Noah Part 4

13 - Noah pt. 2 - The Flood pt. 3 Genesis 7:10-8:5

Tuesday, February 28, 2017

9:11 AM

"The narrator of Genesis devoted nearly three full chapters to the story of Noah’s flood.

Most of ch 6 relates God’s instruction to Noah, and Noah’s preparations for the coming disaster.

Chapter 7 recounts Noah’s and his family’s entrance into the ark and the actual event of the flood, to the point where it reached its crest. The resolution—God’s re-creation of the world in the gradual receding of the waters—

and the final act, the exit from the ark of all whom it had sheltered, are the subject of ch 8.

Thus, ch 7—the chapter describing God’s “de-creation” in judgment—is the one most filled with dramatic language, with the vivid scenes of catastrophic dangers, even with the pathos of small but telling details, such as the notice that God shut the door to the ark as the rains were about to begin, and the fountains of the deep about to be thrown wide open. In the classic story line of history as well as of fiction—inception, climax, resolution—the narrator now brings the reader to the climax: the flood itself."[1]

Just to recap -

This is the account of Noah and the Flood. Noah was a righteous man and he walked with God. He had three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.Noah is told to make an ark of gopher wood…It was divided into rooms and pitched inside and out with bitumen or “asphalt,”A window or roof was constructed and a door was placed in the side of the ark. There were three decks: lower, middle, and upper.God tells Noah that He will destroy the entire world with a Flood. God also promises to establish a covenant with Noah and his entire family. Preliminary instructions for their cargo: Noah is to take aboard two of all living creatures (animals and birds: one male and one female), and every kind of food that will be eaten.

Tonight we will talk about -

Noah spends up to 120 years building the ark and preparing his cargo of food. When Noah is 600 years old, God tells him to take his family, two of all unclean animals, and seven of all clean animals and go into the ark. God says that 7 days from now He will send rain for 40 days and 40 nights. All of the animals come to the ark in pairs and take their places inside. God shuts the door!Seven days later (17th day of the 2nd month): All the fountains of the great deep burst open and the floodgates of the sky open. It rains for 40 days and 40 nights.[2]

I want to go back just briefly and talk about the "clean" and "unclean" animals we talked about some Sunday Night. After service Wylie came up to me and quoted the verse in chapter 7 that Noah took 7 pairs of each kind of animals. Which I thought was so encouraging and cute. I'm glad our young people have been taking an interest in the Bible and church lately.

ON the question of clean and unclean I did want to make it clear that everyone and everything were still vegetarian up to this point. Eating of meat was not done until after the flood. There may have been some types of scavengers to clean up animal carcasses and things of that nature, the Bible doesn't say. But as far as food for people and most animals it was still vegetarian.

So clean and unclean would have only been from what I can tell regarding their ability to be sacrificed or not. [7]

There are over 200 flood stories from nearly every type of culture and every kind of people. You have to be careful as they are often said to mirror the Genesis account, and at times it is said that Genesis mirror's those accounts. But what sets these stories apart from the Genesis account is they are all polytheistic accounts (use many gods) Genesis talks of only the One True God.

Dr. Alan Brown in his Pentateuch Class shared with us these notes:

"A Flood tradition is a story particular to a certain culture that refers back in history to a worldwide Flood. Two people who have done much work in collecting Flood traditions are Tim LaHaye and John Morris, who present a full listing in their book The Ark on Ararat. It is grouped by areas of global distribution, and the sheer enormity of the list makes it worth looking at.

These Flood traditions vary, but there is much agreement too.

In 88% of them there is a favored family. In 70% survival in due to a boat. In 95% the sole cause of the catastrophe is a Flood. In 66% the disaster is due to man’s wickedness. In 67% animals are also saved. In 57% the survivors end up on a mountain. In smaller percentages birds are sent out, a rainbow is mentioned, and eight persons specifically are saved.

Moreover, there is a predictable pattern to these variations if we assume that the story of the Flood is true and that the descendants of Noah spread out over the earth after the Flood, bearing the memory of the Flood with them.

In the Middle East the stories are very similar. But the farther one goes from the place where the story originated the more incidental circumstances, local color, and cultural elements creep in. LaHaye and Morris conclude, “The universal Flood traditions can only have come from a common source, embellished with local color and culture, but retaining enough pertinent data to convey both historical and moral concepts.”

Hugh Miller, a careful investigator on these stories in the 1800s, wrote, “The destruction of well nigh the whole human race in an early age of the world’s history by a great deluge appears to have so impressed the minds of the few survivors and seems to have been handed down to their children, in consequence, with such terror-struck impressiveness, that their remote descendants of the present day have not even yet forgotten it. It appears in almost every mythology, and lives in the most distant countries and among the most barbarous tribes.”[8] Dr. Alan Brown Notes

Noah’s life was divided into three unequal parts.

His first son was born when he was five hundred years old (5:32). The flood came when he was six hundred years old. He died at the age of ninehundred fifty years (9:29). [3]

We are told for the first time explicitly that the salvation of Noah and his family is due to his virtuous character (7:1)[4].

The Flood 7:10-24 - This would have been a global catastrophic flood. Called into the Ark - 7:6-7,13-16 ( A Flashback or Review)Now verses 13-16 talk about the boarding of the Ark. No doubt it took some time to pen the animals, nest them down, and everything. Perhaps they were on the Ark for seven days after the door was shut (As it sounds like the door was shut the same day they entered the Ark)) Although some scholars think the storm started the same day they entered the ark. "Why a seven-day pause? According to Jewish midrash, the seven-day interval is a period of mourning for the death of Methuselah (as Tgs. ), who dies in the year of the flood (see 5:27–28), or a period for God's own grief for the world (e.g., Gen.Rab. 32.7); Tg.Ps.-J. adds that the respite is a final opportunity for repentance. The passage does not give any indication of the week's purpose. Verse 10 can be misread to indicate that the ark's occupants reside in the ark for a week until the rains begin, but this is illusory because v. 13 clarifies that it is on the same day that the family enters the ark that the rains commence. Rather, v. 10 indicates that the rains fall precisely on the day that God had forewarned one week earlier (v. 4). [5]

Shut in with God - Gen. 7:16 - "Before the door of the ark is closed (v. 16) and all that it contains disappears from our sight, the Bible passes before us, one by one, all the human beings and the various types of animal life that found refuge within it, in order that we should realize the importance and value of the living treasures entrusted to the ark’s protection. (1964, 88)

After Noah, his family, and the animals all were inside the ark, in obedience to God’s command, Yahweh shut him in. This is God’s only reported action in the paragraph."[6] While this may be the only recorded act of God in the paragraph they were now completely in God's hands - there is no indication of a rudder, or steering mechanism. This was not a navigable ship, this was a lifesaving Ark. "The story is marked by several symbols. When the ark was ready to go, "the LORD closed the door behind them" (Genesis 7:16). This was the mark of divine finality. Those within were utterly secure; no person and no power could take their safety from them. For those outside, the last chance of entry was gone."[9]

Fountains of the Deep broken up - 7:10-12,17-24We really don't know how the flood happened. Dr. Henry Morris in his book "The Genesis Record" Lists several popular theories;The sudden tilting of the earth's axisA bombardment of the earth by asteroids or meteoritesA sudden slipping of the earth's crustNuclear explosions detonated by extraterrestial space travelers (Bro. Addisons Pre-Adamic people)Gravitational and electromagnetic forces resulting from a near miss of the earth by a wandering planet or comet Plus many others just as highly imaginative and completely incapable of proof. Dr. Morris reminds us to keep in mind that, "God has, in His omnipotence and omniscience, created a universe of high efficiency of operation and will not interefere in this operation supernaturally unless the natural principles are incapable of accomplishing his purpose in a specific situation.."He goes on to point out, "There is no question that God could have accomplished the entire event miraculously (say by a special creation of the waters of the Flood and then by special "uncreation" of them when it was over) but this would be unnecessary and therefore theologically unlikely.[10] The Genesis RecordWe do know the flood came about from two causes how they happened we are not sure, butThe fountains of the deep being broken up A sonar probe of the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean has revealed a seam in the middle of it. It somewhat matches the continents of North America and Europe with South America and Africa. The impression is that at one time the Atlantic Ocean did not exist, perhaps before the Flood. But through a cataclysmic fissure, the ground opened to make the water recede quickly. This indicates that it is really too difficult to determine what might have happened during the Flood. One is much safer simply to take the Word of God as a factual report of a totally unique and one-time event on the earth.[11]

Once the postulated pressure rise caused the first "fountain" to crack open, the pressurized fluid would surge through at this point and further weaken nearby boundaries, until soon a worldwide chain reaction would develop, cleaving open all the fountains of the great deep throughout the world.

The volcanic explosions and eruptions which would have accompanied these fractures would have poured great quantities of magma up from the earth's mantle along with the waters.

Furthermore, immense quantities of volcanic dust would have been blown skyward, along with gigantic sprays of water and turbulent surges of the atmosphere. The combination of atmospheric turbulence, expanding and cooling gases, and a vast supply of dust and other particles to serve as nuclei of condensation would suffice to penetrate the upper canopy of water vapor and trigger another chain reaction there, causing its waters to begin to condense and coalesce and soon to start moving earthward as a torrential global downpour of rain.[12]

I remember as an early teen-ager my family went to Mammoth Springs in Arkansas after a family reunion. I remember being overwhelmed at the massive amount of water gushing from the spring. I read today that, "Mammoth Spring is Arkansas's largest spring and the second largest spring in the Ozark Mountains. A National Natural Landmark, the spring flows nine million gallons of water hourly. Forming a scenic 10-acre lake, it then flows south as the Spring River" We are talking about a lot of water 9 million gallons hourly. According to Popular Science Magazine March/April 2017 issue the average person uses about 100 gallons of water per day. Using this number and rounding the population of Wichita to 390,000 the total amount of water used per person per day would be 39,585,000 gallons. 9 million gallons an hour, for 24 hours a day is 216 million gallons of water. More than enough to sustain our fair cities water supply. Imagine not 9 million gallons of water an hour but billions and billions of gallons of water gushing up from the earth in geysers and fountains, spewing steam, and water and causing volcanic eruptions and who knows what all else. Raining forty days and forty nights The reason for the phrasing forty days and forty nights (rather than saying just “forty days,” which would define the same period of time) is to alert the reader that the rain fell continuously, without intermission, for the entire period. [13]

the biblical text sets the period of rain at forty days and nights. Beyond that, however, the text recognizes that the rain is only the beginning. The one hundred fifty days that the water prevails (7:24) and the additional one hundred fifty that it recedes (8:5), added to several periods of waiting (7:10; 8:6, 10, 12), add up to just over a year spent on the ark.[14] The Depth of the flood - Gen. 7:17-20Warren Wiersbe makes the claim, "The rain stopped after forty days, which would be on the twenty-eighth day of the third month (Gen. 7:12). However, the water continued to rise for another 110 days and reached its peak after 150 days (v. 24). At that time, the ark rested on a mountain peak of Ararat (8:4). It would take 150 days for the water to recede (v. 3), which takes us to the twelfth month, the seventeenth day. Two months and ten days later, Noah and his family left the ark and set the animals free (8:15–19). From the day that God shut them in, they had been in the ark a year and ten days."[15]

"Fifteen cubits upward…" The phrase "fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail" does not mean that the Flood was only fifteen cubits (22 feet) deep, for the phrase is qualified by the one which immediately follows: "and the mountains were covered." Nor does it necessarily mean that the mountains were covered to a depth of only fifteen cubits, for this would require that all antediluvian mountains be exactly the same altitude. The true meaning of the phrase is to be found in comparing it with Genesis 6:15, where we are told that the height of the Ark was thirty cubits. Nearly all commentators agree that the phrase "fifteen cubits" in 7:20 must therefore refer to…The Ark sank into the water to a depth of fifteen cubits (just one-half of its total height) when fully laden. Such information adds further support to this particular argument for a universal Flood, because it tells us that the Flood "prevailed" over the tops of the highest mountains to a depth of at least fifteen cubits. If the Flood had not covered the mountains by at least such a depth, the Ark could not have floated over them during the five months in which the waters "prevailed" upon the earth.[16]

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[M] Coleson, Joseph (2012). Genesis 1– 11: NBBC- A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition, Beacon Hill Press, Kansas City, MO. https://biblia.com/books/kjv/1Jn4.3#[M] Dr. Alan Brown Notes GBS Pentateuch[M] Coleson, Joseph (2012). Genesis 1– 11: NBBC- A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition, Beacon Hill Press, Kansas City, MO[M] NAC[M] IBID[M] Joseph (2012). Genesis 1– 11: NBBC- A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition, Beacon Hill Press, Kansas City, MO[M] IBID[M] Dr. Alan Brown Notes GBS Pentateuch[M] Kalas, J. E. (2017). Genesis [Kindle Android version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com[M] Henry Morriss , The Genesis Record[M] Wilbur Glenn Williams, Wesleyan Bible Commentary – Genesis, (Indianapolis, IN: Wesleyan Publishing House, 2004), WORDsearch CROSS e-book, 100.[M] Henry Morriss , The Genesis Record[M] Coleson, Joseph (2012). Genesis 1– 11: NBBC- A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition, Beacon Hill Press, Kansas City, MO[M] Walton, J. H. (2017). Genesis, The NIV Application Commentry [Kindle Android version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com[M] Warren Wiersbe, Be Basic[M] From <https://www.mywsb.com/4.v206/c.html> Noah's Flood Morris & Whitcomb