a hurry. Many people think they have done a great deal when they have really done nothing. Better take time in order to save time. Slow is sometimes faster than fast. So Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked out, but he did not go out till God commanded him to do so.
Gen 8:14. And in the second month,
Nearly two months Noah waited for the complete drying of the earth.
Gen 8:14. On the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dried.
The face of the ground was dry in the first month; the earth was dried, the second month. Noah might have thought it was dry enough before; but God did not think so, there was enough mud to breed a pestilence, so Noah must wait until God had made the earth ready for him.
Gen 8:15-16. And God spoke unto Noah, saying, Go forth of the ark,
Noah must wait till God speaks to him. Oh, that some people would wait for Gods command, but they will not! He shall bless thy going out and thy coming in if thou wilt go forth and come in when he bids thee. Go forth, says the Lord, Go forth of the ark.
Gen 8:16-19. Thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons wives with thee. Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth; that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth. And Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons wives with him: Every beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl, and whatsoever creepeth upon the earth, after their kinds, went forth out of the ark.
That was a very wonderful procession, it was the new beginning of everything upon the earth. Whatever evolution or any other folly or evil of man may have done, everything had to begin again over. Everybody was drowned save these great fathers of the new age, and all must begin from this stock.
Gen 8:20. And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD, and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.
Common sense would have said, Spare them, for you will want every one of them. But grace said, Slay them, for they belong to God. Give Jehovah his due. I have often admired that widow of Sarepta. When she had but a handful of meal, she made a little cake for Gods prophet first, but then God multiplied her meal and her oil. Oh, if we would but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, all things should be added unto us! Out of the small stock he had, Noah took of the clean beasts, and of the clean fowls, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.
Gen 8:21. And the LORD smelled a sweet savour;
Noahs faith was pleasing to God. It was Noahs confidence in a bleeding sacrifice that gave him acceptance with the Lord. God thought upon his Son, and that great Sacrifice to be offered long afterwards on the cross, and he smelled a sweet savour.
Gen 8:21. And the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for mans sake; for the imagination of mans heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.
God always speaks comfortable words to those who bring an acceptable sacrifice. If you would hear the voice of a divine promise, go to the atoning blood of Jesus. If you would know what perfect reconciliation means, his to the altar where the great Sacrifice was presented.
Gen 8:22. While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
They never have ceased. He have this year had a long and dreary winter; it looked as if spring would never come. Only a few days ago, the chestnuts were just beginning to turn green, and then there came the little spikes, and now you can see them in full flower. How faithfully God fulfils his covenant with the earth! How truly will he keep his covenant with every believing sinner! Oh, trust ye in him, for his promise will stand fast for ever!
Fuente: Spurgeon’s Verse Expositions of the Bible
Upborne on the billows of judgment, the Ark rode securely, holding within it the nucleus of a new departure in human history. When the work of judgment was fully accomplished, the waters decreased, and the voice that had commanded Noah to build the Ark and to enter therein called him forth.
What a stupendous moment it was in the history of the race and in the experience of this man when he emerged from what had been practically a prison, and yet the vantageground of God for the continuity of His plan and purpose for humanity.
He who by faith had renounced everything in obedience to God, in spite of all appearances, now stepped forth, the sole possessor of the earth. A new day was dawning for humanity, a day of new opportunity in which men would live with history’s testimony to the fact of the divine government and judgment, forever speaking to them of the issues of sin and of the impossibility of escape from the government of God.
The first act of Noah as he found himself delivered from judgment and established in possession was a reaction of response and in itself was most significant. His first look was Godward, and his first act the erection of an altar and the offering of sacrifices.
This attitude and action were answered by a declaration of God which was full of grace. His knowledge of the fact of sin still remaining is declared, but henceforth it was not to be the gauge of His dealing with man. In spite of sin the promise was made that the natural order should continue, seasons come and go, and the day and night should not cease. In other words the declaration was that the earth was not to be involved in the chaos which followed the primal cataclysm (Gen 1:2), but continue to be the sphere for carrying out His purposes in humanity.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
Noah Leaves the Ark
Gen 8:1-22
Traditions of the Flood are found in every country, from the tablets of Babylon to the rude carvings of the Aztecs, proving mans common origin. God remembered Noah. He could not forget, because He had entered into covenant with him and his. Though the floods have been abroad on your life for long years, God has not forgotten you. Sooner might a woman forget her babe! Noahs window only looked upward. It had no outlook on the waters, therefore he sent forth the birds. Dove and raven issued from the same window, so the child of God and the wayward, willful child may issue from the same family; but the former cannot find satisfaction with what satisfies the other, but wings its flight back to God. See Psa 116:7. Through Gods grace Noah stepped out into the new world-the world of resurrection. His first act was the burned-offering of consecration, which was followed immediately by promise. See Rom 12:1-2.
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
Gen 8:4
The history of the deluge is alleged in the New Testament as a type of the deep waters of sin, in which a lost world is perishing, and from which there is no escape but in that ark which God hath prepared for us. The eight souls saved from the deluge are types of that little flock which rides safely and triumphantly, though the floods lift up their waves and the billows break over them. And their safety is assured to them, because they are in Christ.
I. At the root of all Christianity lies that deep mysterious truth, the spiritual union of the Redeemer with those whom He redeemed. To this truth most emphatically witnesses all the New Testament teaching about the ark as a symbol and a prophecy. For (1) The ark is a figure of Christ. The ark floated over the waste of waters as Christ dwelt and toiled and suffered in the wilderness of this world and amid the waters of affliction. (2) The ark is a figure of the redeemed of Christ. The Church, which is Christ’s body, is also the ark of refuge from the wrath of God. This life is still to the Church a conflict, a trial, a pilgrimage, a voyage. The crown shall be at the resurrection of the just.
II. The practical thoughts to which this subject leads us differ but little from the doctrinal. Is not the substance and the end of all-safety in Christ, rest in Christ, and at last glory in Christ? Those only who have rested in the Ark will rest upon Mount Ararat. The life of the Christian is begun on earth; it is perfected in heaven. When the voyage is over, the Saviour, who has been to us the Ark upon the waters, shall be to us, in the eternal mountains of the Lord, rest and peace and light and glory.
Bishop H. Browne, Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge, p. 67.
Gen 8:4, Gen 8:18, Gen 8:20
On the slopes of Ararat was the second cradle of the race, the first village reared in a world of unseen graves.
I. It was the village of the ark, a building fashioned and fabricated from the forests of a drowned and buried world. To the world’s first fathers it must have seemed a hallowed and venerable form.
II. The village of the ark was the village of sacrifice. They built a sacrificial altar in which fear raised the stones, tradition furnished the sacrifice, and faith kindled the flame.
III. The first village was the village of the rainbow. It had been seen before in the old world, but now it was seen as a sign of God’s mercy, His covenant in creation.
IV. The village of the ark gives us our first code of laws. As man first steps forth with the shadows of the fall around him, scarce a principle seems to mark the presence of law. Here we advance quite another stage, to a new world; the principles of law are not many, but they have multiplied. As sins grow, laws grow. Around the first village pealed remote mutterings of storms to come.
V. The village of the ark was the village of sin. Even to Noah, the most righteous of men, sin came out of the simple pursuit of husbandry. A great, good man, the survivor of a lost world, the stem and inheritor of a new, he came to the moment in life of dreadful overcoming.
E. Paxton Hood, The Preacher’s Lantern, vol. iii., p. 92.
References: Gen 8:4, Gen 8:18, Gen 8:19.-Homiletic Quarterly, vol. i., p. 408. Gen 8:9.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xi., No. 637. Gen 8:11.-T. Birkett Dover, A Lent Manual, p. 158; H. Macmillan, The Olive Leaf, p. 1. Gen 8:13-16.-G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount, p. 160.
Gen 8:20, Gen 8:22
Noah, we are told, “was a just man, and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.” Noah reverenced right and justice; he ordered his family well; he lived in the presence of an unseen Being, who is right and true, and who had appointed him to be the head of a family. By the orderliness and quietness of his life he became a witness against the turbulent, self-willed world, in the midst of which he was dwelling. But there is in him also an earnest interest in his fellow-men. He separates from them only that he may be a witness to them of the good that they are flying from, and which he claims for himself and his family because he believes that God designs it for the creatures He has formed.
I. There is an evident difference between the sacrifice of Noah and those of Cain and Abel. Here, under God’s guidance, the mound of turf gives place to the altar which is built. An order is discovered in the dignity of the inferior creatures; the worthiest are selected for an oblation to God; the fire which consumes, the flame which ascends, are used to express the intention of him who presents the victim.
II. We must feel that there was an inward progress in the heart of the man corresponding to this progress in his method of uttering his submission and his aspirations. Noah must have felt that he was representing all human beings; that he was not speaking what was in himself so much as offering the homage of the restored universe.
III. The foundation of sacrifice is laid in the fixed will of God; in His fixed purpose to assert righteousness; in the wisdom which adapts its means to the condition of the creature for whose sake they are used. The sacrifice assumes eternal right to be in the Ruler of the universe, all the caprice to have come from man, from his struggle to be an independent being, from his habit of distrust. When trust is restored by the discovery that God means all for his good, then he brings the sacrifice as a token of his surrender.
F. D. Maurice, The Doctrine of Sacrifice Deduced from the Scriptures, p. 18.
The text teaches:-
I.That worship should succeed every act of Divine deliverance.
II. That sacrifice is the only medium through which acceptable service can be rendered. Noah’s sacrifice expressed: (1) a feeling of supreme thankfulness: (2) a feeling of personal guilt.
III. That no act of worship escapes Divine notice.
IV. That human intercession vitally affects the interests of the race.
Parker, The Cavendish Pulpit, vol. i., p. 61.
References: Gen 8:20.-J. Cumming, Church Before the Flood, p. 359. Gen 8:20-22.-G. Moberly, Plain Sermons, p. 280.
Gen 8:21
These words were said by our Maker more than four thousand years ago, and they have been true ever since, down to this very hour. There is so much more bad than good in us that we should certainly go wrong if left to ourselves, and the bias of our nature to evil is so strong that it can only be corrected by changing the very nature itself; or, in the words of Scripture, by being born again of the Spirit. Everything is properly called good or evil according as it answers or defeats the purpose for which it was made. We were made for our Maker’s glory, after His own image, that we should make His will the rule of our lives, and His love and anger the great objects of our hope and fear; that we should live in Him and for Him and to Him, as our constant Guide and Master and Father. If we answer these ends, then we are good creatures; if we do not, we are bad creatures; nor does it matter how many good or amiable qualities we may possess, like the blossoms or leaves of a barren fruit-tree, we are bad of our kind if we do not bring forth fruit.
II. Now, instead of living to God, we by nature care nothing about God; we live as if we had made ourselves, not as if God had made us. This is the corruption of our nature, which makes us evil in the sight of God. Christ alone can make us sound from head to foot. He alone can give us a new and healthy nature; He alone can teach us so to live as to make this world a school for heaven. All that is wanted is that we should see our need of Him and fly to Him for aid.
T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. i., p. 19.
References: Gen 8:21.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xi., No. 616; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. x., p. 24.
Gen 8:22
I. Every harvest teaches the fact of God’s wise providence.
II. Every harvest teaches the fact of God’s definite purpose. One vast magnificent purpose has kept everything in exact order during all these years of Divine fidelity.
III. God expects every one of His creatures to be as faithful to a purpose as He Himself has been.
C. S. Robinson, Sermons on Neglected Texts, p. 258.
“While the earth remaineth… winter… shall not cease.”
I. Spiritual winter is an ordination of God. The true spiritual analogue of winter is not spiritual death, not even feeble spiritual life. There is an orderly change in the soul. Unseen, yet very really, God’s Spirit is at work, altering influences, changing modes. He introduces a new state of spiritual experiences, seeking to accomplish varied objects, and summoning to new modes of improving His presence.
II. The objects of spiritual winter are: (1) to confirm and strengthen faith; (2) to act as a check upon excesses; (3) to help in the training of the Christian character and the Christian Church.
III. How are we to improve spiritual winter? (1) By learning a lesson of mutual Christian tolerance. (2) By treasuring up the clear vision and calm judgment which the winter of the soul is fitted to impart, for the improvement of the season when fervour shall be renewed and emotion once more excited.
A. Mackennal, Christ’s Healing Touch, p. 101.
References: Gen 8:22.-R. W. Church, Church Sermons, vol. ii., p. 369 (see also Old Testament Outlines, p. 7); J. Van Oosterzee, The Year of Salvation, vol. i., p. 53; R. S. Candlish, The Book of Genesis, vol. i., p. 127; J. Tulloch, Sundays at Balmoral, p. 55; J. E. Vaux, Sermon Notes, 2nd series, p. 94; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxii., No, 1891. Gen 9:1-7.-R. S. Candlish, Book of Genesis, vol. i., p. 140.
Fuente: The Sermon Bible
CHAPTER 8
Noah Remembered
1. Noah remembered (Gen 8:1-3)
2. The ark resting (Gen 8:4-5)
3. The raven sent forth (Gen 8:6-7)
4. The sending forth of the dove (Gen 8:8-12)
5. The waters dried up (Gen 8:13-14)
6. The command to leave the ark (Gen 8:15-17)
7. Noahs obedience (Gen 8:18-19)
8. The altar and the covenant (Gen 8:20-22)
Especially instructive are Gen 8:6-12 in our chapter. Noah opened the window at the end of forty days, and he sent forth a raven. This bird flew to and fro until the waters were dried up from off the earth.
Then he sent forth a dove three times. The first time she found no resting place, and Noah took her back into the ark. The second time she returned with an olive leaf in her mouth, and the third time she did not return at all, and finds her abiding place in the earth.
That the dove is the type of the Holy Spirit needs hardly to be stated. In this outward symbolic form He came upon our Lord. But what does the black raven represent? The raven is the type of evil, a representative of the god of this age and the flesh as well. We may see in the raven flying to and fro until the waters were dried up, a type of the prince of the power in the air, the devil. His work and activity; the devil describes himself as going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it (Job 1:7; Job 2:2). He is doing this still, but there is a time coming when the black raven will stop his restless flight. When this present age ends with divine wrath revealed once more, and the waves of divine judgment have rolled over the earth, then Satan, the devil, that old serpent, will be bound a thousand years.
The dove and her threefold departure is a type of the coming and presence of the Holy Spirit in the earth sent forth from the Lord.
First, she comes forth and finds no resting place. This represents the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, where he was not present in the earth to find a rest, to abide. The second departure of the dove may be taken as a type of the Holy Spirits presence in this age. The dove found a resting place and still she did not stay, but came back to the ark with an olive leaf. This olive leaf was the witness that the judgment waters had passed and that new life had developed. It also signifies peace. So the Holy Spirit is present in this age as the result of the finished work of Christ. The third time the dove did not return. So there is an age in the future when the Holy Spirit will be poured upon all flesh. During the first and second sending forth of the dove, the raven was also present. Both flew over the earth. When the dove went forth the third time the waters were gone and there was no more raven.
The word altar is mentioned here for the first time in the Bible. The altar is for worship. Here then worship is for the first time revealed. We worship, having passed from the old into the new, standing on the ground of resurrection. We know that death and judgment is passed, and therefore we worship in spirit and in truth. Christ is our altar; and in the sacrifices Noah brought, Christ is also typically represented. Only he is a true worshiper who knows Christ and the perfect work He has done. Jehovah smelled the sweet savor. This reminds us of John 4: But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in Spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. Not service is a sweet savor to God, but worship.
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
God remembered: Gen 19:29, Gen 30:22, Exo 2:24, 1Sa 1:19, Neh 13:14, Neh 13:22, Neh 13:29, Neh 13:31, Job 14:13, Psa 106:4, Psa 132:1, Psa 136:23, Psa 137:7, Amo 8:7, Hab 3:2, Rev 16:19, Rev 18:5
the cattle: Num 22:32, Psa 36:6, Jon 4:11, Rom 8:20-22
a wind: Exo 14:21, Psa 104:7-9, Pro 25:23
Reciprocal: Gen 9:10 – General Exo 6:5 – I have remembered Exo 15:10 – blow Num 10:9 – remembered 1Sa 1:11 – remember 2Ki 20:3 – remember Job 12:15 – Behold Job 38:37 – or who Psa 29:10 – sitteth Psa 88:5 – whom Psa 115:12 – hath Psa 119:49 – Remember Jer 51:16 – bringeth Luk 3:36 – Noe 1Pe 3:20 – wherein
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
The Assuaging of the Waters
Gen 8:1-22
INTRODUCTORY WORDS
1. There is a striking verse in 2Pe 3:6-7, which reads: “Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: but the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.”
The people of old willingly were ignorant. They knew not until the flood came and destroyed them all, and yet they should have known because the building of the ark itself was a warning, and the words of Noah were an additional warning of that which was about to happen.
The people of this age should know what is about to happen. They do know inasmuch as they have read “by printed page, and have heard from pulpit, and over the air, that the Lord is coming. Some of our great dailies are already prepared, so we are told, to write up the story of the Rapture, and rush it into their papers at any time.
The unregenerate world is filled with fear, looking forward to those things which are coming to pass upon the earth; and yet, the people of our day, even as the people of Noah’s day, are wilfully ignorant, and wholly unprepared for the judgments which are about to fall.
2. There is another verse in II Peter, which says: “If God * * spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly, * * the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished.” These words carry two conclusions. First, God knows how to deliver. Second, God knows how to reserve. The godly are kept out of temptations, or, carried through them victoriously. The unjust are reserved to the judgment.
With the story of the flood before us as an historical fact, we need to ponder its message of warning. If God spared not that age which had ripened in its wickedness, neither will He spare this age.
I. AND GOD REMEMBERED NOAH (Gen 8:1)
1. Noah was remembered of God, when He commanded the building of the ark. The man who knows God, walks with Him, and is righteous before Him, will be protected from judgment.
2. God remembered Noah after the judgment had fallen, and the waters had prevailed upon the earth. God always remembers those who are hid with Christ, and sheltered in the Heavenly Ark. His eye is upon His children. Nothing can touch or harm them.
3. God remembered Noah and made a wind to pass over the earth. Our God is Master of the elements. He holds the winds in His hands, and He sends them forth at His will. He causes them to turn about continually. He sends the North wind, with its frigid blast; He sends the south wind, with its soft and balmy breezes. The zepher and the tornado are alike in His hands.
4. God remembered Noah and the fountains of the deep were stayed. The waters assuaged, the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain was restrained. Thus the waters returned from off the earth continually and were abated.
Darkness may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. Judgments are not always upon the earth. Day follows night, light follows darkness, peace follows despair. There remaineth a rest to the people of God. How glorious it is, that, after the tribulation darkness shall have passed, the Millennium with its rest and peace will follow!
II. AND THE ARK RESTED UPON THE MOUNTAINS OF ARARAT (Gen 8:4)
1. After the wrath of God had wrought its will, and its ministry was completed, there came a period of rest. How the words ring out, “Come unto Me * * and I will give you rest”! We can rest in His arms just as sweetly, and as safely, as the ark ever rested upon the mountains of Ararat.
2. The rest occurred in the seventh month, and on the seventeenth day of the month. The fourteenth day stands for death, the seventeenth day stands for resurrection. The lamb was kept up until the fourteenth day of the month and then it was slain. Jesus Christ was kept up from before the foundation of the world, dedicated to death, and then on the fourteenth day of the month at the very hour of the slaying of the passover lamb with a loud cry He gave up the ghost. Three days later-on the seventeenth, He rose from the dead. Salvation carries us to the Cross, where Christ died. It carries us to the empty tomb, from which Christ arose.
The waters of the flood flowed over all life in judgment and death. Upon the Cross the billows of wrath flowed over Christ. However, Christ rose from the dead, even as the ark rested on Mount Ararat, thus, does the believer come forth in resurrection power, to walk in newness of life.
Thus clearly did the Word of God, far back in Noah’s day, give a foregleam of the death and resurrection of Christ and of our union with Him in His death and resurrection.
As we think it over we almost feel that we were with Noah in the ark. One thing we know, we will be with Christ, secure from the judgment which the tribulation will bring. “We are not appointed unto wrath.” The vials of God’s wrath will not fall upon us.
III. THE RAVEN AND THE DOVE (Gen 8:7-9; Gen 8:12)
1. The significance of the raven. The raven and its typical significance may be difficult to establish, and yet we all know that there is a vast contrast between the raven and the dove. The raven is black, the dove is white. The raven is ravenous and unclean; the dove is gentle and pure.
The hour when Satan saw the wreckage of the flood was to him but a foregleam of another day, when the earth will once more be judged, not by water, but by fire. The flood seemed to be Satan’s first great undoing, since God created man; the tribulation will be his second great undoing. The antichrist and the false prophet, the two empowered demigods of. Satan, will then be cast into the lake of fire, and the devil, himself, will be chained, and cast into the pit of the abyss, for one thousand years. After the thousand years Satan will be cast into the lake of fire.
2. The significance of the dove. The dove in the Bible is the type of the Holy Spirit. When Christ was baptized, the Holy Spirit descended as a dove, and lighted upon Him. The dove went out from the ark, and, at first, found no rest for the sole of her foot. Thus she returned unto Noah in the ark. After seven days the dove was sent forth again, and in the evening she returned with an olive leaf in her mouth. The olive leaf is the universal emblem of peace. On the American dollar there is an eagle holding the olive branch of peace. The olive leaf also stands for life and love. It seemed to anticipate the time when judgment will have passed, and when the Summer will have come, even when the Lord will reign in peace with His people upon the earth.
IV. THE LOOK OF NOAH (Gen 8:13)
1. The look of judgment, passed. Noah beheld what God, in His judgment, had wrought upon the earth. With what awe, and with what solemn mien must this mighty man of old have viewed the results of God’s overwhelming wrath. How different did everything seem than on that day when Noah entered into the ark. The power of God, linked to the judgments of God, had overwhelmed the wicked one. All of this is in token of the fact that Christ will reign, until He hath put all enemies under His feet, and the last enemy which shall be destroyed will be death.
2. The look of new possibilities. Noah saw an earth rid of its corruption, cleansed of its impurity, and ready to be filled with blessing. The old had been destroyed, that the new might come in. Upon the wreckage of the past, a new era was to be builded.
How often has it been asked-Is the Second Coming of Christ, the end of the world? It cannot be. The Lord Jesus will, indeed, unsheath His sword, and dire judgments will rest upon the land; the whole earth will reel to and fro as a drunkard; however, after the judgments are passed, a new day will come-a day wherein righteousness and truth shall kiss one another, and the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.
V. THE GOING FORTH OUT OF THE ARK (Gen 8:15-16)
1. The entering in to the ark. As Noah and his family entered in, and as with him all things of fowl, and cattle, and creeping thing entered also, the story of protection, of security, and of salvation was set forth. How wonderful it is to be housed in Christ, to be sheltered from the storm, to be succored from wrath. All of this has been brought out in our preceding studies.
2. The going out of the ark.
(1) The going out was suggestive of new life, in a new realm. Old things were passed away, all things were made new. How different is the new life in Christ, to the old life when we walked in divers lusts.
(2) The going out was suggestive of new service. We are saved to serve. To be safely sheltered in the ark is wholesome, but it is necessary to go out.
On the mountain top Peter, James, and John revelled in the glory of the transfiguration. It was from the mountain top, however, that they went down to find at the foot of the mountain, a man who had brought his son who was a lunatic. The disciples could not heal him, but the Lord brought him deliverance.
From the heights, we must go to the depths, carrying our new life and light. From the place of prayer, we must go to the place of privation and of penury.
Noah housed in the ark, was Noah in preparation for his going forth out of the ark.
Moses learned at the backside of the mountain, where he was shut in with God, how to go forth to the people. Paul in Arabia with his Lord, was made ready for Paul the Missionary-traveler. Noah in the ark, was Noah in school.
VI. THE SACRIFICE OF NOAH (Gen 8:20-21)
1. In Noah’s sacrifice he acknowledged himself a sinner saved by grace. Noah, as he built his altar, proclaimed forever that Noah saved, was Noah saved by grace. He did not boast himself against the ungodly, for he also was ungodly. The difference between Noah and the people who were destroyed by the flood, was to be sure a difference in the extent of sin, not a difference in the fact of sin. They were lost because they were not under the blood; he, and his, were saved because they were under the blood.
As Noah stood that day by the altar offering up his sacrifices, he confessed himself just what our heading says, a sinner saved by grace.
2. In Noah’s sacrifice he acknowledged that grace operates through the death of Christ. We need not imagine that these men of old knew nothing of Calvary, and nothing of the meaning of the sacrifices which they offered. Abel Had offered his sacrifice by faith, and the faith of Abel was a far-flung faith. It looked down through the ages and saw the Son of God going forth to die.
3. The sacrifice of Noah was a sweet-smelling savor to God. The Lord did not delight in the blood of bulls and of goats, in themselves, nor in the blood of beast and fowl, themselves; neither did the Lord delight in the mere anguish of His Son upon the Cross. The sweet savor which the Lord smelled was the savor of Noah’s faith; the salvation which came to Noah through faith and by virtue of the shedding of the Blood of Christ.
The ordinances of baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, are not, in themselves, a sweet savor to God; but when, in them, those who keep the ordinances do it in remembrance of Him, and in faith, they set forth His salvation work, then they are precious in the sight of God. Let us all ask ourselves the question-Are we under the Blood?
VII. THE PROMISE AND THE PLEDGE OF GOD (Gen 8:21-22)
1. God, in His eternal purposes, has left man upon the earth until His final judgments shall come forth. God knows the heart of man, that it is evil. God knows everything concerning sin and its wreckage.
From the days of the flood until this hour the sun has risen and set upon the just and the unjust, God’s purposes of grace have moved steadily forward. The chosen people have been called out, the Cross of Christ has been established, the Church has been builded, and now the age is’ hastening towards the last great purpose of God, which is the personal reign of Christ.
Each age, since Noah, with God’s distinctive method of ministration has come and gone under judgment; the age in which we now live will close with the most terrific judgment since the flood (the Great Tribulation), and yet, the earth still remaineth, and will remain with its seedtime and harvest, its cold and heat, its summer and winter, its day and night. Not until after the thousand years, when the earth shall pass away with a great noise, and its final burnings shall occur, will these things cease.
2. God, in His eternal purposes, has left man upon the earth under the message of the Cross and its possible redemption. As Noah stood by his altar God revealed this purpose. Men have continued in their wickedness, and they are growing worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived, and yet, withal, God, in patience, still waits and pleads.
The story of the Cross is being pressed with renewed vigor by multitudes of men, and its message of peace and redemption is being carried to the ends of the earth. The sweet smelling savor still goes up, and ultimately the Lord will look on the travail of His soul and be satisfied.
AN ILLUSTRATION
One afternoon, before returning to the office, I dozed upon my bed and suddenly I seemed to be awake and in the Ararat Plain near Etchmiadzin. The plain was full of people of all nations and all walks of life. They were all drifting or gliding toward Mt. Ararat, and as I looked I was aware that the glistening peak had become the “Great White Throne” and it was the Judgment Day. Without any physical effort we were all moving toward that throne. Suddenly I became aware that the lives and thoughts of all around me accompanied each one and were as plainly visible as a moving picture. There were clergymen, college professors, teachers, artisans, laborers, employers and employees, and people from every walk of life. Memory was revived and, with nothing lost, every man’s life as it came before him was open to the rest of us. I thought of the passage in the Revelation, “And the books were opened: * * and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books” (Rev 20:12). If our own memories are the books that witness against us judgment must be brief and indisputable. As we moved toward the Great White Throne there appeared a fork in the road opposite the throne, and one road passed upward at the right of the throne and the other road dropped abruptly to the dark valley below.
As I drew near the throne I ceased to be conscious of the sins and lives of others on the road. My whole consciousness was occupied with the thought that there was a very glaring mountain at my right at which I dared not look, for it must be the mountain of my sins, and as I reached the fork in the road and, self-condemned, thought, there was nothing for me to do but turn to the left, a voice spoke from the throne, “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto Me; for I have redeemed thee” (Isa 44:22). “I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for Mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins” (Isa 43:25). Then I turned to look at the mountain of what I thought were my sins, and, behold, it was the life of Christ put to my credit The joy of that moment still brings the tears to my. eyes. The revulsion of feeling was so great that it awakened me and interrupted the vision.
If we know that this is what awaits us at the Judgment, how can any of us fail to strive now to show our gratitude by consecrated lives?-Clarence D. Ussher, in “The Sunday School Times.”
Fuente: Neighbour’s Wells of Living Water
A Thanksgiving Sacrifice The flood lasted one year and ten days ( Gen 7:11 ; Gen 8:14 ). Noah’s first act on the renewed earth was to offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving. It could be viewed as a sacrifice dedicating the renewed earth to God. It also served as a reminder of man’s reliance upon God. Following the sacrifice, God made a further covenant with Noah. He said he would never again destroy the earth with water. He placed a rainbow in the sky as a perpetual reminder of the promise. God did this because he was pleased with Noah’s sacrifice ( Gen 8:20-22 ; Gen 9:8-17 ).
Fuente: Gary Hampton Commentary on Selected Books
Gen 8:1. And God remembered Noah, &c. This is an expression after the manner of men; for not any of his creatures, much less any of his people, are forgotten of God. But the whole race of mankind, except Noah and his family, was now extinguished, and gone into the land of forgetfulness, so that Gods remembering Noah was the return of his mercy to mankind, of whom he would not make a full end. Noah himself, though one that had found grace in the eyes of the Lord, yet seemed to be forgotten in the ark; but at length God returned in mercy to him, and that is expressed by his remembering him.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Gen 8:3. The waters returned from off the earth continually. The Hebrew, cha-loveck ve-shou. Montanus renders eundo et redeundo, the going and coming of the waters. The word is used, Gen 8:7, for the going and coming of the raven; and Isa 60:8, for the flight and return of doves to their windows. Moses here in plain words designates the flux and reflux of the waters, which twice in little less than twenty five hours overflowed the mountains, desolating and stratifying anew the whole face of the earth. Hence we find a world of plants and trees, which once grew in the warmer climates, deposed in our coalfields, and countless plants of which botany is now ignorant.
The whole period of the deluge comprised a year, according to Dr. Lightfoot. Forty six days, after the harvest, were spent in victualling the ark. The rain, accompanied with great darkness, fell for forty days. The tides rose higher and higher for one hundred and fifty days, and gradually receded for one hundred and twenty days. Then the ark rested on Mount Ararat, whose highest summit is eight thousand feet above the level of the sea.
That the earth was destroyed by impetuous tides, we have the assertion of Manilius, a Roman poet, who seems to have studied geology on the Alps, and who dedicates his poem on Astronomy to Augustus. The reader will excuse my best efforts in the following translation.
Et vomit oceanus pontum, sitiensque resorbet,
Nec sese ipse capit, sic quondam merserat urbes,
Humani generis quum solus constitit hres Deucalion.
MANILIUS ASTRON. LIB. IV. 830.
* * * *
The ocean wide
Throws up the sea, and then resorbs the tide;
Nor could it thus forbear the angry play,
Till the Alps were bared, and cities washed away;
Deucalion only then obtained the grace
To be the Sire of all the human race.
Gen 8:4. The seventeenth day. Noah was just one year in the ark, including seven weeks after harvest to collect provisions. The time is reckoned from the civil year, and not the ecclesiastical year of the Jews, which began when they left Egypt.
Gen 8:10. Yet other seven days. It would seem, that Noah religiously kept the sabbath in the best manner he could during the flood; and from the exact chronology of time, that he kept a written journal of the Lords mercies. It should also be remarked, that he came out at the beginning of winter; this is another instance of the care of Providence; for the earth, after having been so long under salt water, would not be prepared for vegetation, till the frosts and rains had operated on its surface.
Gen 8:20. Fifteen cubits; that is, the ark drew so many cubits of water. It floated exactly half in and half out of the water.
REFLECTIONS.CHAP. 8. AND 9.
When the whole world was corrupted, did God in this extraordinary way preserve the one righteous family? Then the multitude of the wicked shall not contribute to their safety, nor shall the small number of the righteous expose them to the least danger; and if piety is so dear to God, let us value it above every other consideration.
Noah built an altar to the Lord; hence we should, after deliverance from afflictions and troubles, as a first duty, kneel down and give glory to God. Devotion on these occasions is warmed and animated by fresh tokens of providence, and becomes peculiarly acceptable to God.
The Lord renewed his covenant with this patriarch, and modified it according to the existing circumstances. He does not indeed repeat the promise of the Womans Seed to bruise the serpents head; that stood like a rock through all succeeding ages, and was implied in the sacrifices; but he enforced anew the moral precepts, because it was proper to secure his own glory, and to restrain the depravity of man by awarding death to crimes; these precepts, the Jews affirm, were seven in number.
God promised Noah seedtime and harvest to the end of the world; and what is better, these temporal promises were shadows of spiritual and eternal good to those who sincerely embraced the covenant. Hence we see the faithfulness of God. He has not destroyed us by water, nor has the harvest at any time failed, except in cases of temporary famine, which he sends to remind us of our sins: hence also we should look for a double portion, a little of earth and a little of heaven.
But did Noah after all plant a vineyard, and was he once overtaken with intoxication; though from his long life of nine hundred and fifty years, and from the high favours of God towards him, we may infer that he was a patriarch of the strictest temperance; then let aged christians and aged ministers learn to preserve in old age the glory of early piety. This one sin was complicated: it led to Hams sin, and brought the curse of servitude on his posterity. Dr. Jenkins, in his Reasonableness of the Christian religion, has brought sufficient evidence from the scriptures and from pagan authors to prove, that the Africans, whom all nations have afflicted with slavery, are the descendants of Ham, or of Cush, his eldest son. Whenever we have the calamity to hear of a defect in a father, or an elder, let us, animated with the filial piety of Shem and Japhet, take a mantle of love, and cover it for once, that a blessing may come upon us, and that the silent and secret tears of repentance may so far purge it that it shall never be repeated.
Was the bow fixed in the clouds from the beginning, though now adopted as the pledge of the covenant, just as circumcision, and as bread and wine in the Lords supper were afterwards adopted as signs of the same covenant; then objects of sense, when divinely appointed, may aid our faith. Yea all nature should remind us of the fidelity of God, and prompt us to constancy in religion, and unshaken confidence in the dark and cloudy day.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Genesis 8
We shall now return to Noah, and contemplate him in a new position. we have seen him building the ark, we have seen him in the ark, and we shall now view him going forth of the ark, and taking his place in the new world.* “And God remembered Noah.” The strange work of judgement being over, the saved family, and all in association with them, come into remembrance. “God made a wind to pass over the earth; and the waters assuaged; the fountains also of deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained. The beams of sun now begin to act upon a world that had been baptised with a baptism of judgement. Judgement is God’s “strange work.” He delights not in, though He is glorified by, it. Blessed be His name, He is ever ready to leave the place of judgement, and enter that of mercy, because He delights in mercy.
{*I would here mention, for my reader’s prayerful consideration, a thought very familiar to the minds of those who have especially given themselves to the study of what is called “dispensational truth.” It has reference to Enoch and Noah. The former was taken away, as we have seen. before the judgement came; whereas the latter was carried through the judgement. Now, it is thought that Enoch is a figure of the Church, who shall be taken away before human evil reaches its climax, and before the divine judgement falls thereon. Noah, on the other hand, is a figure of the remnant of Israel, who shall be brought through the deep waters of affliction. and through the fire of judgement, and led into the full enjoyment of millennial bliss, in virtue of God’s everlasting covenant. I may add, that I quite receive this thought in reference to those two Old Testament fathers. I consider that it has the full support of the general scope and analogy of Holy Scripture.}
“And it came to pass, at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made: and he sent forth a raven, which went forth, to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth.” The unclean bird made its escape, and found, no doubt, a resting-place on some floating carcass. It sought not the ark again. Not so the dove. “She found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark . . . . . and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark: and the dove came in to him, in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf, pluckt off.” Sweet emblem of the renewed mind, which, amid the surrounding desolation, seeks and finds its rest and portion in Christ; and not only so, but also lays hold of the earnest of the inheritance, and furnishes the blessed proof, that judgement has passed away, and that a renewed earth is coming fully into view. The carnal mind, on the contrary, can rest in anything and everything but Christ. It can feed upon all uncleanness. “The olive leaf” has no attraction for it. It can find all it needs in a seen of death, and hence is not occupied with the thought of a new world and its glories; but the heart, that is taught and exercised by the Spirit of God, can only rest and rejoice in that in which He rests and rejoices. It rests in the Ark of His salvation “until the times of the restitution of all things.” May it be thus with you and me, beloved render; may Jesus be the abiding rest and portion of our hearts, that so we may not seek them in a world which is under the judgement of God. The dove went back to Noah, and waited for his time of rest: and we should ever find our place with Christ, until the time of His exaltation, and glory, in the ages to come. “He that shall come, will come, and will not tarry.” ALL we want, as to this, is a little patience. May God direct our hearts into His love, and into “the patience of Christ.”
“And God spake unto Noah, saying, go forth of the ark.” The same God that had said, “make thee an ark,” and “come thou into the ark, “now says, “go forth of the ark.” “And Noah went forth . . . . and builded an altar unto the Lord.” ALL is simple obedience. There is the obedience of faith and the worship of faith: both go together. The altar is erected, where, just before, all had been a scene of death and judgement. The ark had borne Noah and his family safely over the waters of judgement. It had carried him from the old into the new world, where he now takes his place as a worshipper.* And, be it observed, it was “unto the Lord” he erected his altar. Superstition would have worshipped the ark, as being the means of salvation. It is ever the tendency of the heart to displace God by His ordinances. Now, the ark was a very marked and manifest ordinance; but Noah’s faith passed beyond the ark to the God of the ark; and, hence, when he stepped out of it, instead of casting back a lingering look at it, or regarding it as an object of worship or veneration, he built an altar unto the Lord, and worshipped Him: and the ark is never heard of again.
{*It is interesting to look at this entire subject of the ark and deluge in connection with that most important and deeply significant ordinance of baptism. A truly baptised person, that is, one who as the apostle says, “obeys from the heart that type of doctrine to which he is delivered” is one who has passed from the old world into the new, in spirit and principle, and by faith. The water rolls over his person, signifying that his old man is buried, that his place in nature is ignored – that his old nature is entirely set aside; in short, that he is a dead man. When he is plunged beneath the water, expression is given to the fact, that his name, place and existence, in nature, are put out of sight; that the flesh, with all that pertained thereto, its sins, its iniquities, its liabilities, is buried in the grave of Christ, and never can come into God’s sight again.
Again when he rises up out of the water, expression is given to the truth that he only comes up as the possessor of a new life, even the resurrection of Christ. If Christ had not been raised from the dead, the believer could not come up out of the water, but should remain buried beneath its surface, as the simple expression of the place which righteously belongs to nature. But inasmuch as Christ rose from the dead in the power of a new life, having entirely put away our sins, we also come up out of the water; and, in so doing set, forth the fact that we are put, by the grace of God, and through the death of Christ, in full possession of a new life to which divine righteousness inseparably attaches. “We are buried with Him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” (See Rom 6 and Col 2. passim. Comp. also 1 Peter 3: 18-22) All this makes the institution of baptism one of immense importance, and pregnant with meaning}
This teaches us a very simple, but, at the same time, a very seasonable lesson. The moment the heart lets slip the reality of God Himself, there is no placing a limit to its declension; it is on the highway to the grossest forms of idolatry. In the judgement of faith, an ordinance is only valuable as it conveys God, in living power, to the soul; that is to say, so long as faith Can enjoy Christ therein, according to His own appointment. Beyond this, it is worth just nothing; and if it, in the smallest degree, comes between the heart and His precious work and His glorious Person, it ceases to be an ordinance of God, and becomes an instrument of the devil. In the judgement of superstition, the ordinance is everything, and God is shut out; and the name of God is only made use of to exalt the ordinance, and Give it a deep hold of the human heart, and a mighty influence over the human mind. Thus it was that the children of Israel worshipped the brazen serpent. That, which had once been a channel of blessing to them, because used of God, became, when their hearts had departed from the Lord, an object of superstitious veneration; and Hezekiah had to break it in pieces, and call it “a piece of brass. In itself it was only a “Nehushtan,” but, when used of God, it was a means of rich blessing. Now, faith owned it to be what divine revelation said it was; but superstition, throwing, as ever does, divine revelation overboard, lost the real purpose of God in the thing, and actually made a god of the thing itself. (See 2 Kings 18: 4)
And, my reader, is there not a deep lesson in all this for the present age? I am convinced there is. We live in an age of ordinances. The atmosphere, which enwraps the professing church, is impregnated with the elements of a traditionary religion, which robs the soul of Christ and His divinely full salvation. It is not that human traditions boldly deny that there is such a person as Christ, or such a thing as the cross of Christ: were they to do so, the eyes of many might be opened. However, it is not thus. The evil is of a far more invidious and dangerous character. Ordinances are added to Christ and the work of Christ, The sinner is not saved by Christ alone, but by Christ and ordinances. Thus he is robbed of Christ altogether; for it will, assuredly be found that Christ and ordinances will prove in the sequel, to be ordinances, and not Christ. This is a solemn consideration for all who stand up for a religion of ordinances. “If ye be circumcised Christ will profit you nothing.” It must be Christ wholly, or not at all. The devil persuades men, that they are honouring Christ when they make much of His ordinances. whereas, all the while, he knows full well, that they are, in reality, setting Christ entirely aside, and deifying the ordinance. I would only repeat here a remark which I have made elsewhere, namely, that superstition makes everything of the ordinance; infidelity, and mysticism, make nothing of it; faith uses to divine appointment.
Fuente: Mackintosh’s Notes on the Pentateuch
Gen 6:5 to Gen 9:17. The Flood.This section has been very skilfully composed from both J and P. There are numerous repetitions: Gen 6:5-8 and Gen 6:12 f.; Gen 7:7-9 and Gen 7:13-16; Gen 7:11 and Gen 7:12; Gen 7:17 and Gen 7:18 f.; Gen 7:21 and Gen 7:23; Gen 8:2 a and Gen 8:2 b. There are also differences of representation. According to Gen 6:19 f., Gen 7:15 f., the animals go in by pairs; according to Gen 7:2 f. the clean go in by sevens (or seven pairs), the unclean by pairs. In Gen 7:11 the Flood is caused by the breaking up of the fountains of the great deep and the opening of the windows of heaven, in Gen 7:12 by a long-continued rain. According to Gen 7:12 the rain continued forty days, according to Gen 7:24 the waters prevailed 150 days. There are also phraseological and stylistic differences, those characteristic of P being specially prominent. The analysis into two sources has been effected with almost complete unanimity. To P belong Gen 6:9-22, Gen 7:6; Gen 7:11, Gen 7:13-16 a, Gen 7:17 a (except forty days), Gen 7:18-21, Gen 7:24, Gen 8:1-2 a, Gen 8:3 b Gen 8:5, Gen 8:13 a, Gen 8:14-19, Gen 9:1-17. To J belong Gen 6:5-8, Gen 7:1-5, Gen 7:7-10; Gen 7:12; Gen 7:16 b, Gen 7:22 f., Gen 8:2 b Gen 8:3 a, Gen 8:6-13 b, Gen 8:20-22. In both cases some slight elements are due to the redactor. When the analysis has been effected, two all but complete stories appear, bearing the marks of P and J.
Difficult questions are raised as to the relation in which these stories stand to other Deluge narratives. A very large number exists, and of these many are independent. It is still debated whether the legends go back to the primitive period of history before the dispersion; this is not probable, for the date would be so early that oral tradition would hardly have preserved it. Presumably many were local in their origin, for such catastrophes on a small scale must have been numerous, and some of the stories may have been coloured and enriched by contamination with others. These parallels, however, must be neglected here, except the Babylonian accounts. Two of these are known to us, and fragments of a third have been recently discovered. The two former tell substantially the same story, though with considerable differences in detail. One is preserved in the extracts from Berossus given by Alexander Polyhistor. The other was discovered by George Smith in 1872. It comes in the eleventh canto of the Epic of Gilgamesh. It describes how the god Ea saved Utnapistim by commanding him to build a ship and take into it the seed of life of every kind. He built and stored it, and when the rain began to fall entered the ship and closed the door. A vivid description is given of the storm, and the terror it inspired in the gods. On the seventh day he opened the ship, which settled on Mount Nizir. After seven days he sent out a dove, and then a swallow, both of which returned; then a raven, which did not return. Then the ship was left and he offered sacrifice, to which the gods came hungrily. Bels anger at the escape was appeased by Ea on the ground that the punishment had been indiscriminate, and the hero with his wife was granted immortality. The coincidences with the Biblical account are so close that they can be explained only by dependence of the Biblical on the Babylonian story, though not necessarily on the form known to us. Probably the Hebrews received it through the Canaanites, and it passed through a process of purification, in which the offensive elements were removed. The Hebrew story is immeasurably higher in tone than the Babylonian. In the latter Bel in his anger destroys good and evil alike, and is enraged to discover that any have escaped the Flood. The gods cower under the storm like dogs in a kennel; and when the sacrifice is offered, smell the sweet savour and gather like flies over the sacrificer. In the Biblical story the punishment is represented as strictly deserved by all who perish, and the only righteous man and his family are preserved, not by the friendly help of another deity, but by the direct action of Him who sends the Flood.
The question as to the historical character of the narrative still remains. The terms seem to require a universal deluge, for all flesh on the earth was destroyed (Gen 6:17, Gen 7:4, Gen 7:21-23), and all the high mountains that were under the whole heaven were covered (Gen 7:19 f.). But this would involve a depth of water all over the world not far short of 30,000 ft., and that sufficient water was available at the time is most improbable. The ark could not have contained more than a very small proportion of the animal life on the globe, to say nothing of the food needed for them, nor could eight people have attended to their wants, nor apart from a constant miracle could the very different conditions they required in order to live at all have been supplied. Nor without such a miracle, could they have come from lands so remote. Moreover, the present distribution of animals would on this view be unaccountable. If all the species were present at a single centre at a time so comparatively near as less than five thousand years ago, we should have expected far greater uniformity between different parts of the world than now exists. The difficulty of coming applies equally to return. Nor if the human race took a new beginning from three brothers and their three wives (Gen 7:13, Gen 9:19) could we account for the origin, within the very brief period which is all that our knowledge of antiquity permits, of so many different races, for the development of languages with a long history behind them, or for the founding of states and rise of advanced civilisations. And this quite understates the difficulty, for archology shows a continuous development of such civilisations from a time far earlier than the earliest to which the Flood can be assigned. A partial Deluge is not consistent with the Biblical representation (see above). And an inundation which took seventy-three days to sink from the day when the ark rested on the mountains of Ararat till the tops of the mountains became visible (Gen 8:4 f.) implies a depth of water which would involve a universal deluge. The story, therefore, cannot be accepted as historical; but it may and probably does rest on the recollection of an actual deluge, perhaps produced by a combination of the inundation normally caused by the overflow of the Tigris and Euphrates with earthquake and flooding from the Persian Gulf.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
A RENEWED EARTH
The five months of floating on a shoreless sea would seem interminable to Noah and his family, and it can be well imagined that they would feel that God had forgotten them. “But God remembered Noah, and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the ark,” — the wild beasts as well as domesticated animals. But a flood covering even the mountains would require a long length of time to subside, even with the wind God sent to help in this. However, the sources from which the water came were stopped. If a tidal wave had emanated from the seas, this ceased to exert its power, and of course the rain from heaven no longer fell. This itself would be a welcome relief to the people in the ark. Yet at the end of 150 days the ark only grounded in the mountains of Ararat: there was still no land visible (v.4). Four and one half months later the tops of the mountains were seen (v.5).
Allowing forty days more, Noah opened the window of the ark and sent out a raven, and the raven did not return (v.7). He also sent out a dove as a test, but the dove did not find any favorable circumstances and returned to the ark (v.9). The unclean raven would no doubt find carrion to feed upon, which would be offensive to the clean dove. The raven is typical of the unclean, while the dove pictures the pure, renewed nature of the believer that can find pleasure only in what is pure and holy.
Now ten and a half months had passed since Noah’s entering the ark. He removed the covering of the ark and found the face of the ground dry (v.13). Yet of course it would be dry on the higher elevations where the ark was, while requiring more time in lower areas to have the waters recede. So that verse 14 tells us that it was about two months later that the earth was dried. This total time amounts to one year and ten days (cf.Chapter 7:11 and 8:14).
Nothing is said about anyone being anxious to leave the ark. Had they become so accustomed to living there that they were hesitant to leave? God gave them orders to go out, however, including all the humans and all the animals of every kind. Whether at first they returned there for shelter at night we are not told. The animals sent back into their natural habitat, would then “breed abundantly” and multiply.
How good it is to see that Noah’s first recorded act after leaving the ark is to build an altar to the Lord and offer one of every clean animal and every clean bird as burnt offerings to the Lord. He showed no resentment toward God at the thought of so terrible a flood, but became if anything a more decided worshiper of his great Creator. Evidently God’s awesome judgment of the ungodly world increased within Noah a healthy, reverential fear of the God of all the earth.
Because these offerings are all typical of the matchless sacrifice of the Lord Jesus, God smelled a sweet savor, and for this reason purposed that He would not again curse the ground for man’s sake. The basis of this purpose is really the sacrifice of Christ pictured in the offerings, the only refuge for man. It is interesting too that, while in Chapter 6:5 we see that the reason for the flood was that “the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually,” yet this same fact becomes a reason that God would not curse the earth again (v.21). Since the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth, God would not again curse the earth or destroy every living thing out of it. The reason for this is that in the sacrifice of Christ there is a remedy for the evil nature of man. This is only implied here, whereas in the New Testament this marvelous truth is seen in the actual death of the Lord Jesus and the subsequent teachings as to all of its wonderful value.
From that time there would be a normal cycle of living conditions on earth so long as earth remains. After the awful catastrophe of the flood, who could foretell that for the rest of earth’s history there would a constant pattern of “seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night.” No one but the Creator Himself would even venture to suggest this. In the New Testament, however (2Pe 3:10), God has as definitely foretold that the earth is not going to remain as it is: “The heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” God foretold the flood 120 years in advance: the flood came. He has foretold the constant cycle of seasons so long as the earth remains: this has been thoroughly accurate for thousands of years and will remain so until, as He has also foretold, the earth and its works shall be burned up. How vitally important it is that we believe the revelation of God!
Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible
8:1 And God {a} remembered Noah, and {b} every living thing, and all the cattle that [was] with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged;
(a) Not that God forgets his at any time, but when he sends comfort then he shows that he remembers them.
(b) If God remembered every brute beast, that ought also to assure his children.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
When Moses wrote that God remembered someone (Gen 8:1), he meant God extended mercy to him or her by delivering that person from death (here; cf. Gen 19:29) or from barrenness (Gen 30:22). [Note: Hamilton, p. 299.] God’s rescue of Noah foreshadows His deliverance of Israel in the Exodus (cf. Gen 8:13-14 and Exo 2:24; Exo 14:21). [Note: Sailhamer, The Pentateuch . . ., p. 127; idem, "Genesis," p. 89.]
"’Ararat,’ known as ancient Urartu in Assyrian records, was an extensive territory and bordered the northern Mesopotamian region. It reached its political zenith in the ninth to sixth centuries B.C. Urartu surrounded Lake Van with boundaries taking in southeast Turkey, southern Russia, and northwest Iran. Among the mountains of modern Armenia is the impressive peak known today as Mount Ararat, some seventeen thousand feet in elevation, which the Turks call Byk Ari Da. ’Mount Ararat’ as a geographical designation comes from later tradition. During the eleventh to twelfth centuries A.D., it became the traditional site known as the place of Noah’s landing. Gen 8:4, however, does not specify a peak and refers generally to its location as the ’mountains of Ararat.’ . . . The search for the ark’s artifacts has been both a medieval and a modern occupation; but to the skeptic such evidence is not convincing, and to the believer, while not irrelevant, it is not necessary to faith." [Note: Mathews, pp. 385-86.]
Modern Mt. Ararat lies on the border between Turkey and Armenia near the center of the ancient world. From this general region Noah’s descendants spread out over the earth. [Note: For a history of the evidence that Noah’s ark is still on Mt. Ararat, see Boice, 1:263-65. See also Tim LaHaye and John Morris, The Ark on Mt. Ararat, or Violet Cummings, Has Anybody Really Seen Noah’s Ark?]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
THE FLOOD
Gen 5:1-32; Gen 6:1-22; Gen 7:1-24; Gen 8:1-22; Gen 9:1-29
THE first great event which indelibly impressed itself on the memory of the primeval world was the Flood. There is every reason to believe that this catastrophe was co-extensive with the human population of the world. In every branch of the human family traditions of the event are found. These traditions need not be recited, though some of them bear a remarkable likeness to the Biblical story, while others are very beautiful in their construction, and significant in individual points. Local floods happening at various times in different countries could not have given birth to the minute coincidences found in these traditions, such as the sending out of the birds, and the number of persons saved. But we have as yet no material for calculating how far human population had spread from the Original centre. It might apparently be argued that it could not have spread to the seacoast, or that at any rate no ships had as yet been built large enough to weather a severe storm; for a thoroughly nautical population could have had little difficulty in surviving such a catastrophe as is here described. But all that can be affirmed is that there is no evidence that the waters extended beyond the inhabited part of the earth; and from certain details of the narrative, this part of the earth may be identified as the great plain of the Euphrates and Tigris.
Some of the expressions used in the narrative might indeed lead us to suppose that the writer understood the catastrophe to have extended over the whole globe; but expressions of similar largeness elsewhere occur in passages where their meaning must be restricted: Probably the most convincing evidence of the limited extent of the Flood is furnished by the animals of Australia. The animals that abound in that island are different from those found in other parts of the world, but are similar to the species which are found fossilised in the island itself, and which therefore must have inhabited these same regions long anterior to the Flood. If then the Flood extended to Australia and destroyed all animal life there, what are we compelled to suppose as the order of events? We must suppose that the creatures, visited by some presentiment of what was to happen many months after, selected specimens of their number, and that these specimens by some unknown and quite inconceivable means crossed thousands of miles of sea, found their way through all kinds of perils from unaccustomed climate, food, and beasts of prey; singled out Noah by some inscrutable instinct, and surrendered themselves to his keeping. And after the year in the ark expired, they turned their faces homewards, leaving behind them no progeny, again preserving themselves intact, and transporting themselves by some unknown means to their island home. This, if the Deluge was universal, must have been going on with thousands of animals from all parts of the globe; and not only were these animals a stupendous miracle in themselves, but wherever they went they were the occasion of miracle in others, all the beasts of prey refraining from their natural food. The fact is, the thing will not bear stating.
But it is not the physical but the moral aspects of the Flood with which we have here to do. And, first, this narrator explains its cause. He ascribes it to the abnormal wickedness of the antediluvians. To describe the demoralised condition of society before the Flood, the strongest language is used. “God saw that the wickedness of man was great,” monstrous in acts of violence, and in habitual courses and established usages. “Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually,”-there was no mixture of good, no relentings, no repentances, no visitings of compunction, no hesitations and debatings. It was a world of men fierce and energetic, violent and lawless, in perpetual war and turmoil; in which if a man sought to live a righteous life, he had to conceive it of his own mind and to follow it out unaided and without the countenance of any.
This abnormal wickedness again is accounted for by the abnormal marriages from which the leaders of these ages sprang. Everything seemed abnormal, huge, inhuman. As there are laid bare to the eye of the geologist in those archaic times vast forms bearing a likeness to forms we are now familiar with, but of gigantic proportions and wallowing in dim, mist-covered regions; so to the eye of the historian there loom through the obscurity colossal forms perpetrating deeds of more than human savagery, and strength, and daring; heroes that seem formed in a different mould from common men.
However we interpret the narrative, its significance for us is plain. There is nothing prudish in the Bible. It speaks with a manly frankness of the beauty of women and its ensnaring power. The Mosaic law was stringent against intermarriage with idolatresses, and still in the New Testament something more than an echo of the old denunciation of such marriages is heard. Those who were most concerned about preserving a pure morality and a high tone in society were keenly alive to the dangers that threatened from this quarter. It is a permanent danger to character because it is to a permanent element in human nature that the temptation appeals. To many in every generation, perhaps to the majority, this is the most dangerous form in which worldliness presents itself; and to resist this the most painful test of principle. With natures keenly sensitive to beauty and superficial attractiveness, some are called upon to make their choice between a conscientious cleaving to God and an attachment to that which in the form is perfect but at heart is defective, depraved, godless. Where there is great outward attraction a man fights against the growing sense of inward uncongeniality, and persuades himself he is too scrupulous and uncharitable, or that he is a bad reader of character. There may be an undercurrent of warning; he may be sensible that his whole nature is not satisfied, and it may seem to him ominous that what is best within him does not flourish in his new attachment, but rather what is inferior, if not what is worst. But all such omens and warnings are disregarded and stifled by some such silly thought as that consideration and calculation are out of place in such matters. And what is the result? The result is the same as it ever was. Instead of the ungodly rising to the level of the godly, he sinks to hers. The worldly style, the amusements, the fashions once distasteful to him, but allowed for her sake, become familiar, and at last wholly displace the old and godly ways, the arrangements that left room for acknowledging God in the family; and there is one household less as a point of resistance to the incursion of an ungodly tone in society, one deserter more added to the already too crowded ranks of the ungodly, and the life-time if not the eternity of one soul embittered. Not without a consideration of the temptations that do actually lead men astray did the law enjoin: “Thou shalt not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, nor take of their daughters unto thy sons.”
It seems like a truism to say that a greater amount of unhappiness has been produced by mismanagement, folly, and wickedness in the relation subsisting between men and women than by any other cause. God has given us the capacity of love to regulate this relation and be our safe guide in all matters connected with it. But frequently, from one cause or another, the government and direction of this relation are taken out of the hands of love and put into the thoroughly incompetent hands of convenience, or fancy, or selfish lust. A marriage contracted from any such motive is sure to bring unhappiness of a long-continued, wearing, and often heartbreaking kind. Such a marriage is often the form in which retribution comes for youthful selfishness and youthful licentiousness. You cannot cheat nature. Just in so far as you allow yourself to be ruled in youth by a selfish love of pleasure, in so far do you incapacitate yourself for love. You sacrifice what is genuine and satisfying, because provided by nature, to what is spurious, unsatisfying, and shameful. You cannot afterwards, unless by a long and bitter discipline, restore the capacity of warm and pure love in your heart. Every indulgence in which true love is absent is another blow given to the faculty of love within you-you make yourself in that capacity decrepit, paralyzed, dead. You have lost, you have killed the faculty that should be your guide in all these matters, and so you are at last precipitated without this guidance into a marriage formed from some other motive, formed therefore against nature, and in which you are the everlasting victim of natures relentless justice. Remember that you cannot have both things, a youth of loveless pleasure and a loving marriage-you must make your choice. For as surely as genuine love kills all evil desire; so surely does evil desire kill the very capacity of love, and blind utterly its wretched victim to the qualities that ought to excite love.
The language used of God in relation to this universal corruption strikes every one as remarkable. “It repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart.” This is what is usually termed anthropomorphism, i.e., the presenting of God in terms applicable only to man; it is an instance of the same mode of speaking as is used when we speak of Gods hand or eye or heart. These expressions are not absolutely true, but they are useful and convey to us a meaning which could scarcely otherwise be expressed. Some persons think that the use of these expressions proves that in early times God was thought of as wearing a body and as being very like ourselves in His inward nature. And even in our day we have been ridiculed for speaking of God as a magnified man. Now in the first place the use of such expressions does not prove that even the earliest worshippers of God believed Him to have eyes and hands and a body. We freely use the same expressions though we have no such belief. We use them because our language is formed for human uses and on a human level, and we have no capacity to frame a better. And in the second place, though not absolutely true they do help us towards the truth. We are told that it degrades God to think of Him as hearing prayer and accepting praise; nay, that to think Of Him as a Person at all, is to degrade Him. We ought to think of Him as the Absolutely Unknowable. But which degrades God most, and which exalts Him most? If we find that it is impossible to worship an absolutely unknowable, if we find that practically such an idea is a mere nonentity to us, and that we cannot in point of fact pay any homage or show any consideration to such an empty abstraction, is not this really to lower God? And if we find that when we think of Him as a Person, and ascribe to Him all human virtue in an infinite degree, we can rejoice in Him and worship Him with true adoration, is not this to exalt Him? While we call Him our Father we know that this title is inadequate; while we speak of God as planning and decreeing we know that we are merely making shift to express what is inexpressible by us-we know that our thoughts of Him are never adequate and that to think of Him at all is to lower Him, is to think of Him inadequately; but when the practical alternative is such as it is, we find we do well to think of Him with the highest personal attributes we can conceive. For to refuse to ascribe such attributes to Him because this is degrading Him, is to empty our minds of any idea of Him which can stimulate either to worship or to duty. If by ridding our minds of all anthropomorphic ideas and refusing to think of God as feeling, thinking, acting as men do, we could thereby get to a really higher conception of Him, a conception which would practically make us worship Him more devotedly and serve Him more faithfully, then by all means let us do so. But if the result of refusing to think of Him as in many ways like ourselves, is that we cease to think of Him at all or only as a dead impersonal force, then this certainly is not to reach a higher but a lower conception of Him. And until we see our way to some truly higher conception than that which we have of a Personal God, we had better be content with it.
In short, we do well to be humble, and considering that we know very little about existence of any kind, and least of all about Gods, and that our God has been presented to us in human form, we do well to accept Christ as our God, to worship, love, and serve Him, finding Him sufficient for all our wants of this life, and leaving it to other times to get the solution of anything that is not made plain to us in Him. This is one boon that the science and philosophy of our day have unintentionally conferred upon us. They have laboured to make us feel how remote and inaccessible God is, how little we can know Him, how truly He is past finding out; they have laboured to make us feel how intangible and invisible and incomprehensible God is, but the result of this is that we turn with all the stronger longing to Him who is the Image of the Invisible God, and on whom a voice has fallen from the excellent glory, “This is My beloved Son, hear Him.”
The Flood itself we need not attempt to describe. It has been remarked that though the narrative is vivid and forcible, it is entirely wanting in that sort of description which in a modern historian or poet would have occupied the largest space. “We see nothing of the death-struggle; we hear not the cry of despair; we are not called upon to witness the frantic agony of husband and wife, and parent and child, as they fled in terror before the rising waters. Nor is a word said of the sadness of the one righteous man, who, safe himself, looked upon the destruction which he could not avert.” The Chaldean tradition which is the most closely allied to the Biblical account is not so reticent. Tears are shed in heaven over the catastrophe, and even consternation affected its inhabitants, while within the ark itself the Chaldean Noah says, “When the storm came to an end and the terrible water-spout ceased, I opened the window and the light smote upon my face. I looked at the sea attentively observing, and the whole of humanity had returned to mud, like seaweed the corpses floated. I was seized with sadness; I sat down and wept and my tears fell upon my face.”
There can be little question that this is a true description of Noahs feeling. And the sense of desolation and constraint would rather increase in Noahs mind than diminish. Month after month elapsed; he was coming daily nearer the end of his food, and yet the waters were unabated. He did not know how long he was to be kept in this dark, disagreeable place. He was left to do his daily work without any supernatural signs to help him against his natural anxieties. The floating of the ark and all that went on in it had no mark of Gods hand upon it. He was indeed safe while others had been destroyed. But of what good was this safety to be? Was he ever to get out of this prison house? To what straits was he to be first reduced? So it is often with ourselves. We are left to fulfil Gods will without any sensible tokens to set over against natural difficulties, painful and pinching circumstances, ill health, low spirits, failure of favourite projects and old hopes-so that at last we come to think that perhaps safety is all we are to have in Christ, a mere exemption from suffering of one kind purchased by the endurance of much suffering of another kind: that we are to be thankful for pardon on any terms; and escaping with our life, must be content though it be bare. Why, how often does a Christian wonder whether, after all, he has chosen a life that he can endure, whether the monotony and the restraints of the Christian life are not inconsistent with true enjoyment?
This strife between the felt restriction of the Christian life and the natural craving for abundant life, for entrance into all that the world can show us, and experience of all forms of enjoyment-this strife goes on unceasingly in the heart of many of us as it goes on from age to age in the world. Which is the true view of life, which is the view to guide us in choosing and refusing the enjoyments and pursuits that are presented to us? Are we to believe that the ideal man for this life is he who has tasted all culture and delight, who believes in nature, recognising no fall and seeking for no redemption, and makes enjoyment his end; or he who sees that all enjoyment is deceptive till man is set right morally, and who spends himself on this, knowing that blood and misery must come before peace and rest, and crowned as our King and Leader, not with a garland of roses, but with the crown of Him Who is greatest of all, because servant of all-to Whom the most sunken is not repulsive, and Who will not abandon the most hopeless? This comes to be very much the question, whether this life is final or preparatory?-whether, therefore, our work in it should be to check lower propensities and develop and train all that is best in character, so as to be fit for highest life and enjoyment in a world to come-or should take ourselves as we find ourselves, and delight in this present world? whether this is a placid eternal state, in which things are very much as they should be, and in which therefore we can live freely and enjoy freely; or whether it is a disordered, initial condition in which our main task should be to do a little towards putting things on a better rail and getting at least the germ and small beginnings of future good planted in one another? So that in the midst of all felt restriction, there is the highest hope, that one day we shall go forth from the narrow precincts of our ark, and step out into the free bright sunshine, in a world where there is nothing to offend, and that the time of our deprivation will seem to have been well spent indeed, if it has left within us a capacity permanently to enjoy love, holiness, justice, and all that is delighted in by God Himself.
The use made of this event in the New Testament is remarkable. It is compared by Peter to baptism, and both are viewed as illustrations of salvation by destruction. The eight souls, he says, who were in the ark, “were saved by water.” The water which destroyed the rest saved them. When there seemed little hope of the godly line being able to withstand the influence of the ungodly, the Flood came and left Noahs family in a new world, with freedom to order all things according to their own ideas. In this Peter sees some analogy to baptism. In baptism, the penitent who believes in the efficacy of Christs blood to purge away sin, lets his defilement be washed away and rises new and clean to the life Christ gives. In Christ the sinner finds shelter for himself and destruction for his sins. It is Gods wrath against sin that saves us by destroying our sins; just as it was the Flood which devastated the world, that at the same time, and thereby, saved Noah and his family.
In this event, too, we see the completeness of Gods work. Often we feel reluctant to surrender our sinful habits to so final a destruction as is implied in being one with Christ. The expense at which holiness is to be bought seems almost too great. So much that has given us pleasure must be parted with; so many old ties sundered, a condition of holiness presents an aspect of dreariness and hopelessness; like the world after the flood, not a moving thing on the surface of the earth, everything levelled, prostrate, and washed even with the ground; here the corpse of a man, there the carcase of a beast: here mighty forest timber swept prone like the rushes on the banks of a flooded stream, and there a city without inhabitants, everything dank, dismal, and repellent. But this is only one aspect of the work; the beginning, necessary if the work is to be thorough. If any part of the sinful life remain it will spring up to mar what God means to introduce us to. Only that is to be preserved which we can take with us into our ark. Only that is to pass on into our life which we can retain while we are in true connection with Christ, and which we think can help us to live as His friends, and to serve Him zealously.
This event then gives us some measure by which we can know how much God will do to maintain holiness upon earth. In this catastrophe every one who strives after godliness may find encouragement, seeing in it the Divine earnestness of God-for good and against evil. There is only one other event in history that so conspicuously shows that holiness among men is the object for which God will sacrifice everything else. There is no need now of any further demonstration of Gods purpose in this world. and His zeal for carrying it out. And may it not be expected of us His children, that we stand in presence of the cross until our cold and frivolous hearts catch something of the earnestness, the “resisting unto blood striving against sin,” which is exhibited there? The Flood has not been forgotten by almost any people under heaven, but its moral result is nil. But he whose memory is haunted by a dying Redeemer, by the thought of One Whose love found its most appropriate and practical result in dying for him, is prevented from much sin, and finds in that love the spring of eternal hope, that which his soul in the deep privacy of his most sacred thoughts can feed upon with joy, that which he builds himself round and broods over as his inalienable possession.