Genesis 7

The Flood Covers the Earth
1“*Finally, the day came when the **LORD said to Noah, "***Go into the ****boat with all your family, for among all the people of the earth, I consider you alone to be righteous.”
* - “Finally” – After 120 years of Noah and his sons building the ark and preparing for the flood, with no further word from the Lord! 100 years of preaching – to no avail. Methuselah was on his deathbed.
** “LORD” = “Yahweh”. Previous verses, was “Elohim”.
*** “Go” - Original is “Come”, not “Go” – because God would be in the ark with them. Jesus asleep in the boat during the storm – the disciples had forgotten the lesson of Noah.
**** “boat” (ark) – Noah had prepared an ark “to the saving of his house” – Hebrews 11:7.

2“Take along seven pairs of each animal that I have approved for eating and for sacrifice, and take one pair of each of the others.”
Pairs of every species of land animals, except were to be taken for the preservation of their respective kinds. This was the general rule of admission, only with regard to those animals which are "clean," three pairs were to be taken, whether of beasts or birds; and the reason was that their rapid multiplication was a matter of the highest importance, when the earth should be renovated, for their utility either as articles of food or as employed in the service of man. But what was the use of the seventh? It was reserved for sacrifice; and so that both during Noah's residence in the ark, and after his return to dry land, provision was made for celebrating the rites of worship according to the religion of fallen man.

3“Then select *seven pairs of every kind of **bird. There must be a male and a female in each pair to ensure that ***every kind of living creature will survive the flood.”
* “seven” - Already it is clear that there are distinct types of animals and birds considered suitable for sacrifice and for eating.
** “bird” refers to clean birds rather than all birds, being a parallel with verse 2 in abbreviated form.

*** “every kind of living creature will survive” – indicating a universal flood, not a local flood.

4“*One week from today I will begin **forty days and forty nights of rain. And I will ***wipe from the earth all the living things I have created."”
* “One week” = 7 days. The number of days given for getting all the living creatures aboard is seven, the number of divine perfection. The world began in seven ‘days’, now preparations for its decease will also take ‘seven days’. This also gives 7 extra days for man to repent (like the 7 years of tribulation). This also gave 7 days of mourning for Methuselah as in Gen 50:10 with Joseph. A week for a world to repent!
The seven days was needed in order to get all the living things into the ark in readiness for the Flood, and it would seem to have taken up the whole time, for once they were in ‘on that very day’ the Flood came (v.11-13).
** “forty” – ‘Forty days and forty nights’ will later be significant as a period when men of God wait on God at special moments in history (Moses - Exodus 24.18; 34,28; Deuteronomy 9.9, 18; Elijah - 1 Kings 19.8; and Jesus Himself - Matthew 4.2 and parallels). Perhaps that idea looks back to this time. The mention of both days and nights shows the intensity of the experience. It is unceasing. ‘Forty days’ had probably already begun to mean an unspecified period of a little over a month, as it certainly would later as a period of waiting for judgment (Ezekiel 4.6; Jonah 3.4) or as a more general period of waiting (Numbers 13.25; 1 Samuel 17.16 - both significant periods of waiting for Israel). So what God is saying here (and what He probably originally said before it was translated into numbers) is that it will rain for over a moon period of days and nights. But the mention of nights stresses the continuity of it.
Today, even 40 straight days of constant heavy rain would not be adequate for a universal flood. So, there had to be at the time and enormous amount of water in the sky and subterranean.
*** “wipe from the earth” – “kol yeyum” – literally “all existence” or “all that grows up”.
5“So Noah did exactly as the LORD had commanded him.”

6“He was 600 years old when the flood came,”

7“and he went aboard the boat to escape--he and his wife and his sons and their wives.”
There is as yet no rain, but in full obedience Noah and his sons carry out the task of entering the ark, a process which clearly took seven days with all the creatures to get aboard, and they take their wives with them. This links the sons in obedience with their father. It was as well they obeyed promptly.
8“With them were all the various kinds of animals--those approved for eating and sacrifice and those that were not--along with all the birds and other small animals.”

9“They came into the boat in *pairs, male and female, just as **God had commanded Noah.”
* “pairs” - The emphasis here is on the fact that the creatures were in pairs, both male and female, whether pairs of two or pairs of sevens, to stress God’s determination to repopulate the earth. Previously it had been ‘two of every sort’, compared with ‘two and two’ here. Elohim is used in order to refer the reader back to God’s command in 6.19 with verse 22. (Note however that it was as Yahweh that God referred to the distinction between clean and unclean (7.2) - thus both names are in use by the one writer).
** “God” = “Elohim”
10“One week later, the flood came and covered the earth.”
Noah had been told to commence entry into the ark seven days previously (7:1), but it is clear that the task took the whole seven days allotted so that it was finally completed on the very day the Flood came, and on that day the final creature entered the ark, and Noah and his family went in for the last time.
If this were not a world-wide flood, wouldn’t it have been simpler just to migrate from the area?

11“When Noah was 600 years old, on the *seventeenth day of the second month, the **underground waters ***burst forth on the earth, and the rain fell in mighty torrents from the sky.”

*“seventeenth day of the second month” – This would be late November or December so that Noah had had a harvest just before, from which to supply his ark.

** “underground waters” – Waters emerging from fountains and springs. Subterranean reservoirs.
Prov 8:24 “I was born before the oceans were created, before the springs bubbled forth their waters.”
Job 38:16 “Have you explored the springs from which the seas come? Have you walked about and explored their depths?”
Ps 33:7 “He gave the sea its boundaries and locked the oceans in vast reservoirs.”
Ps 104:9 “Then you set a firm boundary for the seas, so they would never again cover the earth.”
*** “burst forth” – literally “cleaved open”. Happened before the rain started. Probably, coincidental with volcanoes and earthquakes. All the dust spewed into the atmosphere probably would have seeded the clouds and begun the rain. If the fountains of the great deep were the major source of the waters, then they must have been a huge source of water. Some have suggested that when God made the dry land appear from under the waters on the third day of creation, some of the water that covered the earth became trapped underneath and within the dry land

On the day the flood began, there was a "breaking up" of the fountains, which implies a release of the water, possibly through large fissures in the ground or in the sea floor. The waters that had been held back burst forth with catastrophic consequences.
There are many volcanic rocks interspersed between the fossil layers in the rock record -- layers that were obviously deposited during Noah's flood. So it is quite plausible that these fountains of the great deep involved a series of volcanic eruptions with prodigious amounts of water bursting up through the ground. It is interesting that up to 70 percent or more of what comes out of volcanoes today is water, often in the form of steam.
In their catastrophic plate tectonics model for the flood, Austin et al. have proposed that at the onset of the flood, the ocean floor rapidly lifted up to 6,500 feet (2,000 meters) due to an increase in temperature as horizontal movement of the tectonic plates accelerated. This would spill the seawater onto the land and cause massive flooding -- perhaps what is aptly described as the breaking up of the "fountains of the great deep."
The other source of the waters for Noah's flood was "the windows of heaven."
The Genesis 7:11 reference to the windows of heaven being opened has been interpreted as the collapse of such a water vapor canopy, which somehow became unstable and fell as rain. Volcanic eruptions associated with the breaking up of the fountains of the great deep could have thrown dust into the water vapor canopy, causing the water vapor to nucleate on the dust particles and make rain.
Some have suggested that the vapor canopy caused a greenhouse effect before the Flood with a pleasant sub tropical-to-temperate climate all around the globe, even at the poles where today there is ice. This would have caused the growth of lush vegetation on the land all around the globe. The discovery of coal seams in Antarctica containing vegetation that is not now found growing at the poles, but which obviously grew under warmer conditions, was taken as support for these ideas.
A vapor canopy would also affect the global wind systems. Also, the mountains were almost certainly not as high before the flood as they are today, as we shall see. In today's world, the major winds and high mountain ranges are a very important part of the water cycle that brings rain to the continents. Before the flood, however, these factors would have caused the weather systems to be different.
12“The rain continued to fall for forty days and forty nights.”

13“But Noah had gone into the boat that very day with his wife and his sons--Shem, Ham, and Japheth--and their wives.”

14“With them in the boat were pairs of every kind of breathing animal--domestic and wild, large and small--along with birds and flying insects of every kind.”

15“Two by two they came into the boat,”

16“male and female, just as *God had commanded. Then the **LORD shut them in.
literally, "covered him round about." The "shutting him in" intimated that Noah had become the special object of divine care and protection, and that to those without the season of grace was over.

* “God” = “Elohim”
** “LORD” = “Yahweh”. Note that it was God that closed and sealed the door – not Noah! Salvation by grace not works. We are sealed by him.

17“For forty days the floods prevailed, covering the ground and lifting the boat high above the earth”.

18“As the waters rose higher and higher above the ground, the boat floated safely on the surface.”

19“Finally, the water *covered even the highest **mountains on the earth,”
“covered” = “prevailed” in the KJV. Literally, “were overwhelmingly mighty”. Job 12:15 says the waters “overturned the earth.”
** “mountains” - No high mountains, such as Everest?

20“standing more than twenty-two feet* above the highest peaks.”
* “twenty-two feet” = Hebrew 15 cubits. Half the height of the ark.
21“All the living things on earth died--birds, domestic animals, wild animals, all kinds of small animals, and all the people.”

22“Everything died that breathed and lived on dry land.”


23“Every living thing on the earth was wiped out--people, animals both large and small, and birds. They were all destroyed, and only Noah was left alive, along with those who were with him in the boat”.

24“And the water *covered the earth for 150 days.”
* “covered” – again “prevailed”.
For five moon cycles there was no let up. The rain may now not be quite so severe and continuous, the tidal waves may now sweep in in lesser measure, but the waters did not begin to decrease. The new moon came and went, and came again, but the Flood continued in its intensity. How carefully they must have watched the moon through its cycle again and again, until it must have seemed that the cataclysm would never end, for there was no lowering of the level of the water. And then God’s time came.