GENESIS 7:1-12

THE LORD CALLS NOAH AND HIS FAMILY INTO THE ARK

7:1 The Lord said to Noah, "Come into the ark, you and all your household, because I have found you righteous in this generation.”

For 100 years Noah had been faithful to do all the Lord had commanded without question, concerning the building of the ark and preparing for the coming flood.

With all the urgency possible, Noah warned his generation of the coming flood and God’s judgment upon the world.

One more time before the flood the Lord spoke to Noah, instructing him to come into the ark where he and his household would be safe and saved from the wrath that was coming upon the world.

Noah believed the Lord, demonstrating his faith through unwavering obedience to His commands. The Lord accounted him as righteous, and saved both him and his house.

Noah’s family had every opportunity to rebel against the Lord as the rest of the world, but their hearts, like Noah’s, had been sovereignly moved by God to believe and obey.

THE LORD GIVES NOAH ONE LAST COMMAND

7:2-5 Take with you seven of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth. Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe out from the face of the earth every living thing I have made.  And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him.

It seems likely that the clean animals were those considered suitable for domestication and a form of companionship with man. In addition (according to Genesis 8:20), some of the clean animals were to be set apart for sacrificial offerings: Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it.

The Lord assured Noah that after the seven days were passed a tremendous rain would come upon the earth for forty days and forty nights, until all living things were destroyed from the face of the earth.

Notice that it is God who will cause the rain to fall (this is a participle in the Hiphil pattern, indicating that God is the one who is bringing the rain). It is a great statement of sovereignty in which the elements of nature are under his complete control.

The Lord also revealed that everything on the dry land that had life would be literally “wiped out” from the face of the ground. This was to be no small matter; the earth would be completely cleansed of its corruption in this global deluge from heaven. Great sin requires a great flood.

The Hebrew words translated “every living substance” are “kol yequwm”, and mean literally “all existence,” or “all that grows up.” So this translation does not limit itself to everything with “the breath of life,” but includes vegetation as well as humans, and animals.

The ground was to be so inundated and devastated as to be utterly barren of life of any kind. The Hebrew word “machah” is used here to indicate total annihilation or extermination of all life on the earth. All human and animal life would be either buried in the sediments (where they would one day become coal and oil beds for the post-flood world) or else just decay and go back to dust.

THE TIME FOR JUDGMENT HAS BEGUN

7:6-12 Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth. And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah. And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth.  In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month — on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.

The waters that made up the Great Flood came from two sources: the springs of the great deep (waters below the firmament) and the floodgates of the heavens (waters above the firmament).

When the time for the destruction of this world arrived, all that was required was to bring the two sources of water together as they had been when first created. The waters above the firmament had to be condensed and precipitated and the waters below had to burst their bounds and cover the earth’s surface.

The bursting forth of these two water sources took place under the providential supervision of the same God who created the heavens and earth, its lands and waters. These great quantities of water, formerly restrained by God, were suddenly released to flood the earth exactly as God had predicted—for forty days and forty nights.

Psalm 104:1-4 Praise the LORD, O my soul. O LORD my God, you are very great; you are clothed with splendor and majesty. He wraps Himself in light as with a garment; He stretches out the heavens like a tent and lays the beams of His upper chambers on their waters. He makes the clouds His chariot and rides on the wings of the wind. He makes winds His messengers, flames of fire His servants.

APPLICATION

In the course of events leading up to the flood, it should be noted how patient and longsuffering God is with sinners. He gives them much time to repent and turn from their wicked ways. But His tolerance is not without end; He will not hold His wrath back forever.

The execution of God’s justice on sinners does not always come by the same path, or at the same pace, but it does come. The unrepentant should not misinterpret God’s forbearance as an eternal reprieve from judgment.

2 Peter 2:1-9 But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce damnable heresies, even denying the Lord they professed bought them — bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disgrace. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.  For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment; if He did not spare the ancient world when He brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others in his family; if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if He rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)—if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment, while continuing their punishment.