Noah
- The Story (Genesis 5:29 – 9:29)
- 5:29 Noah’s name means ‘rest,’ expressing Lamech’s hope that God’s curse of the ground (3:17 – 19) would be relieved. See 8:21.
- 6:5 Obviously, this is a generalization that does not include Noah (see 6:8, 11 – 13).
- 6:6 To be ‘sorry’ and ‘grieved,’ God had not anticipated that things would get this bad.
- 6:7 Another generalization, since 8 people and a bunch of animals were on the ark.
- 6:14 Gopherwood probably is cypress. Pitch was used to seal wooden ships for thousands of years.
- 6:15 Assuming that a cubit is 18”, the ark was 450’ x 75’ x 45’.
- 6:16 Window near the top; door in the side; three decks.
- 6:19 Two of each animal – this is modified in 7:2 – 3.
- 6:20 The animals come to Noah; he does not need to capture them.
- 6:21 Noah needed to gather the food for people and animals to last a year.
- 7:2 – 3 Seven clean animals, two unclean. If not for food, at least for sacrifice (8:20).
- 7:11 Waters from below plus rain from above.
- 7:20 The water rose until it was 22.5’ above the mountain peaks.
- 7:24 The flooded condition lasted at least 150 days.
- 8:4 The ark grounded itself on the submerged peaks of the Ararat range as the waters receded.
- 8:5 The water went down slowly for another 2.5 months, when the mountain peaks became visible.
- 8:6 – 12 At about the 9-month mark, Noah started sending out birds to see it anything was growing yet. Finally, a dove brought back an olive leaf, signifying plant growth. Then, the bird did not return, signifying enough food to not come back.
- 8:14 They were on the ark a year and 10 days.
- 8:17 “Be fruitful and multiply” referred to the animals, not the people. See 9:1.
- 8:21 The curse on the ground was lifted. So, before the flood, farming must have been much harder than it is now. Note: ‘Youth’ is the teen-through-thirty age bracket. Many have understood this to mean “from infancy” or “from birth,” but that is not what it says.
- 9:1 Noah’s boys were to repopulate the earth. In 300 years (Abraham’s birth), they could reach 50 million due to lack of war, long lives, and long fertility.
- 9:2 Apparently, the animals had little fear of people before the Flood.
- 9:3 The implication is that people ate only plants before this time, but from this point onward would be omnivorous.
- 9:5 Capital punishment instituted. Cain was not killed for murdering his brother (4:9 – 15).
- 9:11 God promised not to wipe out everything with a world-wide flood again.
- 9:13 – 17 The rainbow is the reminder of this promise. This lends credence to the idea that, prior to the Flood, the ground was watered by dew only (2:5 – 6), and that the rain that began the Flood was the first time. Rainbows are a physical phenomenon caused by light being refracted through raindrops. Assuming that physics did not change with the Flood, rainbows would have happened before the Flood if it had rained.
- Other mentions of Noah
- Isaiah 54:9 God compared the captivities of Israel (Assyria in Isaiah’s time, and Babylon to follow) to the waters of Noah: for cleansing and of short duration.
- Ezekiel 14:14, 20 Noah, Daniel, and Job are given as examples of particularly righteous people who, were they in the Israel of Ezekiel’s day, would not be enough to save the nation, only themselves.
- Hebrews 11:7 “By faith Noah, being divinely instructed of things not yet seen, with reverent circumspection, prepared an ark into the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.”
- 1 Peter 3:20 – 21 “The longsuffering of God waited patiently during the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, into which a few, that is eight souls, were saved through water. This is also an antitype which now saves us – baptism (not the removal of the filth of the flesh but the answer of a good conscience into God), through the resurrection of Jesus Christ…” Note: Noah did not get wet. The Flood rescued him from a sinful world, which is symbolic of how Christians are preserved from a similarly sinful world.
- 2 Peter 2:5 [God] “did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight persons, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the Flood on the world of the ungodly.”
- 2 Peter 3:5 – 6 “For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of hold and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that existed perished, being flooded with water.”