Genesis 8

be understood the precipitating of all the aqueous vapours which were suspended in the atmosphere.]—Bagster. “The progress of the deluge (says Dr. Hurdis) is here described in a climax truly awful. The ark is first represented to us as just lifted from the ground. We then see it moving along upon an immense body of waters, among the ruins of a world gradually disappearing; and, last of all, behold it floating along upon the flood, the very mountains themselves having disappeared under the waves of a universal ocean.” But while this scene must, indeed, have been awfully sublime, a still more terrific scene presents itself, in the floating carcasses of a drowning world; the inhabitants of the ark, however, were doubtless saved the horror of this sight, by the only window (if we conjecture right) being in the roof, and shaded by it; and as to the cries of the sufferers, the howling of the tempest and the thunder of the storm effectually prevented them from being heard within the ark.

Our Lord has told us, concerning the inhabitants of the old world, till the day that Noah entered into the ark, “they did eat, they drank, they married wives, and they were given in marriage;” neither his preaching, nor his behaviour interrupted their business or their pleasures; and “thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.” ((Matthew 24:26-30).) Of the number of inhabitants then upon the earth, we can judge only by calculating the progress of population, and in this there is more of conjecture than of certainty. Some have calculated them at a thousand millions; but taking them only at a quarter, or even a tenth of this estimation, it presents a most appalling scene for contemplation, to be exceeded only by the more tremendous judgment of a burning world, at the last day—OF MEN perished in the waters.

“Who knows the power of thine anger? Oh my soul, fear thou the Lord with filial fear; in this is the beginning of wisdom—the path of pleasantness, and the salvation of the soul.” Forty days and nights did the rain continue: “The thickened sky Like a dark ceiling stood; down rushed the rain Impetuous, and continued till the earth No more was seen.” —Milton. And though the rain then ceased, “the waters prevailed upon the earth for one hundred and fifty days,” or five months, till “all in whose nostrils was the breath of life died;… and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.” Here we may be allowed to drop a tear over a perishing world, especially as we hear of their “spirits still in prison; ((1 Peter 3:19).) but let us not unite with those who revile the justice of that God, whose “long-suffering waited” 120 years, while a prophet was sent to warn them of their danger. O happy they, who, by the mercy of God, were secured within the ark with Noah, and rode above the storm! “The like figure whereunto baptism doth now save us, (not the putting away the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ: who is gone into heaven and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him.” ((1 Peter 3:21-22).) Chap. VIII. Ver. 1—12. The waters assuaged.—“God remembered Noah.” The Lord never forgets his people in their affliction; and when he remembers them, he remembers those that belong to them.

Innumerable are the blessings young persons receive, through their connexion with serious families; and even the domestic animals, though unconscious of it, often escape a world of sufferings by living with them, for “a righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.” ((Proverbs 12:10).) The means used to restore the earth to its former state, as a human habitation, were the following:—1. The flood-gates of heaven and the fountains of the deep were stopped, which prevented any farther confluence of waters; and 2dly, a wind of a drying nature (such as the Samiel) passed over the earth, which produced an extraordinary degree of evaporation, by which means much of the water was carried up into the atmosphere, while, at the same time, 3dly, the waters below retired in the nature of a tide, (“going and returning,”

as the margin reads,) till they returned to those ancient caverns on which the earth is built. ((Psalms 24:2).) Thus the waters gradually decreased, till the ark rested on some part of the mountains of Ararat, in Persian Armenia. It is generally supposed, upon the summit of the highest of them; but more probably lower down, for the convenience of Noah’s family, and of the animals, some of whom would find it difficult to get down into the plain, from an eminence so great. The Diary of this event, which occupied the year (A. M.) 1656, runs as follows:—On the 10th of the second month, answering to the latter part of our October, Noah entered the ark; and seven days afterwards (first week of November) the flood began, and continuing 40 days of incessant rain, ceased about the middle of our December.

For 150 days (or five months) the flood remained permanent, after which it gradually abated; and on the 17th of the seventh month, (April the 2d) the ark rested on Mount Ararat. The waters continued retreating; and on the 1st of the 10th month, Tammuz, (middle of our June,) the tops of the mountains were discovered; and 40 days afterwards (latter end of July) Noah opened his window, and sent forth a raven, which went to and fro, (or as the Hebrew expresses it, “Going forth and returning,” not into, but upon, the ark) till the earth was dry. In the mean time, he sent forth a dove every week, who, the second time, brought a leaf or sprig of olive, and the third time returned no more. On the first day of the following year, (September 16) Noah uncovered the ark, and found the earth tolerably dry; and on the 27th of the month following (about the middle of November) it was quite dry, and Noah and his family began to leave the ark.

Noah was naturally anxious to do this, and hence the several experiments he made, to ascertain whether the earth was prepared for him; but as he went into the ark by God’s special order, so he must have his permission before he left it. When Providence fixes us in any situation of life, we should be cautious not to leave it without good reason. “Art thou called being a servant? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather.” ((1 Corinthians 7:21).) “The repeated mention of ‘seven days,’ seems to imply, that, from the beginning, time had been divided into weeks; which can no otherwise be accounted for, that I know of, (says one) than by admitting that, from the beginning, those who feared God remembered the sabbath day to keep it holy.”

If, as we have supposed, the earth was created at the autumnal equinox, it was probably restored at the same period, and in a similar state of verdure and fruitfulness; for it was about the beginning of September that the dove brought home an olive branch, and possibly with fruit, for this was the season for olives, figs, and grapes. That the earth was restored in a state of fertility, the herbs bearing seed and the trees fruit, as at first, seems probable, for several reasons. 1. Noah and his family, human and animal, had now probably nearly expended their provisions; and if not, they would be useless to the wild animals and birds, now set at large from the ark. 2. Noah appears not to have received orders to preserve seeds of any kind; and if he had, it would be eight or nine months before that seed could produce a harvest; and, 3dly, The flood itself probably gave an additional fertility to the earth, as the overflowing of the Nile is well known to have given to Egypt.

These circumstances considered, it is not improbable that, by the good providence of God, the earth might now be prepared to greet her new governor (Noah) with a general and abundant harvest; and with seed against the seed time, which was now approaching. Ver. 13—22. Noah’s offering for his deliverance.—Noah, we are told, now came forth from the ark, with his wife and his three sons, and their wives, amounting to eight souls, with all the animals under their protection, of which, it should seem, none died while in the ark, notwithstanding their being so closely stowed. As an acknowledgment, therefore, of the divine goodness, he offers, of every clean bird and beast, a burnt-offering to the Lord; for which purpose he built an altar, the first we read of, though probably not the first erected.

Notes on the verses

(Genesis 8)ver. 1. God made a wind.—Dr. Clarke mentions a friend, who had been bathing in the Tigris, coming out of it in his bathing dress when one of those winds called Samiel passed over the river, and he found himself and his dress dried instantaneously.

Ver. 4. [Ararat is generally understood to be Armenia, as it is rendered elsewhere, in which there is a great chain of mountains, like the Alps or Pyrenees, upon the highest part of which, called by some “The Finger Mountain,” the ark is supposed to have rested.]—Bagster. Mount Ararat has two heads, or peaks, always covered with snow, on the larger and higher of which, tradition reports that Noah’s ark rested. But a recent and respectable traveller (Sir R.

K. Porter) says, “These inaccessible summits have never been trodden by the foot of man since the days of Noah, if even then; for my idea is, that the ark rested in the space between these heads, and not on the top of either.” Travels in Persia. It was, indeed, formerly reported, that some remains of the ark were still to be seen on the higher and larger summit; but this is expressly contradicted by Tournefort, a celebrated French traveller. See Burder’s Oriental Literature, and Dr. Adam Clarke’s.

Ver. 8. Waters abated.—The Hebrew word here used is different from that in ver. 7. and means to dry by evaporation; and is therefore applied to corn dried or parched by fire, as in (Leviticus 2:14). See also (Jeremiah 29:22). Dr. Hurdis therefore renders it, “to see if the waters were exhaled (i.e. by evaporation) from off the face of the ground.” As to the amount of evaporation, even in this country, Bp. Watson found, by several curious experiments, that 1600 gallons of water were exhaled from one acre of land within 12 hours of a hot summer’s day, (June, 1779) when there had been no rain for more than a month.—Watson’s Chemical Essays.

Ver. 11. Olive leaf.—Rather branch, as it is rendered, (Nehemiah 8:15). Ainsworth. For the remarks relative to the produce of the seasons, see the authorities in Taylor’s Frag. to Calmet, and Horne’s Introd. to the Scrip. From this olive branch, probably, the olive became, in all ages, the emblem of peace and reconciliation.

Ver. 13. The above dates may not be perfectly correct, because there were some variations in the Jewish months, with which we are not perfectly acquainted. Generally they begin in the middle of our months, which answer each to part of two Jewish months, and they are reckoned according to the Civil year, the Ecclesiastical not being settled till the time of Moses. (For the names and arrangement of the months, see the Introduction.) The Ecclesiastical year contained the same months, but began with Nisan, the seventh month of the Civil year.

Ver. 14. In the second month, on the seven and twentieth day.—[From this, it appears, that Noah was in the ark a complete Solar year, or 365 days; for he entered the ark the seventeenth day of the second month, in the 600th year of his life, and continued in it till the twenty-seventh day of the second month, in the 601st year of his life, as we see above.

According to the LXX this year was A. M. 2242; and according to Dr. Hales, 2256.]—Bagster.

Ver. 20. Built an altar.—That is, of earth, or turf, as afterwards ordered. See (Exodus 20:24). Virgil and Horace also both speak of such.—Ainsworth. Burnt-offerings.—Called in Greek Holocausts, but in Hebrew Gnoloth, (i.e. ascensions,) because, instead of part being eaten, (as in other sacrifices,) the whole (except the skin) ascended up to heaven in smoke and flame.—Ainsworth.

Ver. 21. A sweet savour.—Thus an infidel nobleman makes Cain profanely jeer his brother: Abel having said that his altar had been “hallowed” “By the immortal pleasure of Jehovah In the acceptance of” his victim, Cain thus blasphemously retorts:—

“’Tis pleasure! What? was his high pleasure in The fumes of scorching flesh and smoking blood? Give way!—Thy God loves blood! then look to it; Give way, ere he hath more!” Those who can read such lines without horror, must surely have renounced the very name of Christianity.

“For the imagination, &c.—The particle Ki has various acceptations, of which for is unquestionably one; but it is used also in the sense of though, (or although,) (Joshua 17:18), &c. and is so rendered in this place by Drs. Clarke and Boothroyd, and many others.

Every moving thing that liveth shall be [meat] for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things. Only flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat. And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man. And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein.”

The gratitude of Noah affords us a useful example. Though, when he left the ark, it was about the middle of our November, and winter was fast approaching, before he builds a hut or a hovel for himself and family, he builds an altar for his God. Nor is he sparing of his sacrifice, for though he had but a few animals left, he offered one of each of those admitted in sacrifice to his deliverer; and that not merely as a thank-offering, like Cain’s, but as an acknowledgment of human guilt, and an avowal of his faith in the great atonement. Noah offered by faith, as well as Abel.—(Hebrews 11:7.) Noah’s offering was accepted. “The Lord smelled a sweet savour,” or, as the margin reads, “a savour of rest;”

in which there seems an allusion to Noah’s name, as already explained, ((Genesis 5:29).) An acceptable sacrifice was considered as perfume offered to Jehovah; but in order to this, two things were requisite: 1. That the offering should be according to divine appointment; and, 2dly, that the person who offered was himself a believer, and offered in faith of the great atonement of the Messiah: for otherwise, when the sacrifice was inconsistent with the divine appointment, or offered in hypocrisy and mixed up with crime, then the Lord says, “I hate, I despise your feast days, and will not smell [the perfumes] in your solemn assemblies. Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts.”

(Amos 5:21, 22.) So far from true is it, as some unbelievers have profanely said, that Jehovah delights in blood, it is an established doctrine of both Testaments, that “the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin,” but as typically referring to, and deriving all their merit or acceptance from, the “sacrifice of Jesus Christ,” who was “once offered to bear the sins of many.” (Hebrews 9:28; 10:1–12.) And who is said expressly to have given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God, for a “sweet smelling savour.” (Ephesians 5:2.) “And the Lord said in his heart,” that is, to himself, “I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth, (or infancy;) neither will I any more smite every thing living, as I have done.”

If we take the verse in this sense, it is as if the Lord had said, I will not again curse the ground, because I see it to be useless; the imagination of man’s heart is still as evil as ever; referring probably to Ham, “the younger son of Noah,” whose heart the Lord had read, even in the seclusion of the ark. Or, if we take the Hebrew particle, as many commentators do, in the sense of though, instead of for, as in the margin, it then means, “Notwithstanding I see man’s heart is still the same as before the flood, (see (Genesis 6:5).) yet will I no more destroy the earth on that account; but, looking to the atoning sacrifice of Messiah, I will spare them and bless them for his sake; and “while the earth remaineth, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease;” an intimation, by the bye, that all these had been changed, or suspended, during the awful year of the deluge, as well as an assurance to us, that they shall not be so suspended any more.

And this has hitherto been the case; whatever partial floods and famines have prevailed, the fruitfulness of one part of the world has generally compensated the losses of the other.

Ver. 22. While the earth remaineth.—Or, as the margin reads, more literally from the Hebrew, “As yet all the days of the earth.” The extract on traditions respecting the flood, is quoted by Fuller, on Genesis, from “Letters on the Evidences of the Christian Religion; by an Inquirer;” first printed at Calcutta in 1802, and since in England. See also Burder’s Oriental Lit. and Collier’s Scrip. Facts. Most of the European nations divide the year into four distinct parts, called quarters, or seasons; but there are six divisions in the Text, which, we are informed by the Rabbins, obtained in Palestine among the Hebrews.

The same division exists among the Arabs to the present day. (See Golius, (Leviticus 10)Arab.) According to this gracious promise, the heavenly bodies have ever since preserved their courses, the seasons their successions, and the earth hath produced its increase for the use of man.]—Bagster.

CHAP. IX.

Ver. 4. Flesh with the life thereof.—Bruce’s account of the Abyssinians eating the flesh of a living animal was long thought incredible, but is now generally admitted. The circumstance related is, that three soldiers driving a cow, stopped short, threw down the animal, opened the skin above the buttock, cut out two steaks therefrom, which they placed on their shields, restored the skin with skewers and a cataplasm of clay, and afterwards drove on the animal.

Thus they ate “the flesh with the blood,” as it appears Saul’s soldiers did in one instance. See 1 Samuel 14:33. Oriental Customs, i. c. 1. 27. h Leviticus 24:17. 1 Kings 2:5, 6, 32. g Exodus 21:12, 28. that men would praise the Lord for his goodness; and for his wonderful works to the children of men! For he satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul with goodness.” ((Psalms 107:8-9).)

As to evidence in confirmation of the history of the flood, an ingenious writer has observed:—“We are acquainted with no ancient people who were without traditions of this event. From Josephus we learn, that Berosus, a Chaldean historian, whose works are now lost, related the same things as Moses of the deluge, and the preservation of Noah in an ark.

Eusebius informs us, that the history of the flood was contained in the works of Abydenus, an Assyrian writer. Lucian, the Greek writer, says that the present is not the original race of men; but is descended from Deucalion, who was preserved in an ark from the universal deluge, which destroyed men for their wickedness. Varro, the Roman writer, divided time into three periods; the first, from the origin of men to the deluge. The Hindoo puranas contain the history of the deluge, and of Noah, under the name of Satyavrata. They relate, that Satyavrata was miraculously reserved in an ark from a deluge which destroyed all mankind.” The same writer adds, that “the whole of our globe has been submerged by the ocean, is proved not by tradition only, but by its mineralogical and fossil history.

On the summits of high mountains, and in the centres of continents, vast beds of shells, and other marine productions, are to be found. Petrified fishes and sea-weeds exist in the heart of quarries. The vegetable and animal productions of the torrid zone have been dug up in the coldest regions, as Siberia; and the productions of the polar regions have been found in warm climates. These facts are unanswerable proofs of a deluge.” Nor, we may add, has God “left himself without witness” among the heathen, to any of the great facts recorded in Scripture, as we shall have repeated occasions to observe.