A Christian's Guide to Studying and Applying the Old Testament
Text: Genesis 8:1-19 (NKJV)
1 Then God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters subsided. 2 The fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven were also stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained. 3 And the waters receded continually from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters decreased. 4 Then the ark rested in the seventh month, the seventeenth day of the month, on the mountains of Ararat. 5 And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month. In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen.
6 So it came to pass, at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made. 7 Then he sent out a raven, which kept going to and fro until the waters had dried up from the earth. 8 He also sent out from himself a dove, to see if the waters had receded from the face of the ground. 9 But the dove found no resting place for the sole of her foot, and she returned into the ark to him, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took her, and drew her into the ark to himself. 10 And he waited yet another seven days, and again he sent the dove out from the ark. 11 Then the dove came to him in the evening, and behold, a freshly plucked olive leaf was in her mouth; and Noah knew that the waters had receded from the earth. 12 So he waited yet another seven days and sent out the dove, which did not return again to him anymore.
13 And it came to pass in the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, that the waters were dried up from the earth; and Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and indeed the surface of the ground was dry. 14 And in the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dried.
15 Then God spoke to Noah, saying, 16 “Go out of the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons’ wives with you. 17 Bring out with you every living thing of all flesh that is with you: birds and cattle and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, so that they may abound on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.” 18 So Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him. 19 Every animal, every creeping thing, every bird, and whatever creeps on the earth, according to their families, went out of the ark.
Devotional Thoughts and Commentary:
As the Flood had begun with an act of God, so did it end. Initially, God "remembered" not in the sense that He had forgotten about Noah but that He took action based on the knowledge of Noah's (and the other creatures') plight in the Ark. This is the turning point of the Flood narrative both in literary format and the actual content of the story. God's judgment on the inhabitants of the Earth had come to a close, and now God looks toward the repopulating of Earth by the survivors.
Where is this land feature called the "mountains of Ararat (אֲרָרַט)" that the Ark came to rest upon, and can't we find the Ark to provide conclusive proof of the Biblical story today? It is difficult to put exact locations on the map for ancient locations with proper names. Man made places (such as cities) are easier to pin down since archaeology often finds names carved into walls or in records at archaeological digs, but this is still not easy. The most likely location is in modern Armenia near the center of the country above the plains of Araxes on a roughly 12,000' peak. This fits both with the minimal internal evidence in the Biblical account as well as tradition and logic. That area is an interesting place for the repopulation of mankind on the Earth after the Flood. Because of the location along land and sea routes, it really was the ideal location for mankind to spread out to the continents for repopulation.
As I mentioned in my last post, the flooding actually lasted for 314 days.
The passage closed with God giving a command not only to Noah but to all the inhabitants of the Ark. This command was already embedded within the genetics of all those creatures, but given the rebellion of sinful man, God spelled it out for him to make sure. They were commanded to bear young, to repopulate the Earth. This command was obeyed, and with the longevity of the human lifespan, the Earth repopulated relatively quickly.
An interesting question regards what was eaten after the dispersal from the Ark. Now, it is easy to accept that the animals were fed and supernaturally calmed from the desire to eat each other while on the Ark; however, what happened after they left the Ark? Wouldn't the lions just have eaten the sheep pretty fast? Well, it seems safe to assume that there were a lot of freshly dead sea animals left high and dry. This would have provided some food quickly. However, I guess that the long-term (a couple of years) answer was supernatural intervention. If one accepts the rest of this narrative, that isn't really much of a leap for an omnipotent God, is it?
There is something interesting to note in Genesis 8:19. Though Carolous Linnaeus is credited with the modern biological system of taxonomical classification, Genesis provides some better insight. In Genesis 2:19-20, we see that Adam originally gave the names to the various animal species. Not so much "Great Dane" as "dog," but this is the origin of biological taxonomy. Then, as the animals emerged from the Ark, we see that they went out "according to their families." It would seem that this was a technical classification as much as a parental unit. The animals went out with those of their same kind. This is both logical as we see it happen in flocks and packs every day, but it is also quite an interesting designation. In this case, the term best translated as "families" most closely aligns with our modern classification(s) of "species" and/or "genus."
Applications:
The applications here are again mostly intellectual. Know what the Bible says, believe it, and then apply it to your worldview. What holds the authoritative truth in your mind? Is it God who gave us the revelation of Himself in the Bible or the claims of pseudoscience masquerading as true science?
Other Studies from Genesis
"Herme- what?" How to Understand the Bible
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