Genesis 7

1. AND the LORD said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I 2 seen righteous before me in this generation. Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee 3 seven and seven, the male and his female; and of the beasts that are not clean two, the male 4 and his female; of the fowl also of the air, seven and seven, male and female: to keep seed 5 alive upon the face of all the earth. For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the 6 earth forty days and forty nights; and every living thing that I have made will I destroy from 7 off the face of the ground. And Noah did according unto all that the LORD commanded him. 8 And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth. And 9 Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him, into the ark, because 10 of the waters of the flood. Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and 11 of every thing that creepeth upon the ground, there went in two and two unto Noah into the 12 ark, male and female, as God commanded Noah. And it came to pass after the seven days, 13 that the waters of the flood were upon the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in 14 the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the same day were all the foun- 15 tains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain 16 was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. In the selfsame day entered Noah, and 17 Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his 18 sons with them into the ark; they, and every beast after its kind, and all the cattle after 19 their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after its kind, and every 20 fowl after its kind, every bird of every sort. And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two 21 and two of all flesh wherein is the breath of life. And they that went in, went in male and 22 female of all flesh, as God commanded him; and the LORD shut him in. And the flood was 23 forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up 24 above the earth. And the waters prevailed, and increased greatly upon the earth; and the 25 ark went upon the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; 26 and all the high mountains that were under the whole heaven were covered. Fifteen cubits 27 upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that 28 moved upon the earth, both fowl, and cattle, and beast, and every creeping thing that creepeth 29 upon the earth, and every man; all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, of 30 all that was in the dry land, died. And every living thing was destroyed which was upon the 31 face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and creeping thing, and fowl of the heaven; and 32 they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only was left, and they that were with him 33 in the ark. And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.

Locality of the Flood. There is a remarkable portion of the globe, chiefly on the Asiatic Continent, though it extends into Europe, and which is nearly equal to all Europe in extent; whose rivers (some of them the Volga, Oural, Sihon, Kour, and the Amoo, of great size) do not fall into the ocean, but, on the contrary, are all turned inward, losing themselves, in the eastern part of the tract, in the lakes of a rainless district; in the western parts, into such seas as the Caspian and the Aral. In this region there are extensive districts still under the level of the ocean. Vast plains, white with salt, and charged with sea-shells, show that the Caspian Sea was, at no distant period, greatly more extensive than it is now. With the well-known facts, then, before us, regarding this depressed Asiatic region, let us suppose that the human family, amounting to several millions, were congregated in that tract of country, which, extending eastward from the modern Ararat to far beyond the Sea of Aral, includes the original Caucasian centre of the race. Let us suppose that, the hour of judgment having arrived, the land began gradually to sink (as the tract in the Run of Cutch sank in the year 1819) equably for 40 days at the rate of about 400 feet per day,—a rate not twice greater than that at which the tide rises in the Strait of Magellan, and which would have rendered itself apparent as but a persistent inward flowing of the sea. The depression, which, by extending to the Euxine Sea and the Persian Gulf on the one hand and the Gulf of Finland on the other, would open up by three separate channels the “fountains of the great deep,” and which included an area of 2000 miles each way, would, at the end of the fortieth day, be sunk in its centre to the depth of 1600 feet,—sufficient to bury the loftiest mountains of the district; and yet, having a gradient of declination of but 16 feet per mile, the contour of its hills and plains would remain apparently what they had been before, and the doomed inhabitants would see but the water rising along the mountain-sides, and one refuge after another swept away. Hugh Miller.

The preceding chapter accounts for a period of 120 years. In the present chapter we reach the end of that period. The ark has been built in the prescribed form with due preparation and capacity. Noah has done according to all that God had commanded him, and now the Lord gives to Noah fuller directions concerning the animals which he was to take with him.

2,3. The boundary line between clean and unclean animals is marked by nature. Every tribe of mankind would distinguish between the sheep and the hyena, between the dove and the vulture. Whether animal food was eaten before the Deluge or not, it is certain that flocks and herds were fed for the sake of their milk and wool, and that of them victims were offered in sacrifice. This alone would separate between the clean and the unclean. It is not improbable, that the distinction even of the names “clean and unclean” had been fully established by custom, long before it was recognized and ratified by the Law. E. H. B.—Many things, established afterward in the law of Moses, obtained before that law, and were generally practised by the worshippers of God: for example; sacrifices (Gen. 4: 8, 13), the paying of tithe (Gen. 14), circumcision (Gen. 17), the right of primogeniture (Gen. 25), making vows (Gen. 28), marrying the brother’s wife (Gen. 38: 8). And some of those things, which Moses forbade, were forbidden before his law: as the eating of blood, and murder, which was a capital crime before the law (Gen. 9: 4, 6). And there is no doubt but the difference of clean and unclean beasts, with respect to sacrifice, was known and observed before the Law of Moses, and before the Flood. Bp. Kidder.

There remains in these commands concerning food the general truth for all times, that everything outward should by emblem lead us to think of what is inward—that the external symbolic purity, like every other discipline and custom, especially in the service of God, ought to prepare the way for the life of true holiness; and that therefore we can never regard with indifference the emblems of our own sins in the world of creation, nor anything, indeed, which in nature serves to remind us of death and destruction, and of the wild power of unbridled lust. Ger!

4. He went into the ark, upon notice that the flood would come after seven days, though, probably, as yet there appeared no visible sign of its approach, but all continued serene and clear; for as he prepared the ark by faith in the warning given that the flood would come, so he went into it by faith in this warning that it would come quickly, though he did not see that the second causes had yet begun to work. In every step he took he walked by faith, and not by sense. H.

7. His ark was builded and the time was come that he should enter in. There was something formidable in that final and conclusive step. But the patriarch took it. He felt that this contrivance was as mighty as the Divine command, and he rejoiced to be the prisoner of a promise-keeping God. Fearless and unfaltering he stepped in, and felt that he was now the guest of God, and need fear no further ill. And in obeying the Divine command and casting himself on the Providence of God, the believer is like the patriarch entering the dark and unproved ark. He knows not what shall be the issue. There is no crevice by which he can discern the course along which he is drifting; no aperture to cheer him with the sight of emerging peaks or nearer land; no window except one overhead, to teach him that he must look up and look no other way. And many a time the winds are loud and the waters high. But his heart keeps up, till, after long waiting and many a prayer, one day the door open and lets him out on a large and wealthy land, and he finds how good it is to be piloted blindfold to such a pleasant place. To every age the history of Noah has been a burning and shining light, and the great lesson it has taught is the faithfulness of God, the wisdom of simply trusting Him, and promptly complying with His commands; and it tells to every prisoner of hope, and every pilgrim in the dark, The Lord knoweth how to deliver them who put their trust in Him. Hamilton.

8,9. Of beasts and fowls there went in.** He who first miraculously brought them to Adam, that he might give them their names, now brings them to Noah, that he may preserve their lives. A. C.

11. Were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.** It cannot be imagined that this is a philosophical explanation of the flood. The use of Scripture is always to describe the phenomena of nature, not to trace their hidden causes. The words here written express only the effect produced upon man’s senses. There was a flood of waters from above and beneath. E. H. B.—The beautiful figure of the windows of the skies being opened is preceded by the equally striking one of the fountains of the great deep being broken up. This was the chief source of the flood. A change in the level of the land was accomplished. The waters of the great deep now broke their bounds, flowed in on the sunken surface, and drowned the world of man, with all its inhabitants. 12. The accompanying heavy rain of forty days and nights was only a subsidiary instrument in the deluging of the land. We may imagine the sinking of the land to have been so gradual as to occupy the whole of these forty days of rain. There is an awful magnificence in this constant uplifting of the billows over the yielding land. M.

The Bible does not give us a single picture of the dreadful scenes that followed. It merely tells us that the tops of the mountains were covered, and that every living creature died. It leaves us to conceive the dreadful realities which that statement implies. W. G. B.—The narrative is vivid and forcible, though entirely wanting in that sort of description which in a modern historian or poet would have occupied the largest space. We see nothing of the death-struggle; we hear not the cry of despair; we are not called upon to witness the frantic agony of husband and wife, and parent and child, as they fled in terror before the rising waters. Nor is a word said of the sadness of the one righteous man who, safe himself, looked upon the destruction which he could not avert. But an impression is left upon the mind with peculiar vividness from the very simplicity of the narrative, and it is that of utter desolation. This is heightened by the repetition and contrast of two ideas. On the one hand, we are reminded no less than six times in the narrative who the tenants of the ark were, the favored and rescued few; and, on the other hand, the total and absolute blotting out of everything else is not less emphatically dwelt upon. Peroxene.

Were there only eight saved? There were thousands, millions sought. Nor is it justice to

God to forget how long a period of patience, and preaching, and warning, and compassion, preceded that dreadful deluge. Long before the clouds rained down death; long before the floor and solid pavement of this earth, under the prodigious agencies at work, broke up, like the deck of a leaking ship, and the waters rushed from below, to meet the waters from above, and sink a guilty world; long before the time when the ark floated away by tower and town, and those crowded hill-tops, where frantic groups had clustered, and amid prayers and curses, and shrieks and shouts, hung out their signals of distress—very long before this, God had been calling an impenitent world to repentance. Had they no warning in Noah’s preaching? Was there nothing to alarm them in the very sight of the ark, as story rose upon story; and nothing in the sound of those ceaseless hammers to waken all but the dead? It was not till mercy’s arm grew weary ringing the warning bell, that God “poured out his fury” on them. The ark stood useless for years, a huge laughing-stock for the scoffer’s wit; it stood till it was covered with the marks of age, and its builders with the contempt of the world; and many a sneer had those men to bear, as pointing to the serene heavens above and an empty ark below, the question was put, “Where is the promise of his coming?” Most patient God! Then, as now, thou wert slow to punish—“waiting to be gracious.” Guthrie.

13. Though men were to be reduced to so small a number, and it would be very desirable to have the world speedily repeopled, yet Noah’s sons were to have each of them but one wife, which strengthens the arguments against having many wives; for from the beginning of this new world it was not so; as, at first, God made, so now he kept alive, but one woman for one man (Matt. 19 : 4, 8). H.

16. And the Lord shut him in.** By some providential or supernatural agency the door of the ark, which could not have been secured with pitch or bitumen by Noah, was secured and made water-tight. E. H. B.—As he shut him in, so he shut the OTHERS out. God had waited one hundred and twenty years upon that generation: they did not repent; they filled up the measure of their iniquities, and then wrath came upon them to the uttermost. A. C.—These two ideas of closing and excluding are both conveyed by the original as may be seen (Ps. 35 : 3 ; 2 Kings 4 : 4, 5). There is probably at the same time a latent implication that without such protection the ark would have been liable to a violent assault from the desperate multitudes, who, from the character given of that generation, were undoubtedly capable of the most flagrant outrages. And let it be considered that something very nearly resembling this will be acted over again. “As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be at the coming of the Son of man.” Not only shall the world, as then, be full of dissipation, but the concluding scene is described in nearly the same words, “And they that were ready went in, and the door was shut!” Bush.

There is room enough in Christ for all comers. Those that by faith come into Christ, the Ark, shall by the power of God be shut in, and kept as in a stronghold by the power of God (1 Pet. 1:5). God put Adam into paradise, but he did not shut him in, and so he threw himself out; but when he put Noah into the ark, he shut him in, and so, when he brings a soul to Christ, he insures the salvation: it is not in our own keeping, but in the Mediator’s hand. The door of mercy will shortly be shut against those that now make light of it. Now knock, and it shall be opened; but the time will come when it shall not (Luke 13:25). H.

11-20. With a graphic minuteness we have the exact year, the month, the day of the month, when the great rain commenced upon the earth, and Noah went into the ark. Were ever the pictorial and the statistical combined in so life-like a description? Surely the man who first painted this scene must have been in that ark when it was “lifted up,” and went walking forth upon the waters; he must have been an eye-witness of that irresistibly rising wave, those disappearing hills, all ending at last in that sky-bounded waste.

19. Under the whole heaven. Who that has any true love or reverence for the Bible would raise an argument, on these words, either for or against the absolute universality of the deluge, or think of interpreting the writer at all by either our modern geography or our modern astronomy! It was all of earth he knew, or that was known to Moses after him. The divine Spirit that employed his vivid conception, as well as his vivid language, has given it to us as the measure and the assurance of his truthfulness; and it is just that truthfulness which, in such an account as this, is of the highest critical value. T. L.

19. All the high mountains. Similar terms are abundantly used where they must certainly be taken in a limited though wide extent. To notice only passages in the Pentateuch itself, although the New Testament supplies even stronger examples: compare Gen.

what? Undoubtedly from that which formed the real element of danger—the corruption, enmity, and violence of ungodly men. It was this which wasted the Church of God, and brought it to the verge of destruction. All was ready to perish. It was to save him—and with him, the cause of God—from this source of imminent danger and perdition, that the flood was sent; and it could only do so by effectually separating between him and the seed of evildoers—engulfing them in ruin, and sustaining him uninjured in his temporary home. The direct and immediate object was the extermination of that wicked race whose heaven-daring impiety and hopeless impenitence was the real danger that menaced the cause and people of God,—“the destroying of those (to use the language that evidently refers to it in Rev. 11 : 18) who destroyed the earth.” P. F.

23. Only Noah was left.** The Divine patience had “endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fit for destruction.” For a hundred and twenty years the seasons had revolved. Only the prophetic ark arose; proclaiming that every added day was a winged messenger from the mercy-seat inviting men to repent. As if lingering to see whether some ground might not yet appear for withdrawing the doom, whether the world’s last consummating sin might not be indefinitely delayed, “the long-suffering of God had waited while the ark was a preparing.” But man’s intense depravity was more than a match for even such patience. And now the time had come when the evil must be swept from the earth to make way for yet greater good. The planet over which “the morning stars had sang together,” and which might still have been floating through the heavens to the same strains—the ark of space—now showed only a solitary vessel in the midst of a shoreless waste of waters, freighted with the hardly-saved wreck of a world departed. But that vessel was conveying into the future the precious germs of a new era of the Divine manifestation. For the human incarnation of the Divine—the great manifestation of God by man, as well as to him—is yet to come. J. H.

Noah lives; when all about him were monuments of justice, thousands falling on his right hand and ten thousands on his left, he was a monument of mercy; only with his eyes might he behold and see the reward of the wicked (Ps. 91 : 7, 8). In the floods of great waters, they did not come nigh him (Pa. 32 : 6). We have reason to think, that while the long-suffering of God waited Noah not only preached to but prayed for that wicked world, and would have turned away the wrath; but his prayers return into his own bosom, and are answered only in his own escape; which is plainly referred to (Ez. 14 : 14), Noah, Daniel, and Job shall but deliver their own souls. H.

In vain doth he fly whom God pursues. There is no way to fly from his judgments, but to fly to his mercy by repenting. The faith of the righteous cannot be so much derided as their success is magnified: how securely doth Noah ride out this uproar of heaven, earth and waters! He knew that he which owned the waters would steer him; that he who shut him in would preserve him. How happy a thing is faith! What a quiet safety, what a heavenly peace, doth it work in the soul in the midst of all the inundations of evil! Bp. H.—How easily might the Lord have translated Noah as Enoch was translated, and have closed the sad record of humanity with the flood! But, in the midst of judgments, he had purposes of mercy; and he put salvation in contrast with destruction by providing for the safety of his servant and his family, and continuing, through him, at once the line of descent from Adam and the line of promise unto the Saviour. How tender and thoughtful was the care that God took of his servant in all the preparations for his comfort during the time of the flood! And how strong were the faith of Noah and his spirit of obedience, that led him, without hesitation, to undertake so vast a work as building and storing the ark upon the bare command of Jehovah! But, as he rode above that mighty sea, that faith was justified, that righteousness was honored, and his ark became the symbol of refuge and hope to the people of God in all after-ages. J. P. T.

The account of the flood concerns us all. The sin which brought down that judgment is not a thing of the most remote antiquity; it is of our own days, it is here amongst us, it is everywhere. For what does our Lord mean, when He says, “they ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage”? He is naming, not occasional crimes which disturb society, but society’s most ordinary and most necessary practices; things which are neither crimes nor sins in themselves; things which all may do and must do. It is as if He had said, “They rose in the morning, and lay down to rest at night; they went to their daily work, and were refreshed by their daily recreations; they had their hopes and their enjoyments; they lived as we are living daily.” But then our Lord goes on to say, that the end of this life was, that the flood came and destroyed them all: that is, in the emphatic sense of the word death, which it bears when spoken of as God’s judgment, “the end of all these things was death.” Such simply is our Lord’s language, with no softening or explanation given. Yet we know that he did not mean that because men ate and drank; and married, and bought and sold, and planted and builded, that therefore they were and would be destroyed. We have here the same sort of language which He employs on other occasions; “Woe unto you that laugh now, for ye shall mourn and weep.” Yet it is no sin to laugh. “Woe unto you that are full, for ye shall be hungry.” Yet it is no sin to be full. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” Yet Abraham, the father of the faithful, was rich; and David, the man after God’s own heart, had kingly wealth, and kingly state and power also. Why then does our Lord so speak, and that not once only or in one place but on several occasions, as if this manner of speaking were used purposely. We cannot surely be mistaken in believing that He did speak so purposely; that He did mean us to understand that there was a natural danger in the things of which He was speaking, which if left to itself and not earnestly struggled against would most certainly lead to the following judgment; that he who laughed, unless he could laugh in faith, would surely weep; that he who was full, unless he carefully remembered from whom his good things came, would surely be hungry; that they who lived a peaceful, a busy, and a happy life, would be cut off from life eternal, unless they took good heed to live unto God. And further our Lord meant us to see, what experience largely shows, that the things which would take away the poison from laughter, from plenty, from a busy and enjoying life, were not things easily to be procured and at any moment,—things which all when warned of their danger would immediately procure for their safety. Arnold.

Extent of the deluge. There can be no doubt that the flood was universal, so far as man was concerned; that it extended to all the then known world. The literal truth of the narration obliges us to believe that the whole human race, except eight persons, perished by the waters of the flood. But the language of the Book of Genesis does not compel us to suppose that the whole surface of the globe was actually covered with water. P. S.—If we carefully consider the nature of the narrative, we shall surely be led to conclude that the deluge is described from the point of view of an eye-witness, not from the point of view of the Omnipotent. That merely is related which actually appeared. The deluge described in Genesis is pictured as it would have presented itself to the eyes of Noah and his family. It is in the highest degree probable that the description is really that which was given by one of such eye-witnesses. The words may certainly mean that the deluge was universal over the whole extent of the world. Yet, if only the inhabited world was inundated, the effect would have been the same to Noah, and would most likely have been described in the same words. Cook.

It is not to be supposed that the entire globe of the earth was covered with water. Where was the need of overwhelming those regions in which there were no human beings? It would be highly unreasonable to suppose that mankind had so increased before the deluge as to have penetrated to all the corners of the earth. It is, indeed, not probable that they had extended themselves beyond the limits of Syria and Mesopotamia. Absurd it would be to affirm that the effects of the punishment inflicted upon men alone applied to places in which there were no men. If, then, we should entertain the belief that not so much as the hundredth part of the globe was overspread with water, still the deluge would be universal, because the extirpation took effect upon all the part of the globe which was inhabited. If we take this ground, the difficulties which some have raised about the deluge fall away as inapplicable, and mere cavils; and irreligious persons have no reason left them for doubting the truth of the Holy Scriptures. Matthew Poole, 1670.—In fact, some enemies to the Gospel have seen the historical proof of the deluge to be so strong that they have confessed it to be irresistible. M. Boué, an eminent writer and scoffer of the French school, has said, “I shall be vexed to be thought stupid enough to deny that an inundation or catastrophe has taken place in the world, or rather in the region inhabited by the antediluvians. To me this seems to be as really a fact in history as the reign of Cæsar at Rome.” King.

The deluge was evidently a local convulsion. The object, that of destroying the human race and the animal population of its peculiar centre of creation, the preservation of specimens of these creatures in the ark, and the physical requirements of the case, shut us up to this conclusion, which is now accepted by the best biblical expositors and which inflicts no violence on the terms of the record. Viewed in this light, the phenomena recorded in the Bible in connection with geological probabilities lead us to infer that the physical agencies evoked by the

Divine power to destroy this ungodly race, were a subsidence of the region they inhabited so as to admit the oceanic waters, and extensive atmospheric disturbances connected with that subsidence, and perhaps with the elevation of neighboring regions. Dawson.

Nor is it possible to conceive of an assemblage of all the living creatures of the different regions of the earth at any one spot. The Polar bear surely could not survive a journey from his native icebergs to the sultry plains of Mesopotamia; nor could the animals of South America have reached these except by travelling the whole length, northward, of North America, and then, after miraculously crossing Behring’s Strait, having pressed, westward, across the whole breadth of Asia, a continent larger than the moon. Or, how could tropical creatures find supplies of food in passing through such a variety of climates, and over vast spaces of hideous desert? Geikie.

That the deluge was of limited extent geographically, and not universal, may be fairly assumed on the following grounds: (1.) The moral reasons for a deluge do not seem to require it to be universal, since obviously that corrupt generation whose sins demanded such a judgment did not overspread all the continents and lands of the globe, but appear to have been confined within a quite limited area in Western Asia. (2.) While on the one hand we may not limit the miraculous power of the Almighty; on the other hand, it is not legitimate to assume an expenditure of miraculous power indefinitely beyond what the occasion demands. This objection is designed to apply, not specially to the supply of water requisite to flood the whole earth at once, for there is water enough in the oceans and seas to submerge the continents, provided only that the ocean beds be temporarily uplifted and the continents relatively depressed: but it does apply with great force to the preservation of the living animals and plants of the whole world. The narrative assumes that the deluge will destroy the land animals and the fowls of the air unless they are protected in the ark. It also gives us the dimensions of the ark, and leaves us to estimate proximately how many could be saved alive in it. The narrative, therefore, does not authorize us to resort to miracle for the preservation of these animal races. Now it is entirely certain that only an exceedingly small part of all the land animals, insects and birds of the whole world were saved in the ark. Men versed in natural science estimate the living species of vertebrate animals at 21,000; of articulates, 300,000—numbers by far too great to be provided for in Noah’s ark. Yet again: To a great extent the “fauna” (as they are called)—the animal species of the several continents—differ widely from each other. South America has its families, many of them unknown to other continents; Australia has its special group, and Africa its own. It is simply incredible that all or even the mass of these animals came to Noah and were preserved in the ark. If they had been destroyed by the flood, there should be traces of their sudden annihilation in the drift of that flood, and geological research might trace the introduction of new races by special creation to repeople those continents. No such line of proofs for a universal deluge is found. The absence of such traces of destruction and of new creation makes it far more than probable that the flood was limited in extent and not universal. Still further it is urged against a universal deluge—and for aught that appears conclusively—that volcanic cones exist—of Etna in Sicily and of Auvergne in Southern France—which, being composed of loose scoriae and ashes, must have been washed away by any deluge that should reach them. The cones of Etna are estimated to be 12,000 years old. (3.) The apparently universal language of the narrative may be readily explained as other similar language must be in the Scriptures, without assuming a range of meaning beyond the writer’s personal knowledge. The writer of this narrative speaks as an eye-witness, especially of the great rain: of the ark borne up upon the waters; of the surging back and forth of the billows, and of their covering “the high hills under the whole heaven,” i.e. as far as the eye could reach. The same style of universal language appears frequently in the Scriptures, yet subject to limitations from the known nature of the case; e.g. Deut. 2:25; Acts 2:5; Matt. 3:5. Of the sin it is said repeatedly—“The earth was corrupt before God;” “the earth was filled with violence.” Obviously this same “earth,” to the same geographical extent and not apparently anything more, was destroyed by the flood. There is every reason to suppose that at this time both the righteous descendants of Seth and the wicked descendants of Cain were living in the great basin of the Euphrates and the Tigris—with great probability not reaching out beyond the area bounded by the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, the Caspian, Black, Mediterranean and Red Seas. This, therefore, we may assume to have been the area submerged by this deluge, and we have no occasion to look for its traces beyond these limits. H. C.

Traditions of the Deluge. The evidence shows a consentient belief among members of all the great races into which ethnologists have divided mankind. Among the Semites, the Babylonians and the Hebrews; among the Hamites, the Egyptians, among the Aryans, the Indians, Armenians, Phrygians, Lithuanians, Goths, Celts, and Greeks; among the Turanians, the Chinese, Mexicans, Red Indians, and Polynesian islanders, held the belief, which has thus the character of a universal tradition—a tradition of which but one rational account can be given, namely, that it embodies the recollection of a fact in which all mankind was concerned. It is remarkably confirmatory of the Biblical narrative to find that it unites details scattered up and down the various traditional accounts, but nowhere else found in combination. Altogether, the conclusion is irresistibly forced upon us that the Hebrew is the authentic narrative, of which the remainder are more or less corrupted versions. It is impossible to derive the Hebrew account from any of the other stories, while it is quite possible to derive all of them from it. G. R.

A recollection thus precise and concordant cannot be a myth voluntarily invented. No religious or cosmogonic myth presents this character of universality. It must arise from the reminiscence of a real and terrible event, so powerfully impressing the imagination of the first ancestors of our race, as never to have been forgotten by their descendants. Far from being a myth, the Biblical Deluge is a real and historical fact, having, to say the least, left its impress on the ancestors of three races—Aryan or Indo-European, Semitic or Syro-Arabian, Chamitic or Kushite—that is to say, on the three great civilized races of the ancient world, those which constitute the higher humanity—before the ancestors of those races had as yet separated, and in the part of Asia they together inhabited. Contem. Rev.—The traditions of the deluge show that there was, as Scripture affirms, a flood by which all mankind except one righteous family were destroyed; and they prove, in further conformity with the Scripture record, that all the existing tribes and nations of mankind are descended from that one family which survived the flood. The details given in the inscriptions describing the Flood leave no doubt that both the Bible and the Babylonian story describe the same event, and the Flood becomes the starting-point for the modern world in both histories. In their main features the two stories fairly agree: as to the wickedness of the antediluvian world, the Divine anger and command to build the ark, its stocking with birds and beasts, the coming of the deluge, the rain and storm, the ark resting on a mountain, trial being made by birds sent out to see if the waters had subsided, and the building of an altar after the flood. All these main facts occur in the same order in both narratives, but when we come to examine the details of these stages in the two accounts, there appear numerous points of difference; as to the number of people who were saved, the duration of the deluge, the place where the ark rested, the order of sending out the birds, and other similar matters. G. Smith.

The Greek tradition of the flood is worthy of special notice. The accounts of it vary, but according to Lucian, the flood was sent as a punishment of the sins of mankind, and the whole race perished, with the exception of Dencalion and his family, he being preserved on account of his piety. Ovid has given a somewhat different and more poetical account of the flood. Even among the native races of Central America Humboldt found distinct traditions of the flood. W. G. B.

In the Assyrian Department of the British Museum is a series of terra-cotta tablets bearing inscriptions in the cuneiform (i.e., wedge-shaped) character, in which the ancient Assyrian writings are engraved, on one set of which this account is found. Their age is thought by the decipherer to be as old as the seventeenth century B.C., but to represent the traditions of a still earlier age. They record, though imperfectly, the dimensions of the ship of refuge; its bituminous varnish; its inmates, both human and animal; the descent of the rain; the tempest and destruction of life; the duration of the flood, which it places at six days and nights; the cessation of the rain and drying of the earth; and the resting of the ship at a mountain called Nizir. They describe further the sending forth of a dove, a swallow, and a raven; the going forth of the king from the ship, and his erection of an altar at the foot of the mountain; a sacrifice offered by him, and its acceptance by the gods; and lastly, a sort of promise combined with warning, as to the recurrence of Divine visitation in this form by way of punishment for transgression. No one can help seeing how remarkably these inscriptions confirm the Scripture narrative in most respects, and how unaccountable the agreement between them would be except in the supposition that both are founded on a common origin. H. W. P.—When one of the early missionaries to the Sandwich Islands gave an account of Noah and of the flood, the natives

said that an account had come down to them of a general inundation, and that two men escaped it on a small emerging point of a mountain ; but the particulars given by the missionary they had not heard (Bib. Sac. xxii. 418). This

strange corroboration of the flood from an island of the Pacific, is only one of multitudes of testimonies from the old world, and from the new, and from the islands of the sea, representing a score or more of peoples. Beach.