God remembered Noah, all the animals, and all the livestock that were with him in the ship; and God made a wind to pass over the earth. The waters subsided.
Parallel Translations
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God remembered Noah, all the animals, and all the livestock that were with him in the ship; and God made a wind to pass over the earth. The waters subsided.
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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;
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And God remembered Noah, 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 assuaged;
Cross-references (24)
Passages linked to Genesis 8:1 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Genesis 30:22 God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her, and opened her womb.
- Genesis 19:29 When God destroyed the cities of the plain, God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the middle of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in which Lot lived.
- Psalms 136:23 who remembered us in our low estate; for his loving kindness endures forever;
- Exodus 2:24 God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.
- 1 Samuel 1:19 They rose up in the morning early and worshiped Yahweh, then returned and came to their house to Ramah. Then Elkanah knew Hannah his wife; and Yahweh remembered her.
- Psalms 106:4 Remember me, Yahweh, with the favor that you show to your people. Visit me with your salvation,
- Amos 8:7 Yahweh has sworn by the pride of Jacob, “Surely I will never forget any of their works.
- Exodus 14:21 Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and Yahweh caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.
- Psalms 132:1 Yahweh, remember David and all his affliction,
- Nehemiah 13:14 Remember me, my God, concerning this, and don’t wipe out my good deeds that I have done for the house of my God, and for its observances.
- Nehemiah 13:22 I commanded the Levites that they should purify themselves, and that they should come and keep the gates, to sanctify the Sabbath day. Remember to me, my God, this also, and spare me according to the greatness of your loving kindness.
- Nehemiah 13:31 and for the wood offering, at times appointed, and for the first fruits. Remember me, my God, for good.
- Habakkuk 3:2 Yahweh, I have heard of your fame. I stand in awe of your deeds, Yahweh. Renew your work in the middle of the years. In the middle of the years make it known. In wrath, you remember mercy.
- Nehemiah 13:29 Remember them, my God, because they have defiled the priesthood, and the covenant of the priesthood and of the Levites.
- Psalms 137:7 Remember, Yahweh, against the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem, who said, “Raze it! Raze it even to its foundation!”
- Job 14:13 “Oh that you would hide me in Sheol, that you would keep me secret until your wrath is past, that you would appoint me a set time and remember me!
- Romans 8:20-22 For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of decay into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now.
- Jonah 4:11 Shouldn’t I be concerned for Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred twenty thousand persons who can’t discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much livestock?”
- Numbers 22:32 Yahweh’s angel said to him, “Why have you struck your donkey these three times? Behold, I have come out as an adversary, because your way is perverse before me.
- Psalms 104:7-9 At your rebuke they fled. At the voice of your thunder they hurried away. The mountains rose, the valleys sank down, to the place which you had assigned to them. You have set a boundary that they may not pass over, that they don’t turn again to cover the earth.
- Proverbs 25:23 The north wind produces rain; so a backbiting tongue brings an angry face.
- Revelation 16:19 The great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. Babylon the great was remembered in the sight of God, to give to her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath.
- Revelation 18:5 for her sins have reached to the sky, and God has remembered her iniquities.
- Psalms 36:6 Your righteousness is like the mountains of God. Your judgments are like a great deep. Yahweh, you preserve man and animal.
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain 1. And God remembered Noah. Moses now descends more…
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 Psalm 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.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain If God remember every brute beast, what ought to…
If God remember every brute beast, what ought to be the assurance of his children?
Not that God forgetteth his at any time, but when he sendeth succor then he showeth that he remembereth them.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Gen 8:1 And God remembered Noah, and every living…
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.
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God made a wind.] So he worketh usually by means, though he needeth them not. But many times his works are, as Luther speaketh, in contrariis mediis . As here he assuageth the waters by a wind, which naturally "lifteth up the waves thereof," and enrageth them. {Psa 107:25 Jon 1:4} God worketh by contraries, saith Nazianzen, {c} that he may be the more admired.
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} Dια την εναντιων εναντια οικονομειται ινα και μαλλον θαυμαζηται
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain God remembered Noah, i.e. he showed by his actions…
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.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain Here is, I. An act of God's grace: God…
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 (Luk 12:6), 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, Eze 5:13, 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 1:24), and now his spirit was quieted (Zac 6:8), and he remembered Noah and every living thing. he remembered mercy in wrath (Hab 3:2), remembered the days of old (Isa 63:11), 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 14:13. 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 4:11.
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,
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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 (Pro 30:4) and brings them out of his treasuries, Psa 135:7. He sends them when, and whither, and for what purposes, he pleases. Even stormy winds fulfil his word, Psa 148:8. 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, Exo 14:21.
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 12:14, Job 12:15. [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 (Gen 8:1), 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, Zac 4:10. See Pro 4:18.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and…
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, Gen 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.
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(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.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain We have here,
We have here,
I. The earth made anew, by the recess of waters, and the appearing of the dry land a second time. (1.) The increase of the waters is stayed, ver. 1, 2. (2.) They begin sensibly to abate, ver. 3. (3.) After fifteen days ebbing the ark rests, ver. 4. (4.) After sixty days ebbing the tops of the mountains appear, ver.5. (5.) After forty days ebbing, and twenty days before the mountains appeared, Noah begins to send out his spies, a raven and a dove to gain intelligence, ver. 6-12. (6.) Two months after the appearing of the tops of the mountains the waters were gone, and the face of the earth was dry, ver. 13. tho' not dried so as to be fit for man 'till almost two months after, ver. 14.
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II. Man placed anew upon the earth. In which,
1. Noah's discharge and departure out of the ark, ver. 15-19.
2. His sacrifice of praise which he offered to God upon his enlargement, ver. 20.
III. God's acceptance of his sacrifice; and the promise he made thereupon not to drown the world again, ver. 21, 22. And thus at length mercy rejoiceth against judgment.
And God remembered Noah and every living thing - 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 God's remembering Noah was the return of his mercy to mankind, of whom he would not make a full end. Noah himself, tho' 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.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain At the end of one hundred and fifty days…
CHAPTER VIII
At the end of one hundred and fifty days the waters begin to
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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.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Gen 8:1. And God remembered Noah, &c. — This…
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 God’s 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.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain - The Land Was Dried
- The Land Was Dried
1. שׁכך shākak “stoop, assuage.”
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3. חסר chāsar “want, fail, be abated.”
4. אררט 'ărārāṭ, “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. קלל qālal, “be light, lightened, lightly esteemed, swift.”
10. חוּל chûl, “twist, turn, dance, writhe, tremble, be strong, wait.” יהל yāchal “remain, wait, hope.”
13. חרב chāreb, “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.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Remembered; not as if God had ever forgotten Noe,…
Remembered; not as if God had ever forgotten Noe, but he now shews his remembrance of him by the effects. (Menochius) --- A wind, literally a spirit, which St. Ambrose and Theodoret understood of the Holy Ghost, that, as he moved over the waters at first, (chap. i. 2.) to give them fecundity, and to exercise his power in establishing order, so he may shew the same care and providence for this new world, emerging, like the former, from the waters. (Haydock) --- Most interpreters, however, understand this of a violent wind, (Proverbs xxv. 23; Exodus xiv. 21.) a strong blast, such as was sent to divide the Red sea. (Menochius)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain The Ark, and the Saved and Renewed Humanity
THIRD SECTION
The Ark, and the Saved and Renewed Humanity
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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, חלוך ושוב]; 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 [הקלו, 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 (וַיָּחֶל) 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 [יְיָּחֶל 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 flood—so in general one hundred and fifty days. Threefold grade of advance: 1. The ark is lifted up from the ground; 2. the ark’s 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 Noah’s 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.—God’s remembering must be understood in an emphatic sense. God has always remembered Noah; but now he remembers him in a special sense—that 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 flood’s 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 described—how 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.—“אֵרָרָט 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 Behring’s Straits—in 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 (חַלּוֹן) of the sky-light (צֹהַר). Fresh light and air awaken, or rather gradually reanimate, the torpid animal-world, and Noah’s 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 מֵאִתּוֹ by ὀπίσω αὐτοῦ, 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. “וַיָּחֶל fut. Hiphil from חיל,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 (טרף) 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 Ælian 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.—מִכְסֶה. 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 (שָׁנָה), 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 Smith’s “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 Christ’s 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 כִּיּוּן, Arabic َםْזَ ַה 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 כִּיּוּן (Kiyun) is the same with שַׁבַּתַּי, Shabbatai (Saturn, or the sabbath-god), for they made tohim an image, whilst another interpretation makes it to be כוֹכַב שַׁבַּתַּי, the star of Saturn, and so is he called כיואן, 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 (Κρόνος = χρόνος, time), or the old creative, generative power, was before that of Ζεύς, 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 God’s 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 Lange’s 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. God’s 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. God’s remembrance of man and man’s 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 life—a vernal wind—for 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 dove’s 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 days—an 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 (11–14; 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 ἀρχαῖoς κόσμος,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 God’s help, nor throw ourselves hastily out of the ark of the church in sectarian impatience, but wait the Lord’s 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 God’s 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, God’s 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.
Schröder: God had exercised Noah’s 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.13—This 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 God’s 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 θεοπνεύστος, 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 style—and 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 soul’s 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 (נִבקְעוּ, 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 (מֵעַל הָאָרֶץ), and goes forth (תֵּלֵךְ walks forth), עַלְ־פְּנֵי הַמָּיִם, on the face of the waters. וַיּגְבְּרוּ הַמַּיִם, the floods prevail exceedingly, מְאֹד מְאֹד, stronger, stronger—higher, higher—הָלוֹךְ וְגָדֵל, “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, תַּחַת כָּל הַשָּׁמַיִם, “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 ארץ earth,—“under the whole heavens,” תחת כל השמים,—“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, אדמה instead of ארץ, 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 אדמה 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,” עַל פְּנֵי הָאֲדְמָה. 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, הֵהֵל לָרֹב, 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 Cain’s language, Gen_4:14 : “Behold thou art driving me forth this day, מֵעַל פְּנֵי הָאֲדָמָה, from the face of the adamah, that I may become a wanderer בָּאָרֶץ in the (wide) earth,” as distinguished from the fatherland where the protecting divine presence (פָנֶיךָ) 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, וְיָפֶץ אֹתָם, “He drove them asunder”—He sent them far and wide—He 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 פן so expressive of caution and alarm; Gen_11:4, פֶּן נָפוּץ עַל פְּנֵי כְּנֵי כָּל הָאָרֶץ, “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 world’s 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 God’s 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 inhabited—we 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 Æthiopia, 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 (βοος πορος, 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 Ægean 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 (מֵאֵלֵּה) were parted (were divided, נִפְרְדוּ, isolated), the nations in the earth after the flood.”
In the antediluvian period there seems to have been a distinction between ארץ and אדמה, 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 οὐρανὸς and χθών. 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 γαῖα, 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:
̔́Ιστο νῦν τόδε Ταῖα καὶ Οὐρανὸς εὐρὺς ὕπερθεν,
καὶ τὸ κατειβόμενον Στυγὸς ὕδωρ—
still less was it (in conception, at least, whatever may have been the speculative thought), the tellurian idea (see Cicero’s 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 writer’s 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 writer’s 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 (הֶגֶה) that goeth forth from his mouth; under the whole heavens, תַּחַת כָּל הַשַׁמַיִם, he directeth it, and its lightning, עַל כַּנְפוֹת הָאָרֶץ, 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 aërial 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 בְּהֵמָה, the cattle, the common or domestic animals, clean and unclean.17 It was to be from all, מִכֹּל, a term general instead of distributive, and those taken of the בְּהֵמָה 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, πᾶσα ἡ ’Ιουδαία, went out to him, and all the country round about Jordan, πᾶσα ἡ περίχωρος τοῦ ’Ιορδάνου, and were baptized.” Mat_3:5. “And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation, ἀπὸ παντὸς ἔθνους, 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 is—how 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 Ovid’s 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 things—such 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. Ovid’s 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 nebulæ, rorant pennæque 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 ποίησις, ποίημα, something made, a fictitious composition artificially colored and invented. Some have regarded the language, Gen_7:11—“the 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 Chaldæan 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, מאד ,מאד, 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 (גברו, they were fifteen cubits strong, or, as we say, fifteen cubits deep), and the hills (the same word, הרים, thus rendered Gen_8:19) were covered.” Now take this in connection with Gen_8:4 of Genesis 8 : “And the ark rested (ותנח) 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” (הָרֵי אֲרָרָט in the plural—or 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 ark’s 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 (נראו), 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 Ovid’s “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, נְבוּאָה, and what is narrated from sense, רְגִישָׁה, 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 (כִּידוֹר), 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 (רְתִיחָה),—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 œquor. He makes a distinction, which has some ground, between שכך, the calming of the waters, and חסר, 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 (יקר מקרה) 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, וַתֵּלֵךְ עַל פִּנֵי הַמָּיִם, “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 universality—difficulties 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 behéma (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 zoölogy, 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 reappearing—all 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 ark’s 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 ark’s 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 Noachidæ 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.—ניּשֹׁכּוּ. E. V. assuaged. It differs from חסר, to ebb or fail (as used in Gen_8:3). שָׁכַךְ 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. καταῤῥάκται) from above. Its primary sense appears Est_2:1; Est_7:10, חמת המלך שככה, the wrath of the king was calmed. So in Hiphil, Numb. 17:20, where it denotes the quieting of popular commotion. LXX. ἐκόπασε τὸ ὕδωρ, and the water grew tired. The Vulgate confounds it with חסר, imminutæ sunt aquæ. The Syria ܐܬܬܒ̇ܚܘ, “the waters rested;” the late Arabic Translation (Amer. Bib. Soc.), very beautifully and significantly, ֿױב ַבָםַ ו, the waters became quiet. The distinction between this word and חסר is important in determining the stages of the flood—T. L.]
[2][Gen_8:3.—יָשׁוּבוּ. 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 הָלוֹךְ וָשׁוֹב—T.L.]
[3][Gen_8:4.—וַתָּנַח. The ark’s 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 flood’s having covered mountains known to be more than two miles higher, that some have maintained that תנח 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 עַל, 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 (מָנוּח) for the sole of her foot.”—T. L.]
[4][Gen_8:4.—עַל הָרֵי אֲרָרָט. 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 Armeniæ; LXX. ἐπὶ τὰ ὄρη τὰ ’Αραράτ; Targum of Onkelos, עַל טוּרֵי קַרְדּוּ, upon the mountains of Kardu, or the Karduchian; the Syriac the same, ܠܠ ܛܘܪܫ ܩܖ̇ܪܘ, as also Arabs Erpen. ַל ַָּ ַבל זֿ. The Koranic Arabic has it constantly ַז ֿל, 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 אררט 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 אֲרָרָט. 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 ark’s 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 אררט, 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 Chaldæan and Syrian traditions.—T. L.]
[5][Gen_8:7.—וַיֵּצֵא יָצוֹא וָשׁוֹב. “And it went back and forth.” The LXX., Vulgate, and Syriac, render it, “and did not return,” as though they had read וְלֹא שָׁב. 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 paraphrastically—the 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.” וַיִּיָּחֶל, as here pointed, is the regular Niphal of יחל, whereas. וַיָּחֵל, Gen_8:10, has the form of the Hiphil of חיל or חול, and is so regarded by the modern commentators and lexicographers generally. From חול, 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 יחל. The first, says Rashi, is Piel (יְפָעֶל), as though he regarded it as equivalent to וַיְיָחֶל (contracted into יַיָּחֶל), and the second Hithpahel (יתפעל) or יִתְיָחֶל, becoming by assimilation יִיֶּחֵל, like יִנַּבֵּא for יִתְנַבֵּא. 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, præstolor; Greek, ἐκδέχομαι, προςδέχομαι. In regard to the first, it is easy to see how יְיָחֶל would become יָחֶל (yyâ-hel = yâ-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 יֵילִיל, Isa_15:2-3; Isa_16:7, for יְיֵליל (or yé-lil for yyé-lil), as stated by Jona ben Gannach in his Hebrew Grammar (lately edited in Hebrew), p. 28.—T. L.]
[7][The Hebrew נִרְאוּ here, in Niphal, would seem to have a more emphatic sense—became 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 day—perhaps the first clear day that afforded Noah an opportunity for taking an observation—they 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 ֳْזֿُِלٌ, and is evidently a descriptive name from ָּב ַזֿל, præstans, bonus fuit. It is, therefore, an epithet denoting goodness, liberality, or mercy: ָּב ַבּזֿל, the hill of Mercy, or mount Mercy, as we say, the cape, of Good Hope. Compare the Hebrew appellative, Deu_3:25, הַר הַטוֹב, and especially such epithets as we find in Gen_22:14, הַר יְהוָֹה יֵרִאֶה, 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 raven’s 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.),
םַَ ַׁׂََِ ַבהַָٌٌِ ל ُלֻِלוِ
“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 οἰωνός (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 עוֹנֵן, part. מְעוֹנֵן, (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 eagle’s 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 heavens”—a 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 κόσμος, 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 οἰκουμένη, 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 Homer’s 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 : חֹק חָג עַל פְּנֵי הַמָּיִם עַד תַּכְלִית אוֹר עִם חשֶׁךְ, “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 בְּהֵמָה, 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, חרי אררט, page 308.—T. L.]
[19][Such, for example, as the הָלוֹךְ וְחָסוֹר, Gen_8:5, a peculiar Hebrew idiom, denoting most graphically a gradual yet constant subsidence (Vulg., ibant el decrescebant aquæ), 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.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 1-3. God remembered Noah — The ark, containing the…
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.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain Ch. Gen_8:1-14. The Diminution of the Waters
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.
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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.
2a (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).
2b, 3a (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).
3b (P). after the end, &c.] The 150 days are those mentioned in Gen_7:24.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (1) God.—Elohim. On the Jehovistic theory, one would have…
VIII.
(1) God.—Elohim. On the Jehovistic theory, one would have expected Jehovah here. (See Excursus.)
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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.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. H. Mackintosh 1880 · Public Domain Genesis 8
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.
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{*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.
C. H. Mackintosh, Notes on the Pentateuch — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain And God. Elohim, i.e. God in his most universal…
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; 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 (cf. Deu_25:4 Isa_36:6 Psa_145:9, Psa_145:15, Psa_145:16; Jon_4:11) As a proofthat 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 wind ruach. Not the Holy Ghost, as in Gen_1:2 (Theodoret, Ambrose, LXX) pneuma nor the heat of the sun (Rupertus); but a current of air (anemov), 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. Kaipase to udwr, and the water grew tried (LXX). Cf. ejkopasen oJ anemov, Mat_14:32; Mar_4:39 6:51.
HOMILIES BY J.F. MONTGOMERY Ver. 1.
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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 (cf. Mar_6:48; Joh_10:14) 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, 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 (Mat_21:16; Mar_10:49; Luk_18:16) 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 Vers. 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" (ver. 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 man the 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.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain The waters assuaged
Gen_8:1-5
The waters assuaged
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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.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain Gen_8:4. Ararat] “A region nearly in the middle of…
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. Noah’s mountain, in the classics ὁ Ἄβος, 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.)—
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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 WATERS—THEY 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. God’s 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 God’s abundant compassion.
2. God’s 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. God’s 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. God’s 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. God’s gracious ones may be regarded as forsaken by the Lord. (Psa_13:1).
God’s free grace keepeth his saints in mind when they seem to be forgotten.
The manifestation of God’s 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 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 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).
God’s method of healing is contrary to that of wounding. Wind, fountains of deep, and windows of heaven are at God’s disposal.
All creatures move with agility and constancy at God’s 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—
“Mercy’s 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 ne’er 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; Noah’s ark was at rest—safe in “the eye of the storm.” And just as the ship’s 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 undisturbed—calm amid tumultuous motion—in “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.”
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain The history of the deluge is alleged in the…
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.
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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.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain Gen 8:1 - Gen 8:22.
Genesis
‘CLEAR SHINING AFTER RAIN’
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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.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain The Flood (continued)
The Flood (continued)
4. The mountains of Ararat] Ararat is the Assyrian 'Urardhu,' the country round Lake Van, in what is now called Armenia; but the word also signifies 'highlands,' and perhaps it is a general expression for the hilly country which lay to the N. of Assyria. Mt. Masis, now called Mt. Ararat (a peak 17,000 ft. high), is not meant here.
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11. The olive leaf indicated that the tree was above water, and as the olive does not grow at a great elevation, the inference was that the waters had greatly abated.
21. The Lord smelled a sweet savour] A common expression for the favourable acceptance of an offering, cp. Lev_1:9, Lev_1:13, Lev_1:17.
I will not again curse, etc.] An acknowledgment of man's innate propensity to evil. If wicked thoughts, desires, and actions were always to be followed by the judgments they merit, disaster would never be far off (Isa_1:5).
22. Practically there are but two seasons in the land where this was written: one may be called Seed-time, Cold, Winter (middle of Sept. to middle of March); the other, Harvest, Heat, Summer (the rest of the year).
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain Noah Remembered
CHAPTER 8
Noah Remembered
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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. Noah’s 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 Spirit’s 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.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain The Flood Subsides
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. During those long days when the lowlands and finally even the uplands and the mountains sank from sight in the terrible and limitless waste of waters, Noah’s faith may often have been tried sorely as to whether he and his family would survive the general destruction. But God did not forget His servant, and in due time He gave him proof to this effect. He caused a wind to pass over the earth in order to take up the moisture of the universal ocean, and the waters no longer rose, but settled, began to subside.
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v. 2. The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained. God shut up the wells of the great deep and closed the windows of the firmament, so that these sources no longer yielded the limitless masses of water. At the same time the rain was hindered from falling, as it may have done intermittently even after the first forty days of deluge.
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. The waters literally went back from off the earth going and returning, with a steady appreciable settling, becoming definitely less at the end of one hundred and fifty days, this number including both the beginning and the end of the Flood.
v. 4. And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. The Lord so arranged matters that the ark settled down, came to a rest, on the mountain range of Ararat, in the highlands of Armenia. This was just five months, or one hundred and fifty days, after the Deluge had commenced. In this mountain range the Great Ararat rises to a height of 16,254 feet, while the Lesser Ararat is about 12,000 feet high. This landing place of the ark is of the highest significance for the development of humanity, for Armenia lies in the middle of the old continent and approximately at an equal distance from the extremities of Asia, Africa, and Europe. Just as the first cradle of the human race had been somewhere in this neighborhood, thus this country was once more chosen by God as the starting point for the new human family.
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. The subsiding of the waters was slow, but steady, until, seventy-three days after the landing of the ark, the summits of the Armenian highlands were visible from Ararat. This was about 223 days after the beginning of the Flood.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 considered Noah
considered Noah
"remembered Noah" or "decided to help Noah"
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ark
This refers to a very large box that would be able to float on water even in a very bad storm. See how you translated this in Genesis 6:14. AT: "a large boat" or "a ship" or "a barge"
The fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven were closed
"The water stopped coming out of the ground and the rain stopped falling." This can be stated in active form. AT: "God closed the fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven" (See: Active or Passive)
fountains of the deep
"water from under the earth." See how this is translated in Genesis 7:11.
the windows of heaven were closed
This refers to the rain stopping. It describes the sky as a ceiling that keeps the waters above it from falling down to the earth. When the windows, or doors, in the sky were closed, the water stopped coming through them. See how "the windows of heaven" is translated in Genesis 7:11. AT: "the sky closed" or "the doors in the sky closed"
translationWords
God
fountain
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 8:1 God remembered: This structural and theological center of…
8:1 God remembered: This structural and theological center of the flood story does not mean that God had at any point forgotten Noah. This is covenant language reflecting God’s faithfulness to his promise to ensure the safety of his covenant partner (cp. 6:18; 9:15-16; Exod 2:24; Lev 26:42, 45). • wind: The same word is translated “Spirit” in Gen 1:2. This and other parallels (see Gen 9:1-2) suggest that the restoration of the earth after the flood was effectively a new creation.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.