Paul Kretzmann Commentary - Genesis 8:1 - 8:5

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Paul Kretzmann Commentary - Genesis 8:1 - 8:5


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

The Flood Subsides

v. 1. And God remembered Noah and every living thing and all the cattle that was with him in the ark; and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged. During those long days when the lowlands and finally even the uplands and the mountains sank from sight in the terrible and limitless waste of waters, Noah's faith may often have been tried sorely as to whether he and his family would survive the general destruction. But God did not forget His servant, and in due time He gave him proof to this effect. He caused a wind to pass over the earth in order to take up the moisture of the universal ocean, and the waters no longer rose, but settled, began to subside.

v. 2. The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained.
God shut up the wells of the great deep and closed the windows of the firmament, so that these sources no longer yielded the limitless masses of water. At the same time the rain was hindered from falling, as it may have done intermittently even after the first forty days of deluge.

v. 3. And the waters returned from off the earth continually; and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated.
The waters literally went back from off the earth going and returning, with a steady appreciable settling, becoming definitely less at the end of one hundred and fifty days, this number including both the beginning and the end of the Flood.

v. 4. And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.
The Lord so arranged matters that the ark settled down, came to a rest, on the mountain range of Ararat, in the highlands of Armenia. This was just five months, or one hundred and fifty days, after the Deluge had commenced. In this mountain range the Great Ararat rises to a height of 16,254 feet, while the Lesser Ararat is about 12,000 feet high. This landing place of the ark is of the highest significance for the development of humanity, for Armenia lies in the middle of the old continent and approximately at an equal distance from the extremities of Asia, Africa, and Europe. Just as the first cradle of the human race had been somewhere in this neighborhood, thus this country was once more chosen by God as the starting point for the new human family.

v. 5. And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.
The subsiding of the waters was slow, but steady, until, seventy-three days after the landing of the ark, the summits of the Armenian highlands were visible from Ararat. This was about 223 days after the beginning of the Flood.