Genesis 7:1-12

Ge 7:1

And the LORD said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.

 

Then the LORD tells Noah that he and his family were to enter the ark.  God saw Noah as righteous in that evil generation.  It was not because of what was inside Noah because he had the sin nature as well as all the others but the reason that God saw him as righteous was because he was given grace unto salvation.  God saw Christ in Noah.  Noah was in the Messianic line and through his lineage would come the Messiah.

 

Ge 7:2

Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.

 

Then God gives Noah further instructions.  He was to take clean beasts by sevens which probably means seven pairs since both the males and females are mentioned.  An example of clean animals would have been the oxen, sheep and goats.  This may have been a precursor to the law of Moses which differentiated between the clean and the unclean animals.  Then the unclean animals were to be brought on board by two.  The clean animals were used both for food and for sacrifices.

 

Ge 7:3

Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.

 

Then Noah was to bring the fowls of the air by sevens which were the clean birds and by two the unclean birds just as he did with the land animals.  This was done so there would be seed to continue the line of all the protected animals and birds after the flood was over.

 

Ge 7:4

For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.

 

Noah had seven days to make all the preparations that the LORD commanded him to make and then the deluge would begin as the LORD would make it rain for forty days and nights.  The amount of rain that would fall would be sufficient to bring the flood levels above the highest mountains which were present at the time.  This would mean there would be no place to hide and all living things which the LORD created would eventually die no matter how much someone sought to survive.  Many think the LORD is cruel in this but the bottom line is that the LORD owns the world and all it contains including all the people on it.  If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof. (Psalm 50:12) 

 

Ge 7:5

And Noah did according unto all that the LORD commanded him.

 

Once again Noah did as the LORD commanded him in all things, so the stage was now set for the deluge to begin and the judgment of God to commence.


Ge 7:6

And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth.

 

Noah was five hundred years old when he begat Shem which means Shem was now one hundred years old.  Noah was six hundred years old when the flood waters were upon the earth.  This also means that Noah built the ark in just under one hundred years.


Ge 7:7

And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood.

 

Then the time for the flood began and Noah and his family went in which consisted of his three sons and their wives and Noah’s wife making it a total of eight which in the Bible is the number of new beginnings.  Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water. (1 Peter 3:20) 

 

Ge 7:8

Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth,

 

Then all the clean and unclean beasts of the field followed Noah into the ark along with all the insects and the birds of the air, both clean and unclean.  Once again the fish are not mentioned because they could lie in the waters and were not affected by the sin of man.

 

Ge 7:9

There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.

 

Then the animals did not crowd into the door of the ark but had gone into it in an orderly fashion as God had commanded the animals.  There are some today who believe that the ark is a fantasy because of the amount of animals in the world.  What they fail to realize is that Noah probably took animals who were younger and not fully matured yet which means they were smaller plus the amount of individual species was much smaller than it is today.  For example, when we look today at the number of different types of dogs, many think that Noah took a pair of every breed.  That is not so, he took a pair of dogs and from that pair many new breeds of dogs were formed after the flood.  It is the same thing with all the animals which have many different types today.  Look at the insect world, there are over 8,000 species of spiders alone but all Noah had to do was to take one pair of spiders and from them would come all the different types of spiders in the world.  From Noah’s family came all the different nationalities of people in the world including giants called the Anakim which means Noah had the genes of the giants of the Antediluvian world in him.  Which also were accounted giants, as the Anakims; but the Moabites call them Emims. (Deuteronomy 2:11) 

 

Ge 7:10

And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.

 

As God had previously spoken that in seven days the flood would commence and it did.  Seven in the Bible is also the number of completeness which means the antediluvian world had only seven days left from the time of God’s decree.

 

Ge 7:11

In the six 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.

 

If this calendar follows the Jewish calendar then the second month would be Zif and the seventeenth day would correspond to our May 2.  And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the LORD. (1 Kings 6:1)  Then the water which covered the earth had two distinct sources.  The first one was the great deep which means the water came from underground possibly by major earthquakes which broke up all the aquifers and underground lakes and the second source was the windows of Heaven.  If the canopy would have still been around the earth, then there would have been a closed cloud surrounding the earth and that would mean from every part of that canopy the rain would fall steadily plus we cannot discount the reality that God was creating the water in the clouds and the deep to make sure the earth was completely covered.

 

Ge 7:12

And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

 

It rained steadily for forty days and nights.  All one has to do is look at a hurricane which moves through a country, even a category one, which would dump a massive amount of rain in a short period of time.  Multiply that times forty full days and nights and we can get the understanding of how much rain fell upon the earth to cover it.  During this time there must have been great confusion since the rain and clouds had shrouded the sun and no one was able to tell the difference between night and day but part of God’s  promise was that night and day will always be distinct.  While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. (Genesis 8:22)

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