Noah's Ark - Flood & Post Flood - Genesis 8:1 - 9:17

Teacher: Rusty Kennedy
​Series: Bible Stories

Rusty's Notes

THE FLOOD RECEDES
GENESIS 8
1 God remembered Noah,

• - When Moses wrote that "God remembered" someone, in this case Noah, he meant that God extended mercy to him or her by delivering that person from death or destruction.
• God's rescue of Noah foreshadows His deliverance of Israel in the Exodus.

as well as all the wildlife and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. God caused a wind to pass over the earth, and the water began to subside. 2 The sources of the watery depths and the floodgates of the sky were closed, and the rain from the sky stopped. 3 The water steadily receded from the earth, and by the end of 150 days the water had decreased significantly. 4 The ark came to rest in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the mountains of Ararat.

• This verse does not specify a peak and refers generally to its location as the 'mountains of Ararat.
• The search for the ark's artifacts has been both a medieval and a modern occupation; but to the skeptic such evidence is not convincing, and to the believer, while not irrelevant, it is not necessary to faith.
• Modern Mt. Ararat lies on the border between Turkey and Armenia, near the center of the ancient world.
• From this general region Noah's descendants spread out over the earth.

5 The water continued to recede until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were visible. 6 After forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made, 7 and he sent out a raven. It went back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. 8 Then he sent out a dove to see whether the water on the earth’s surface had gone down, 9 but the dove found no resting place for its foot. It returned to him in the ark because water covered the surface of the whole earth. He reached out and brought it into the ark to himself.

• The raven in seeking food settles upon every carcass it sees, whereas the dove will only settle on what is dry and clean.
• The dove which is a light-colored, clean animal (Lev. 1:14; 12:6; et al.), in contrast to dark-colored, unclean animals (Lev. 11:15; Deut. 14:14), returns to its home when it finds no place to land.

10 So Noah waited seven more days and sent out the dove from the ark again. 11 When the dove came to him at evening, there was a plucked olive leaf in its beak. So Noah knew that the water on the earth’s surface had gone down.

• The olive tree will put out leaves even under water.

12 After he had waited another seven days, he sent out the dove, but it did not return to him again. 13 In the six hundred first year, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the water that had covered the earth was dried up. Then Noah removed the ark’s cover and saw that the surface of the ground was drying. 14 By the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the earth was dry.
 
THE LORD’S PROMISE
15 Then God spoke to Noah, 16 “Come out of the ark, you, your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives with you. 17 Bring out all the living creatures that are with you—birds, livestock, those that crawl on the earth—and they will spread over the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.”

• There are many interesting thematic parallels between God calling Noah out of the ark, and God later calling Abraham out of Ur (cf. 8:15 and 12:1; 8:16 and 12:1; 8:18 and 12:4; 8:20 and 12:7; 9:1 and 12:2; 9:9 and 12:7).
• Both Noah and Abraham represent new beginnings in the course of events recorded in Genesis.
• Both are marked by God's promise of blessing and his gift of the covenant.

18 So Noah, along with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives, came out. 19 All the animals, all the creatures that crawl, and all the flying creatures—everything that moves on the earth—came out of the ark by their families.

• These verses may seem like needless repetition to the modern reader, but they underline Noah's obedience to God's words, which Moses stressed in the entire Flood narrative.

20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord. He took some of every kind of clean animal and every kind of clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. 21 When the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, he said to himself, “I will never again curse the ground because of human beings, even though the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth onward. And I will never again strike down every living thing as I have done.

• Noah's "altar" is the first altar mentioned in the Bible.
• His "burnt offerings" were for worship.
• Some of the burnt offerings in the Mosaic cultus (system of worship) were for the same purpose.
• Specifically, a burnt offering made atonement and expressed the offerer's complete personal devotion to God (cf. Lev. 1; Rom. 12:1-2).
• As the head of the new humanity, Noah, with his sacrifice, represented all humankind.
• To sacrifice seems as 'natural' to man as to pray; the one indicates what he feels about himself, the other what he feels about God.
• The one means a felt need of propitiation [a felt need to satisfy God]; the other a felt sense of dependence."

22 As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter, and day and night
will not cease.”

• God's promise in this verse guarantees a certain degree of reliability in earth's climate system.
• There are good theological and scientific reasons to think Earth's climate is stable and global warming alarmism is unwarranted.
• Climate alarmism is distracting people—both Christians and non-Christians—from much weightier issues.
• Biblical religion explained that the seasonal cycle was the consequence of Yahweh's pronouncement and, moreover, evidence of a divine dominion that transcends the elements of the earth.
• There is no place for Mother-earth in biblical ideology.
• Earth owes its powers (not her powers!) to the divine command.

 
GOD’S COVENANT WITH NOAH
9 God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

• At this new beginning of the human family God again commanded Noah and his sons to "fill the earth" with their descendants.
• God established human life anew on the earth, showing His high regard for it.

2 The fear and terror of you will be in every living creature on the earth, every bird of the sky, every creature that crawls on the ground, and all the fish of the sea. They are placed under your authority.

• The phrases "The fear of you" and "the terror of you" express the same idea.
• Evidently at this point animals began to have a greater fear of human beings than they had previously.
• The exceeding sinfulness of mankind that resulted in the Flood did not wipe out God's original commands regarding human reproduction and dominion.

3 Every creature that lives and moves will be food for you; as I gave the green plants, I have given you everything.

• God gave Noah permission to eat animals.
• Until now evidently people had eaten only plants.
• Now humanity received the power of life and death over the animal kingdom ("I have given everything to you").
• Whether or not early man could eat meat by permission from the beginning, now it is stated formally in the Noahic covenant."
• Until the Mosaic Law, God made no distinction between clean and unclean animals with regard to human consumption.
• Under the Mosaic Law, the Israelites could not eat certain foods.
• Under the Law of Christ (Gal. 6:2), we may again eat any foods (Rom. 14:14; 1 Tim. 4:3).
• These changes illustrate the fact that God has changed some of the rules, for human conduct at various strategic times in history.
• These changes are significant features that help us identify the various dispensations (economies) by which God has ruled historically.

4 However, you must not eat meat with its lifeblood in it.

• As with Adam, He also gave them dominion over the animals and permission to eat any animal or "moving thing" for food, with only one prohibition: the animal's blood.
• God did prohibit the eating of animal "blood" in order to instill respect for the sacredness of life, since blood is a symbol of life, and it is the life-giving fluid (cf. Lev. 3:17; 7:2-27; 19:26; Deut. 12:1-24; 1 Sam. 14:32-34; Acts 15:20, 29).
• Visited with Sam’s grandparents on Monday Night and Frank said, “There is definitely life in the blood.”
• This was after his recent blood transfusion.
• "The implication [of New Testament references to eating blood] seems very clear that we are still to respect the sanctify of the blood, since God has appointed it to be a symbol of the atoning blood of Jesus Christ.
• Therefore it is not to be consumed by any believer who wishes to be obedient to Scripture."
• During my years of seminary teaching I had the privilege of ministering to many students from Africa.
• Some of them asked me about this prohibition against eating blood, because in their tribal cultures eating solidified blood was practiced.
• Since Jesus declared all foods clean (Mark 7:19), and Paul taught that all foods are acceptable for the Christian (Rom. 14:20; 1 Cor. 8:8; cf. Acts 10:13), I told them that I thought eating blood was all right, unless it was part of a pagan ceremony.
  In that case participation would probably imply approval of the paganism (cf. 1 Cor. 10:14-33).
• God not only reasserted the cultural mandate to reproduce, and subdue the earth, and modified the food law, but He also reasserted the sanctity of human life (cf. ch. 4).

5 And I will require a penalty for your lifeblood; I will require it from any animal and from any human; if someone murders a fellow human, I will require that person’s life.
6 Whoever sheds human blood,
by humans his blood will be shed,
for God made humans in his image.
7 But you, be fruitful and multiply; spread out over the earth and multiply on it.”

• The reason for capital punishment for murder is that God made man in His own image.
• This is one reason, therefore, that murder is so serious.
• A person extinguishes a revelation of God—which God takes very personally when he or she murders someone.
• Before the Flood, the lack of capital punishment led to bloody vendettas. – Genesis 4:23-24 - 23 Lamech said to his wives: Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; wives of Lamech, pay attention to my words. For I killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. 24 If Cain is to be avenged seven times over, then for Lamech it will be seventy-seven times! [1]
• The Mosaic Law prescribed the death penalty for several other crimes, in addition to murder: working on the sabbath (Exod. 35:2), cursing father or mother (Lev. 20:9), adultery (Lev. 20:10), incest (Lev. 20:11-12), sodomy (Lev. 20:13, 15-16), false prophesying (Deut. 13:1-10), Idolatry (Deut. 17:2-7), incorrigible juvenile delinquency (Deut. 21:18-21), rape (Deut. 22:25), keeping an ox that had killed a human being (Exod. 21:29), kidnapping (Exod. 21:16), and intrusion of an alien into a sacred place or office (Num. 1:51; 3:10, 38; 17:7). These punishments ended with the end of the Mosaic Law, but the punishment for murder continued, since it antedated the Mosaic Law.
• This command laid the foundation for all civil government.
• The human government and the governors that existed previously—as in the city which Cain established (4:17), or in the case of the mighty men (6:4)—existed solely on human authority. Now, however, divine authority was conferred on human government to exercise oversight over those who lived under its jurisdiction.
• Sometimes those who argue against capital punishment, today, appeal to Jesus' statement in the Sermon on the Mount: "You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I say to you, do not show opposition against an evil person" (Matt. 5:38-39).
• Jesus was not cancelling God's command to execute murderers when He said this, but was teaching self-restraint and non-retaliation in interpersonal conflicts, as is clear from the context.
• These verses introduce the another dispensation, the dispensation of Human Government.
• When Noah and his family stepped out of the ark to begin life on earth anew, God laid down new rules for humanity, including a new test.
• Previously no one had the right to take another human life (cf. 4:10-11, 14-15, 23-24). Now, though man's direct moral responsibility to God continued, God delegated to man certain areas of His authority, including capital punishment (the death penalty for a crime).
• God now specified that human beings were to practice capital punishment in order to safeguard the sanctity of human life.

8 Then God said to Noah and his sons with him, 9 “Understand that I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, 10 and with every living creature that is with you—birds, livestock, and all wildlife of the earth that are with you—all the animals of the earth that came out of the ark. 11 I establish my covenant with you that never again will every creature be wiped out by floodwaters; there will never again be a flood to destroy the earth.”

• The Noahic Covenant was a treaty that God made with humankind through Noah.
• In it He promised to "never again" destroy all flesh with "the waters of a flood.

12 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all future generations: 13 I have placed my bow in the clouds, and it will be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 Whenever I form clouds over the earth and the bow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all the living creatures: water will never again become a flood to destroy every creature. 16 The bow will be in the clouds, and I will look at it and remember the permanent covenant between God and all the living creatures on earth.” 17 God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and every creature on earth.” [2]

• The sign that God appointed to remind people of this promise, and to guarantee it, was the rainbow.
• There may have been rainbows before this pronouncement, but now God attached significance to the rainbow.
• In later years God gave other signs in connection with other covenants: physical circumcision with the Abrahamic Covenant, Sabbath observance with the Mosaic Covenant, and the Lord's Supper with the New Covenant.
• The rainbow arcs like a battle bow hung against the clouds.
• The Hebrew word for rainbow, qeset, is also the word for a battle bow.
• The bow is now 'put away,' hung in place by the clouds, suggesting that the 'battle,' the storm, is over.
• Thus the rainbow speaks of peace.
• This covenant would remain for "all future generations”.
• People have no responsibility to guarantee the perpetuity of this covenant.
• God will do all that He promised (v. 9).
• Observe the recurrence of "I," "Myself," and "My" in these verses.
• God was making His promise—to all living creatures for all time going forward—very personal.
• Note that He said that the rainbow would remind Him of His promise; it was primarily a reminder to God and secondarily to human beings.
• Finally, this covenant is unconditional (v. 9), universal (v. 11), and everlasting (v. 12).
• The covenant with Noah [6:18; 9:9-16] is entirely unconditional rather than a conditional covenant, as in the situation in Eden.
• The certainty of the fulfillment of the covenant with Noah rested entirely with God and not with Noah.

God promised not to judge humanity again with a universal flood of water (8:21; 9:11-16).

[1] Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), Ge 4:23–24.
[2] Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), Ge 8:1–9:17.