Genesis 7:10-24

SECOND SECTION

The Flood and the Judgment

Genesis 7:10-24

10And it came to pass after seven days [literally, seven of days] that the waters of the flood were upon the earth. 11In the sixth hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. 12And the rain 9 [גשם, heavy rain, imber, cloud-bursting] was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. 13In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark. 14They, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort. 15And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh wherein is the breath of life. 16And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him; and the Lord shut him in. 17And the flood was forty days upon the earth; 18and the waters increased and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth. And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went 19[drove here and there] upon the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered. 20Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. 21And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: 22All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land. 23And every living thing was destroyed [Lange reads יִמַח in Kal, and renders, he destroyed] which was Upon the face of the ground, both man and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth; an Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark. 24And the waters prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty days.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

1. The Time of the Flood. The beginning of the flood is first determined in reference to the age of Noah. It was in the sixth hundredth year of Noah’s life, that is, in the year when the six hundredth year of his life would be completed. The number 600 appears here to have a symbolical meaning, as also the week for his going into the ark. Six is the number of toil and labor. Next there is fixed the date of the beginning: on the seventeenth day of the second month. According to Knobel, must this date be reckoned from the first day of the six hundredth year of Noah’s life. For this there appears no ground here, if we assume that the narrator had in view a known and determined numbering of the months. The question is this—whether the months are to be determined according to the theocratic year, which the Jews kept after the Exodus from Egypt, and which began with Nisan in April (so that the beginning of the flood would have fallen in the month Ijar, or May), or whether it was after the œconomic years’ reckoning, according to which Tisri (September and October) made the end of the year (Exodus 23:16; Exodus 34:32). Rabbi Joshua, Lepsius, and others, are for the theocratic time-reckoning. According to this, the flood began in the month that followed Nisan. Keil and Knobel, on the contrary, are for the œconomic reckoning, according to which the second month would have fallen in our October or November. “Josephus (Antiq. i. 3, 3) has in mind the month named by the Hebrews Marhezvan, which follows after Tisri; so the Targum of Jonathan, as well as Jarchi and Kimchi. The continuous increase, then, or swelling of the waters from the 17th of the second month, to the 17th of the seventh month, a period of five months, or 150 days, would fall in the winter months.” Knobel. Instead of this, we hold that in a cosmical catastrophe, such as the flood appears to have been, the regard paid to the season of the year becomes fallacious; and then we are not here to think of any usual climatic events, such as took place in the case of the Egyptian plagues, though miraculously effected. It appears, therefore, to us, to have no bearing on the case, that the Euphrates and the Tigris fall towards the end of May, and in August and November reach their lowest point, or the consideration that, for the ancients, the winter season was a mournful time of desolation, etc. Knobel. It would seem from Genesis 8:22, that the flood broke through all the ordinary constitution of nature. In the first place must we endeavor to set ourselves right with respect to the connection in the dates as given in our narration. On the 17th day of the second month, then, came the flood, and it rained, from that time on, forty days and forty nights. The consequence was the height of water in the flood which continued for 150 days (Genesis 7:24). Then began the waters to fall, and, on the 17th day of the seventh month, the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat. Thus far five months have passed. On the first day of the 10th month, that is, after about eight months, the tops of the mountains appeared. Finally, in the six hundred and first year of Noah’s age, in the first day of the first month, the ground was becoming dry, and on the seven-and-twentieth day of the next month, it had become wholly dry (Genesis 8:14). From the statement that this ensued in the six hundred and first year of Noah’s age, it cannot follow that his birthday fell on New Year, but only that about one year had elapsed. The extreme end of the flood, however, was ten days after the full year which the flood had continued. Knobel conjectures that the flood was originally reckoned according to the solar year of 365 days, but that the Hebrew narrator, reckoning by lunar years, transposes the account to one year and eleven days (p. 81). That would make the solar year to have been before the lunar year, which seems to us impossible. It would seem to aid, to some extent, in getting a right view of the times of the year, to bear in mind that the dove which Noah let fly the second time brought back a fresh olive-leaf in its mouth (Genesis 8:11). That was probably forty days, and fourteen days, after the first day of the tenth month, and therefore, at all events, towards the end of the eleventh month. If we must regard this fresh olive-leaf as belonging to the spring season, then the beginning of the flood may have well fallen eleven months before, or in the time of May. But this conclusion is insecure, because the olive-leaf, in its budding, is not confined to the spring. For the opposite view, Delitzsch (p. 257) presents something that is specially worthy of notice, namely, that the observation of the earlier œconomic reckoning of time continued among the Jews after the introduction of the theocratic computation. If, however, the flood began with the autumnal rainy season, it must have ceased exactly as the rainy season of the next year commenced. In regard to the reckoning of the year, Knobel remarks that the Hebrews reckoned it according to lunar months, 354 days, other nations by solar months, making 365 days,—for example, the Egyptians and the Persians, and also, in astronomical matters, the Chaldæans.

In regard to the world-year of the flood, the citations of Delitzsch (p. 244) are worthy of attention. The mythologically enlarged numbering of the Babylonians, Delitzsch and others, reduce to the 2500th year before Christ. In respect to the day when the flood commenced, the Babylonian legend gives the 15th of Dasio. This statement favors the Bible reckoning of the year from Nisan (that is, according to the theocratic reckoning), not from Tisri. For a table of the different monthly suns, see Delitzsch, p. 246.

2.Genesis 7:10. The opening of the Flood the shutting up of the Ark. All the fountains of the great deep were broken up. The Niphal or passive form of בקע is to be noticed. It denotes violent changes in the depths of the sea, or in the action of the earth,—at all events, in the atmosphere (see the preceding Section). תהום, the deep of the sea, whose fountains (Job 38:16; Proverbs 8:28) or origins are conditioned by the heights and depths of the earth itself. This fact is placed first. The rain appears to be mentioned as a consequence. “Similar views of water in the interior of the earth found place among the Greeks and Romans; from this, too, many sought to explain the ebb and flow of the tides.” Knobel. Only, here there is expressed no distinct view respecting the fountains of the sea-deep. The expression, too, “the windows of heaven,” is not to be too literally pressed. In the selfsame day entered Noah, etc. That is, by the time of the breaking out of the flood was the difficult embarkation accomplished—happily accomplished. חַיָּה denotes here the wild beast. All birds, all winged creatures, Knobel takes as synonymous. But since the kind is named before, there would seem to be intended a subdivision of the kind, and that what is said relates to birds in a narrower and in a wider sense. As God had commanded him, and the Lord shut him in. Here most distinctly presents itself the contrasting relation of these two names. Elohim gives him the prescription in relation to the pairs of animals for the preservation of the animal world, but Jehovah, the covenant God, shuts him in, that is, makes sure the closing of the ark for the whole voyage, and for the salvation of his people. This inclusion was, at the same time, an exclusion of the race devoted to death.

3.Genesis 7:17. The full Development of the Flood and its Effect, the Destruction of every Living Thing. And the flood was forty days upon the earth. The first forty days denote the full development of the flood, which lifted up the ark and set it in motion. The advance of the flood is measured by reference to the ark. It is lifted up; it is driven on. With the waves she sails, and over the high hills. The last is said in a general acceptation, as a measurement of the height of the flood by the height of the hills. The estimate that seems to be expressed by saying, “fifteen cubits did the waters prevail over the high hills,” would neither give sense if taken literally, since the high hills have very different heights, nor could it mean that the flood was fifteen cubits above the highest mountain on the earth. But since now Noah could hardly have sailed directly over the highest mountain of the earth, much less have known the fact, we must suppose that this exact estimate was imparted to himself, or to some later writer, through direct revelation—an idea which is little in harmony with the true character of a divine revelation. We must, therefore, suppose that the epic-symbolical view according to which the flood rose high over all the mountains of the earth, became connected with the tradition that Noah found out the measure denoted, by some kind of reference to the mountain on which the ark settled. Knobel: “The representation may amount to this: since the ark drew about fifteen cubits water, its first settling on Ararat in the falling of the flood would give that measure. The 150 days, within which the destruction was accomplished, include the forty days of storm at the beginning. According to Genesis 8:2, the rain continued all through these 150 days. Still must we distinguish its more moderated continuance from the first storm of rain in the forty days.” In respect to the universality of the flood, see Keil, whose judgment about it is similar to that of Ebrard, whereas Delitzsch is unwilling to insist upon it as an article of faith, especially the geographical universality (p. 260). Compare the preceding Section.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. The threatenings of God are as certain as his promises; for God’s word is certain. As sure, however, as is the word of God, so sure is faith in its holy fear, its holy confidence and joy.
2. As God has provided help and deliverance for men by means of exposed infants, or abandoned orphans, so also through old men, as in the case of Abraham, Moses, Noah. The like wonders happen in all times.
3. When the necessity is greatest, then is the help at the nearest, and the highest. When sin (and the flood) become most powerful, then grace, and the miracles of grace, become most mighty for deliverance.
4. The safe embarkation of a little world in the ark before the breaking out of the flood. A wonderful instinct, a still more wonderful procession, a wonderful peace as the consequence of a wonderful terror.
5. The animal-world in the ark, type and symbol of the animal-world in general: the mention of man and woman, man and wife, presents prominently the fact that the ark was to become the point of departure for new generations.
6. Jehovah shut him in. The innermost motive for the salvation of every living thing is God’s covenant with his own. Christ is here the head and star of history.

7. The ark, with its souls, in the waters of the great flood (sintflut), which was at the same time a sin-flood (sündflut), a destroying flood of wrath and judgment; in like manner Moses in the ark upon the Nile, and Christ on the cross and in the grave. There are moments in which the kingdom of God seems lost, or in the most fearful peril, and yet is it all the more securely hidden and protected in the truthfulness of God himself, in the everlasting love he has for his people.

8. The terror of judgment in the flood immensely great, and yet not equal to the terror of the last judgment-day (1 Peter 3:4).

9. The waters of the flood as a symbol of the judgment of redemption, of the baptism at the world’s end, and generally, of the passage of believers with Christ through death to life (Psa 69:77), is to be distinguished from the waters of the sea as the symbol of peoples and nations, their births and revolutions, as compared with the kingdom of God (Job 19:93; Daniel 27:7; Revelation 13:1).

10. The most fearful sorrows are measured by comparing them with the height of water in the flood, and the hardest days of sorrow are reckoned as the days of the deluge.
11. The symbolic of the forty days. Four is the number of the world, ten the number of the completed development. It therefore denotes the fulness of the world-times, and of the world’s judgment.
12. God’s dominion as great as God himself.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

See the preceding. The embarkation into the ark. Jehovah’s shutting in. The measured deeps of terror, the numbered days of trouble. The ark as the cradle of the new human race rocked by the billows: 1. a frail chest, an infinitely precious content; 2. fearfully threatened, securely protected; trembling in the deep abyss of waters, lifted high on the wave of consecration. The help of God in the floods of distress. The watery grave: 1. deep for the human eye; not too deep for the eye of God. The sea, too, shall give up her dead. Noah’s faith; its grandeur: as in contrast, 1. to the universal apostasy, 2. to the impending judgment, 3. to its once great task and labor, 4. to the sport of the world, 5. to the terrors of the flood, 6. to the terrors of the animal world inclosed with him—the ark a lion’s den. Noah in the floating ark, and Moses. Both, though seeming lost, preserved for the greatest things.

Starke: As God suffered the waters to increase gradually, so had the ungodly time for repentance; a thing which may, perhaps, have happened in the case of many, so that the soul was saved in the destruction of the flesh. According to this, it would be false what the Jews say of the men who perished in the flood, that they have neither part in the eternal life, nor in the resurrection of the dead,—a conclusion which they draw from an improper interpretation of Genesis 6:3. It may be easily believed that the fish in great part died, not because the waters were seething hot, as the Rabbins say, but because, with the fresh water, there mingled itself the salt, which is contrary to the nature of many kinds of fish.

Lisco: God shut Noah in; so was the pressure into the ark prevented as against the godless, whilst Noah was made safe.

Gerlach: The clean beasts. Before their use as food they were offered in sacrifice, devoted to God; partly because in each enjoyment thanks should be offered to God, and partly because thereby even the enjoyment itself becomes sanctified.

Calwer, Handbuch: The first judgment of the world through water, the last through fire (2Pe 8:6). So sinks the old world in its grave. Jehovah, the trusted, shuts him in. So, too, watches over us the shepherd of Israel, who slumbers not nor sleepeth. Schröder: There seest thou that all the words of God have the power of an oath (Val. Herberger). A night of death reigns over a world abandoned to its doom. Because the earth was corrupt, morally, the Lord destroys it—(that is, gives it up to physical corruption). So Luther. To say the fountains were broken up, and the flood-gates were opened, is a biblical mode of speech whereby is expressed the fact, that the waters were not suffered to flow in their wonted manner (Calvin). The Lord preserved the ark and Noah therein as a treasure (Verleb. Bibel).

Footnotes:

[7][Genesis 7:11. נִבְקְעוּ, a very strong word. Sudden cleaving; used of the earthquake or earth-cleaving, Numbers 16:31; ZaGen Genesis 14:4. Hence the noun בִּקְעָה, a valley, as though the Hebrews had some notion of valleys having their origin in fissures or violent separations of the earth. Comp. Habakkuk 3:9, נְהָרוֹת תְּבַקַּצ אָרֶץ, “Thou didst cleave the earth with rivers”—or floods. T. L.]

[8][Genesis 7:11. אֲרֻבֹּת windows, openings—general sense very clear from parallel passages, such as Isaiah 60:5 and Ecclesiastes 12:3, though in the latter passage it is used metaphorically of the eyes as the windows of the body. LXX., κ́αταῤῥάκται, Syriac, ܒܿܣܒ̈ܐ, or pourers. T. L.]

[9][Genesis 7:12. גֶּשֶׁם, the very great rain, that which comes down in a body, as it were. מָטָר denotes the common rain, except when this word is joined with it, as in Job 37:6, מְטַר גֶשֶׁם, and in ZaGen Genesis 10:1,—when it is intensified. In the Arabic, جشم is never used for the rain, but it keeps the primary sense of magnitude, weight, density, pinguis, crassus. T. L.]

[10][Genesis 7:13. בְּצֶצֶם הַיּוֹם, in ipso die, in that very day. It denotes a statistical particularity, which takes this account entirely out of the legendary or mythical view. It is most exactly true, or it is the boldest of forgeries in every unit and decimal employed in its reckonings. T. L.]

[11][Genesis 7:14. וְכָל חַחַיָּה—וְכָל הָרֶמֶשׂ. It need only be remarked that all the alls, here and elsewhere, in this account, are to be taken as unlimited, or as specific, according to the view we are compelled, from other considerations, to form of the universality or partiality of the flood itself. Elsewhere only the בְּהֵמָה are mentioned, as is noticed by Dr. Murphy, p. 212, and there is good reason to regard it here as specifically limiting the more general word חיה before it. Their coming to the ark by pairs was evidently supernatural, but this in no respect affects the other question. T. L.]

[12][Genesis 7:23. עַל פְּנֵי הָאֲדָמָה. Rendered in our Version, “on the face of the ground.” Rather, “on the face of the Adamah,” the word, in the Chapter s before, used for the inhabited territory in distinction from ארץ, as in Genesis 4:14;—ארץ, in that connection, being used for the wide, unknown earth, into which Cain feared he should be driven, as a wanderer and a vagabond. The use of אֲרָמָה here certainly seems to imply some territorial limitation. Even when ארץ occurs, it may be better rendered land, indefinitely, than with that idea of totality which our modern knowledge makes us attach to it. See further on this in the Excursus, at the end of the account. T. L.]

[13][Dasios was the eighth month of the Babylonian and Macedonian year. See the Table of Delitzsch, p. 246. T. L.]

[14] “ The great deep,” תּהוֹם רַבָּה, Genesis 7:21. Comp. Genesis 1:2; Proverbs 8:27-28; Job 38:16; Psalms 104:6; Jonah 2:6; Isaiah 51:10, and other places. Sometimes tehom is joined with ים, and seems to be used as synonymous with the great sea, as in Psalms 104:6; Jonah 2:5; but for the primary idea we must look to Genesis 1:2. In creation, it was all water, or fluid (so conceived). Afterwards the land (the solid) is commanded to appear, and the waters are gathered to one place, מָקוֹם אֶחָר, whether it means the surface sea, or the supposed great abyss beneath. In the poetical parts of the Bible, the conception is that of the earth (the land or ground) as built upon the waters lying below. It was the contrast to the heavens or skies above, as in Proverbs 8:28, בְּאַמְּצוֹ שְׁחָקִים מִמָּעַל בַּעַזוֹז עֵינוֹת תִּהוֹם. In regard to all this, it may be said, that the Bible is responsible neither for Neptunian nor Plutonian theories. Facts are given, but they are presented according to the conceptions of the day. Water gushed from the earth, and the writer describes it by saying that the fountains of the tehom rabba, the great deep, were broken up. Aside from the traditional creative account, nothing could have been more natural than the idea that the interior earth, or the space under the earth (whatever notions might have been had of the earth’s shape or support), was a region of water. It was a direct deduction (true or false) from the phenomena of springs and wells,—and that, by a process strictly Baconian. Afterwards, but very early, the sight of volcanoes (see Psalms 104:32) must have given also the idea of interior fire. We know, even yet, hardly any thing about it. Researches on the surface, or shell, of the globe, have given us much curious knowledge as to its progressive surface-formation, and the great periods which it indicates; but beyond this, our knowledge of the vast interior is about as great as that which one who had pierced half through the shell of an egg, would, by such means alone, have obtained of that most curious structure. He might conjecture that there was heat and fluid there, but that would be all. Perhaps it is well that we have so little means of penetrating this vast unknown. We could not rest very securely if we knew all that was going on inside the earth, or had even a glimpse of the surging, boiling, or burning, that may be taking place ten miles, or even ten furlongs, right beneath our feet. There is a tehom rabba there, filled with something that might make a rapid ruin of our earth, if we had nothing to trust to but the unknown nature, and no other insurance against it but our much-lauded science. Our only secure trust is in One in whom we believe, as having a higher than a physical purpose in the continuance of the earth,—one who “binds the floods from overflowing,” and the fires from yet bursting forth.

This conception of the tehom rabba is most graphically presented Genesis 49:25. It is there called הַּחַת תְּהוֹם רֹבֶצֶת, “the abyss couchant below,” like a wild beast crouching down and ready to spring upon his prey, just as in Genesis 4:7 sin is described as רֹנֵץ, ready to spring upon a man at any moment. In the Arabian tradition the waters are represented as coming out of an oven (the vaulted interior earth), and as being boiling hot. See Koran, Surat 11:41, إِنَ ا جَآء أهْى ُذَـا وَ ذَـا رَ ألتذٌـو ز,

“when our command went forth, then boiled the furnace.” This came from the idea of Geysers, or hot springs, and may have had some truth in it, since it does not detract from Scripture to suppose that there may have been other minor facts respecting the flood, preserved in other and independent accounts. Sale says that the Arabians got this from the Jews; and so also Reckendorf states in the Introduction to his Hebrew translation of the Koran, citing from the Talmud (Sanhedrin), but this does not bear them out, since the word רותח, there used, means simply the effervescence or tumultuous boiling motion which Maimonides says came from the violence of the eruption, and not from heat. It is by him, and the Talmud, compared with the violent fermentations and eruptions of sensuality that brought on such an outbursting flood as a fitting judgment; and so says Rabbi Hasada, in the passage quoted from the Sanhedrin: “They corrupted everything (ברותחין), in the boiling sensuality of their transgression, and by the boilings of an all-destroying water wore they judged.” Such a mode of interpretation is peculiarly Rabbinical, but the fact of hot eruptions (like those of the Icelandic geysers) may well have been, or of boiling water, as the Arabian account states it. T.L.]