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About Jesus Steve Sweetman Chapter 7 The
Flood In
the NIV, chapter 7 continues on under the same title as chapter 6 –
The Flood. In
verse 1 God told Noah that it was time to go into the ark, and that he
should now take the rest of his family.
God once again makes the point that Noah is a righteous man in
his generation. Noah wasn't
sinless, but he was righteous due to the fact that he trusted God with
his life. Hebrews 11:7 tells
us that. In
verse 2 God tells Noah to "take seven of every clean animal, both
male and female." I
take this to mean that Noah
was to take seven pairs of clean animals.
One thing we need to notice here is the words "clean
animals." This is the
first mention of clean animals. The
Law of Moses speaks of clean and unclean animals.
Yet here we have clean animals mentioned a few hundred years
before the law came into existence.
This is just another example that much of the Law of Moses was
already known to people before Moses' day. Somehow, in some place, God
must have told someone what animals were clean and what animals were
unclean. As I have said
before, much of the Law of Moses was already around before Moses.
It was only codified in the written law in Moses' day. One
thing to note here is that clean and unclean animals are associated with
two things in the Law of Moses, and probably well before the law.
Clean and unclean animals are associated with food and
sacrifices. Besides
the clean animals, God told Moses to take only 2 pairs of unclean
animals into the ark. It
seems that God was more
interested in the reproduction of clean animals.
Clean animals were animals that had cleft hoofs and chewed the
cud. All other animals were
unclean. There were separate
designations for birds. There's
differences in thinking when it comes to just why God made these
designations with animals. Some
say for dietary reasons, others for moral reasons. It might well be a
combination of both. We do know that in Acts 10 God told Peter that all
animals were clean in His eyes. So
it would appear that clean and unclean animals were only a temporary
designation. Clean
and unclean animals are only part of a larger discussion concerning
cleanness itself. People
could be clean or unclean. Situations
and circumstances could be clean and unclean.
Much of this concerned moral issues.
Some unclean situations concerned the shedding of blood, in
murder, in child birth, in a woman's period, and so on.
This topic is a large topic and I won't get involved in that now.
Verse
3 is a duplication of verse 2 except the clean and
unclean are birds and not animals. In
verse 4 God tells Noah a bit more of his plan.
Once Noah, his family, and the animals were in the ark, God said
that it would rain in seven days. Why
God made Noah wait in the ark for seven days I don't know, but I know
seven is an important number, and I'm sure God has His reasons, and I'm
quite sure that it is prophetic in some sense of the word.
Verse
4 also states that it would rain for forty days and forty nights. Forty
is another one of those special Biblical numbers.
It's associated with testing and judgment. Verse
5 tells us that Noah "did all that the Lord had commanded
him." Why did
Noah obey God? Hebrews 11:7
tells us that he feared God and trusted God to do as He said He would
do. Fear and trust in God are very important if you want to be a Godly
and righteous person. When
the text uses the word "fear", I believe it means being
afraid, not just reverence. Noah
was afraid not to put his trust in God.
He was afraid of the consequences if he didn't
In
verse 6 the text says that Noah was 600 years old when it started to
rain. By my calculations,
according to the genealogy of chapter
5, the year was 1056. That's not 1056 B.C., but 1056 years from the
creation of Adam, that 's assuming the genealogy of chapter 5 is as it
is stated. Some scholars
suggest that there is more to the genealogy than what is stated due to
the fact that the Hebrew word for "father" and
"grandfather" is the same word.
Verse
7 simply states that Noah, his wife, and his family entered the ark to
"escape the flood." The
word "escape" is important here.
That is what salvation is all about.
It is escaping God's wrath. I've
asked people before what it means to be saved.
What are we actually saved from?
Many have a hard time answering this question.
People give varying answers, but the simple fact is that we are
escaping God's wrath, and in that sense of the word, we are escaping God
Himself. Verse
9 tells us that all the
animals and birds came to the ark and entered the ark with Noah.
Some say that God told the animals to come to the ark. Other's
say that since man still probably had authority over the animals, Noah
asked them into the ark. It
might well be a combination of both.
Most likely many of these animals came from a distance.
God probably communicated with them so that they instinctively
knew to go to the ark, as birds instinctively know to fly south in the
winter. Verse
10 confirms the word of the Lord. In
seven days the flood waters came to the earth.
In
verse 11 we learn that when Noah was 600 years old the flood waters
began to cover the earth. I've
figured the date to be 1056, that is, 1056 years after Adam was created.
As I've mentioned earlier,
this was the same year that Methuselah died.
Most scholars feel, and it is Jewish tradition, that Methuselah
was not alive when the flood came. Verse
11 says that "the springs of the great deep burst open."
These words are very significant, especially in light of modern
science which says that much of the
present geological structure of the earth is due to events that
took place millions of years ago. The Hebrew word translated as
"burst open" here means "to cleave and then to
open." This is the
picture. There
were large and massive underground rivers.
I might even suggest that these rivers might actually be oceans
since the word "deep" is used to describe this water.
The word deep is used in Genesis 1:2 to describe the water that
covered the whole earth. So
to me, there was an underground ocean and it exploded upward to the
surface of the earth by way of millions of streams.
The Hebrew word means "to cleave, and then to burst
open." To me that
suggests lots of pressure. The
underground ocean was shut up, the streams were cleaved, or tightly
closed and at one certain point in time, at God's command, the streams
were loosened and there was a massive explosion of water upward to the
surface of the earth. Along
with this water was the rain that came from another massive body of
water that enveloped the earth above the sky as seen in the Genesis 1
creation account. The water
from above and the water from beneath would have done serious damage to
the earth. The earth's
geological structure would have certainly gone through great change
because of the flood. The
flood was not a prolonged gentle rain. Verse
12 tells us that the rain fell on the earth for forty days and forty
nights. That's a lot of
rain. That shows us how much
water there actually was above our sky at that time.
This was God's judgment on the earth.
I think this was one major rain storm, such a rain storm that has
never since been seen. Verse
13 says that "on that very day" Noah and his family entered
the ark. It's a little
confusing to me just when Noah and the rest of his family entered the
ark. In verse 1 God told
Noah to enter the ark with his family and the animals.
In verse 4 God told Noah that in seven days it would start
raining. Verse 7 says that
Noah, his family, and the animals entered the ark.
Verse 10 then says that in seven days it started to rain as God
predicted it would. On the
surface this suggests to me that Noah, his family, and the animals were
in the ark for seven days before it began to rain.
Yet that being said, verses 11 and 13 tells us that on the 17th
day of the second month it began to rain, and on that very day Noah and
his family entered the ark. This
suggests that they entered the ark on the day it began to rain, not
seven days earlier. I'm not
one hundred percent sure how to correlate these events.
It might be possible that it took Noah seven days to get all the
animals into the ark. Maybe
he began that process the day God told him to load up the animals. Verse
14 speaks of the three different types of animals that entered the ark.
This list of three appears in Genesis 1 in the creation account.
They are, livestock, wild animals, and creatures that move along
the ground. It's still
somewhat unclear to me why there is a distinction between livestock and
wild animals. My only guess
is that livestock are those animals that man has specific dealings with,
possibly for milk for one example. In
verse 15 we note that pairs of all creatures that "have the breath
of life in them" came to Noah.
Once again we note that these animals "came to Noah."
In relation to this, chapter 6 verse 19 God told Noah, "you
bring" the animals to the ark.
Chapter 6 verse 20 says that these animals "will come to
you." Chapter 7,
verse 2 God told Noah, "take with you …," as in , you take
the animals. Putting all
these verses together suggests to me that the animals came to Noah.
So maybe God led them to Noah.
Once they came to Noah they followed his command to enter the ark
and Noah put them inside. So
how the animals got into the ark is a combination of God and Noah. Here
we see the words "breath of life."
In the creation account we know that God breathed into man the
breath of life (Genesis 2:7).
Genesis 1:30 tells us that the animals had the breath of life in
them as well, although there is no written record that God breathed into
them. God actually created them in a secondary way.
He told the earth to create the animals.
Nevertheless, animals, like man have the breath of life in them.
I've suggested that when God breathed into man, something of God
was placed into man, and because animals have the breath of life in them
as well, I'd also have to say that something of God was placed in
animals at creation as well. At
this point animals became a living soul as did man when man received the
breath of life from God. This
suggests to me that animals, having a living soul, are eternal and
spiritual like man. They
weren't created in God's likeness and image as man was, but they had to
have become a living soul. The
thing that distinguishes man from animals is that man was created in
God's likeness and image while animals weren't. Verse
17 says that once all the animals were in, "the Lord shut the
door." I wouldn't
think that Noah would have had the capability to shut the door from the
inside, but nonetheless, God made sure the door was shut, because He
shut it tight. And so it is
with our salvation. As Noah
and the rest were saved by God closing the door, so we are saved by the
door that is closed on us, and that door is Jesus as seen in John 10. Verse
17 confirms the fact that the rain fell for forty days straight.
Verse
18 tells us that the flood waters rose greatly and that the ark floated
on top of the water. Verse
19 tells us that the waters covered all the high mountains on the earth.
This tells me that prior to the flood that there were mountains.
I believe these mountains came into existence in the creation
account when God separated the dry land from the seas.
We see in verse 20 just how high the waters got.
The water rose about twenty feet about the highest mountain top.
That's a lot of water. That's
a major flood with major capabilities of changing the structure of the
earth. Verse
21 to 23 tells us that every living creature on the earth, and all the
birds perished. Once again,
there is no mention of fish perishing here. Verse
22 specifically says that "everything on dry land that had the
breath of life in its nostrils died."
This is a point for the argument that fish did not die.
First of all, they don't have nostrils, and second of all, they
don't live on dry land. Verse
24 tells us that the waters flooded the earth for 150 days.
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