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Gen_7:4 For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.
Ver. 4. For yet seven days, &c.] God could have destroyed them by water, or otherwise, in a far shorter space: But, of his free grace, he gives them yet seven days further, and then rains upon the earth forty days, as, not willing that any should "eternally perish, but that all should come to repentance". {2Pe_3:9} The Hebrew doctors are very injurious to Noah, because we read not that he prayed for the old world, but only took care of himself, and his own family, censuring him therefore of self-love and hard-heartedness. So they judge very uncharitably of those that perished in the flood; sending them all to hell, and wresting some scriptures thereunto; as, that in this present verse, God saith, he will destroy them, or blot them out; that is, say they, {a} out of the land of the world to come, the land of the living. I deny not, but many of their "spirits are in prison"; so saith St Peter. {1Pe_3:19} But withal, in the next chapter, the same apostle tells us, that "for this cause the gospel was preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit". {1Pe_4:6} Compare these words with those in 1Pe_3:18-20, and it will appear, the apostle speaks of these antediluvians. All were not saved that were in the ark, nor all damned, we may well think, that were out of it. Could they see their "foundation overflown with a flood," as the phrase is, {Job_22:16} and "not lay for themselves a good foundation" by "laying hold on eternal life"? {1Ti_6:19} St Ambrose conceiveth, that Noah was seven days in the Ark, before the flood came; that as God was six days in creating the world, and rested the seventh; so these perishing persons, admonished by the number of the days of the creation, might "remember their creator," {Ecc_12:1} and make their peace. Nunquam sero, si serio .
{a} R. Menachem, in loc.