Genesis 8
The New World
Gen 8:1 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and domestic animals that were with him in the ark. God caused a wind to blow over the earth and the waters receded.
According to Psalm 104:6-9, the earth’s crust collapsed and the flood waters ran down into large valleys, which became the ocean basins of the modern world today. The wind evaporated the water so that the water could recede into the ocean basin valleys.
2The fountains of the deep and the floodgates of heaven were closed, and the rain stopped falling from the sky.
The subterranean reservoirs were closed. The rain quit falling from the sky.
3The waters kept receding steadily from the earth, so that they had gone down by the end of the 150 days.
All of the world’s oceans bear evidence of former lower levels. All of the world’s continental rivers and lakes bear evidence of former higher water levels and quantities of flow.
4On the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the ark came to rest on one of the mountains of Ararat.
The Ararat mountain range stretches between Southern Russia, Turkey, and Armenia, so it is not possible to know the exact location of Noah’s ark. It is very possible that the ark will be found a short time before the Second Coming of Christ. This would be a tremendous testimony to an unbelieving world, but they most likely will still not believe in Christ. The seventeenth day of the seventh month was the same day that Jesus was raised from the dead.
5The waters kept on receding until the tenth month. On the first day of the tenth month, the tops of the mountains became visible.
The waters continued to recede. The tops of the mountains were becoming visible.
6At the end of forty days, Noah opened the window he had made in the ark
Noah opened up the window to send out the birds.
7and sent out a raven; it kept flying back and forth until the waters had dried up on the earth.
God was no longer talking to Noah, so Noah had to use natural methods. God is a strong parent who allows his children to grow and mature strong.
The raven was an unclean animal, yet it would later feed Elijah. The raven is a strong flier and carrion eater. He could survive for a long time by eating the floating corpses. The raven could rest on the mountain tops above the receding waters.
8Then Noah sent out a dove to see if the waters had receded from the surface of the ground.
The dove was a clean animal who could travel great distances. The dove required fresh plant material and dry ground. The dove will only land on surfaces that are dry and clean.
9The dove could not find a resting place for its feet because water still covered the surface of the entire earth, and so it returned to Noah in the ark. He stretched out his hand, took the dove, and brought it back into the ark.
Doves prefer valleys rather than mountains, so the dove chose not to rest on a mountain peak as the raven did. Its return showed that the valleys were still flooded. The land was still covered with water. There was no fresh plant material or dry ground for the dove to rest.
10He waited seven more days and then sent out the dove again from the ark.
The water had receded even more. Noah hoped that the dove could find dry land.
11When the dove returned to him in the evening, there was a freshly plucked olive leaf in its beak! Noah knew that the waters had receded from the earth.
Olive trees only grow on the upper sections of mountains. This shows that there was now plant life on tops of the mountains, but the mountains were not yet dry. The valleys were still flooded. The fresh olive leaf proved to Noah that the land was beginning to produce vegetation and would soon be ready to support life once again. Scientific experiments have shown that seeds of plants will sprout even after many months of submergence in salt water.
12He waited another seven days and sent the dove out again, but it did not return to him this time.
The dove did not return, because he had found dry ground and fresh vegetation.
13In Noah’s six hundred and first year, in the first day of the first month, the waters had dried up from the earth, and Noah removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry.
Noah spent 378 days on the ark. The Hebrew word for “dried up” is חָרַב (harav), meaning to be free of moisture.
14And by the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was dry.
The Hebrew word for “dry” is יָבֵשׁ (yabash), a different Hebrew word than that in verse 13, meaning the complete absence of water.
15Then God spoke to Noah and said,
God breaks His divine silence.
16“Come out of the ark, you, your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives with you.
God gave a divine command to Noah. It was time for Noah’s family to step out into a new world without demon infestation of man.
17Bring out with you all the living creatures that are with you. Bring out every living thing, including the birds, animals, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. Let them increase and be fruitful and multiply on the earth!”
God repeated the Edenic command to Noah. His family was to increase and multiply. Notice that the command was given specifically to Noah when there were only eight people upon the earth. This was not a command to the modern day church of today, especially when the population of the earth is nearing five billion people. The command for today is to take the gospel to the lost.
To increase and multiply, Noah and his family of eight will have to migrate from Ararat and learn how to live in a drastically different new world. Noah and his sons will still possess the technological, medical, architectural, transportational, musical, and educational knowledge that they possessed in the pre-flood world. Noah was over 600 years old, so he possessed an abundance of knowledge from the advanced pre-flood civilization. Much of the modern medicine and herb knowledge may have come from Noah and his three sons.
18Noah went out along with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives.
During the flood, the canopy in outer space had broken, sending freezing rain upon the earth. This would have caused a mini-ice age. Land bridges would have existed across many places, including the Bering Strait from Siberia to Alaska and down the Malaysian Strait into New Guinea. Noah and his sons had built the ark, so they knew how to build and use boats. They passed this shipping technology to other cultures. Many of the animals and vegetation could have been transported by planned raft editions into different regions of the world.
19Every living creature, every creeping thing, every bird, and everything that moves on the earth went out of the ark in their groups.
All of the animals left the ark, including the baby dinosaurs. Many dragon legends exist throughout the cave painting, art, and literature of ancient history, demonstrating that men and dinosaurs once lived together shortly after the flood.
20Noah built an altar to the Lord. He then took some of every kind of clean animal and clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.
This is the first mention of an altar in the Bible. Before the flood, the blood sacrifice was taken to the entrance of the Garden of Eden and offered directly to the Shekinah Glory. The Shekinah Glory was the visible presence of God upon the earth. God was still omnipresent, but at the same time, He was outside the entrance of the Garden of Eden in his Shekinah Glory form. The blood sacrifice was most likely a lamb, which pointed to Christ. Now that the Garden of Eden had been destroyed by the Flood, Noah erected an altar.
Noah sacrificed one-seventh of his flocks and herds of domestic animals, demonstrating that he had tremendous faith in God to provide his needs. At this time, the world was very rugged, desolate, cold, stormy, barren, silent, and a mystery. There were no more evil hybrid demon-people who thought about nothing but violence, but there were new environmental challenges.
21And the Lord smelled the soothing aroma and said to Himself, “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, even though the inclination of their minds is evil from childhood on. I will never again destroy everything that lives, as I have just done.
The offering pointed to Christ’s atonement, so this was perfume to God’s nostrils. God made a promise to Noah that He would never globally flood the earth again. There would be rain in the post-flood world, but the inhabitants did not need to fear another global flood.
The evil inclination of men is the total depravity of man in which Paul mentioned in Romans 3:10-11. “There is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands God, There is no one who seeks God, not even one.” Man will never seek God on his own. Therefore, God must seek man, or no man would ever be saved. This text destroys the false teaching of Arminianism, which teaches that man has enough divine good inside of him to seek and choose God on his own. This is nowhere taught in Scripture. God generates two different calls to man. A general call is sent out to all men, but it is always rejected. An efficacious call is sent out to the elect, but it is always accepted. Without this efficacious call of God, no one would be saved. Jesus said, “No one comes to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day”. This is the efficacious call of God, This is the grace, or the kindness of God. Believers are saved only because God called them with an efficacious call that they could not resist. Everyone that God calls will be raised up on the last day.
22“While the earth continues to exist, planting time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night will not cease.”
There were no seasons before the flood. In the post flood world, there would be seasons. Noah and his family would have to adapt to this new world.
The Flood left quite an impact in the literature of the ancient world. Everyone living during the time period of the Tower of Babel knew of the flood, but as they grew farther away from God, the history of the Flood became perverted mythologies to them. After their languages were confused, they carried this perverted knowledge of the Flood with them into all of the ancient civilizations of the world.
Waltke comments on the historicity of the Flood:
To be sure, stories of a great flood are found all over the world. For example, Deucalion, son of Prometheus, and the only survivor of the flood brought on by Zeus, offers him a sacrifice like the one at Medone, and it is accepted. In that account the gods are also present, and they feed on the sacrifices or on the smoke that rises from the burning fat.
However, no deluge accounts are so strikingly similar to the Noah account as those of ancient Mesopotamia. The three parallels most striking are: (1) the Sumerian account with the hero Ziusdra, (2) the Old Akkadian account with the hero Atrahasis, and (3) the Old Babylonian account contained in the Gilgamesh Epic, Tablet 11, with the hero Utnapishtim. Although these accounts share many similarities with the Biblical account, the Biblical account stands apart in significant ways. In Mesopotamian stories the petty gods bring the flood to control overpopulation and/or to get rid of the annoying noise of people. Once the flood comes, they are frightened by it, and afterward they hungrily gather around the sacrifice. In contrast, God sovereignly brings the Flood because of human wickedness, and in response to Noah’s sacrifices, he pledges never again to destroy the earth [by water]. Whereas in the Atrahasis Epic the problem redressed by the flood is overpopulation, in Genesis life is an unqualified good.
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1. SAQ--What is the theme of Genesis 8?
2. Why did the raven not return to Noah?
3. Why did the dove return to Noah?
4. What kind of technology knowledge did Noah and his sons possess?
5. How was the new world different from the old world?
6. What was the difference in seasons between the old and new world?
7. Why did Noah build an altar to God?
8. What did the sacrifice of animals symbolize?
9. What promise did God give to Noah?
10. What challenges would Noah experience in the new world?