Genesis 6 to 9 · Story · Featured Study
The Flood
The account of Noah and the ark in Genesis 6 to 9 stands between the fall of Genesis 3 and the tower of Babel in Genesis 11.
The Deluge was a real judgment on a world so filled with violence that God resolved to wipe it out, and yet grace went before the ark. Judgment and mercy run together, and salvation comes through the water, a figure of baptism into Christ.
- Where
- Ararat
- Who
- Noah
Gustave Doré, The Great Flood, 1866. Public domain.
Summary
Genesis 6 to 9 follows Noah's household of eight into the ark, through the flood and out again.
- The ark's Hebrew name, tebah, links it to the basket that carried the infant Moses (Exodus 2:3 and 5).
- The flood lasted a year and ten days, from the day the waters broke out to the day the earth was dry.
- God made the covenant after the flood with every living creature, and set the bow in the clouds as its sign (Genesis 9:12 to 17).
- Christians differ on whether the flood covered the whole earth.
Violence, Favor and the Command to Build
Genesis 6:5 to 22, from the LORD's grief over mankind to Noah's obedience
The LORD saw that every inclination of the human heart was evil all the time, and He grieved that He had made man (Genesis 6:5 to 6). Against that verdict the text sets one man, Noah, six verses before he is told to build the ark.
Noah, however, found favor in the eyes of the LORD.Grace is named here before Noah's righteousness, which Genesis 6:9 states next.
God orders an ark of gopher wood, sealed with pitch inside and out, 300 cubits long, 50 wide and 30 high (Genesis 6:14 to 16). God promises to establish His covenant with Noah, and Noah does everything God commands him (Genesis 6:18 and 22).
Then God said to Noah, “The end of all living creatures has come before Me, because through them the earth is full of violence. Now behold, I will destroy both them and the earth.The Hebrew verb for destroy, shachat, is the verb Genesis 6:11 to 12 uses for the earth's corruption.
The Ark and the Flood Chiasm
the ark from its measures, and the rising and falling halves of the flood year after Gordon Wenham's palistrophe (Vetus Testamentum, 1978)
The ark was 300 cubits long, 50 wide and 30 high, with three decks.
50 cubits, about 23 m (75 feet)
- The roofGenesis 6:16
- A cubit from the topGenesis 6:16
- The upper deckGenesis 6:16
- The lower deckGenesis 6:16
- The middle deckGenesis 6:16
- The doorGenesis 7:16
- Side viewGenesis 6:15
- End viewGenesis 6:15
Each deck's height and the door's place are not stated; the drawing divides the height in thirds. A cubit is about 18 inches.
Side and end views, drawn to one scale.
Doré draws Noah sending the dove from the window over the drowned.
- The roofGenesis 6:16
- The windowGenesis 8:6
- The doveGenesis 8:8
- The cragGenesis 8:4
- Those who perishedGenesis 7:21
Gustave Doré, A Dove Is Sent Forth from the Ark, 1866, from Doré's English Bible. Public domain.
The engraving holds Genesis 8 at its turn.
Eight steps of the flood year, four as the waters rise and four as they recede, dated by the years of Noah's life where Genesis gives a date.
- The fountains and floodgates are openedJudgment risingyear 600, month 2, day 17Genesis 7:11
- The LORD shuts Noah inJudgment risingGenesis 7:16
- The waters rise over the mountainsJudgment risingGenesis 7:19 to 20
- 150 days the waters prevailJudgment risingGenesis 7:24
- The fountains and floodgates are closedMercy recedingGenesis 8:2
- 150 days the waters abateMercy recedingGenesis 8:3
- Noah opens the windowMercy recedingGenesis 8:6
- The waters fall; the land appearsMercy recedingdry by year 601, month 2, day 27Genesis 8:13 to 14
Noah opens the window, The waters fall; the land appears
The ark rests on the mountains of Ararat in month 7, day 17 (Genesis 8:4).
But God remembered Noah and all the animals and livestock that were with him in the ark. And God sent a wind over the earth, and the waters began to subside.The whole story turns here, from rising judgment to receding mercy.
Into the Ark and Out Again
Genesis 7:1 to 9:17, from the closing of the door to the sign in the clouds
Noah enters the ark with his wife, his three sons and their wives, and the animals come to him in pairs, with seven pairs of every clean kind (Genesis 7:2 to 9). Seven days later the flood begins.
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month, all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.And they entered, the male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. Then the LORD shut him in.The verse uses both names: God for the command and the LORD, His covenant name, for the act.
Everything on dry land that had the breath of life dies (Genesis 7:21 to 23). Only Noah and those with him in the ark remain.
Finally, the waters completely inundated the earth, so that all the high mountains under all the heavens were covered.When the waters go down, Noah sends out a raven and then a dove three times. The dove returns once with an olive leaf, and the last time it does not return (Genesis 8:6 to 12). At God's word Noah leaves the ark, builds an altar and offers burnt offerings (Genesis 8:15 to 20). God then makes His covenant with Noah and his descendants, and gives it a sign.
I have set My rainbow in the clouds, and it will be a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth.Genesis 7:19, Genesis 9:13
The Ark & the One Door
the ark's Hebrew name, its door and the covenant
The tebah, a word used in all of Scripture only of Noah's ark and Moses' basket (Exodus 2:3), is a pitch-sealed vessel of salvation through water. The ark of the covenant has a different Hebrew name, though the Greek New Testament calls both kibotos.
Noah's ark has one door, set in its side. Augustine read the ark as a figure of the church and its measures as the proportions of the human body in which Christ came (City of God 15.26). He read its door as the wound the lance made in the side of the crucified Christ, through which believers enter the church.
CARRIED ON THE WATER
The waters rose and lifted the ark high above the earth (Genesis 7:17).
GOD REMEMBERED NOAH AND ACTED
To remember, in Hebrew zakar, is to act on a promise already made. In Genesis 8:1 God acts on the covenant He promised in Genesis 6:18, and in Genesis 9:15 He promises to remember it again.
WHAT THE BOW PROMISES
The covenant promises that all life will never again be cut off by the waters of a flood. Rain still falls after the covenant is made.
Older Flood Stories from Mesopotamia
the Babylonian accounts set beside Genesis
Clay tablets from Babylonia tell of a great flood sent by the gods and survived by one man who builds a boat. In the Atrahasis epic the hero is Atrahasis, and in Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh he is Utnapishtim.
The likeness to Genesis is close in outline, and the difference lies in the gods. In the Babylonian accounts many gods send the flood and then regret sending it, while in Genesis one God judges violence, keeps a righteous man and binds Himself by covenant.
On Why the Account Was Given
written for the people of the exodus
Moses wrote Genesis for the people the LORD brought out of Egypt, to teach them who the LORD is and who they are before Him. The flood is told to that end, and so the account gives what the teaching needs and leaves many details of the waters untold.
What the Text Leaves Unsaid
the date, the peak, the waters, the animals and the rainbow
When did the flood happen?Genesis 7:11 and 8:13
The text dates the flood by Noah's age and gives no date in any calendar we use. Reckonings from the genealogies differ, because the Hebrew and the Greek texts give different ages in Genesis 5 and 11.
Where did the ark come to rest?Genesis 8:4
Ararat is a region and its range, and the text names no single peak in it.
How did the waters come and go?Genesis 7:11 and 8:1 to 2
The text names the fountains of the great deep, the floodgates of the heavens and the wind God sent over the earth. It gives no account of what the fountains and the floodgates were.
How many animals came aboard?Genesis 7:2 to 3 and 7:8 to 9
The text gives no count of the kinds of animals that came aboard.
Was this the first rainbow?Genesis 9:13
Genesis does not say whether a rainbow had been seen before the flood.
The Flood in the Rest of Scripture
how the Psalms, the prophets, Jesus and the apostles read Genesis 6 to 9
Psalm 29:10 says the LORD sits enthroned over the flood, using the same word, mabbul, that Genesis uses. Isaiah 54:9 holds up the oath to Noah as the pattern of God's oath never again to be angry with His people.
Jesus compares His coming to the days of Noah (Matthew 24:37). People were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark. They were oblivious until the flood came and swept them all away (Matthew 24:38 to 39; Luke 17:26 to 27). Hebrews 11:7 names Noah among the faithful, because he built the ark in godly fear when warned of things not yet seen.
John Wesley reads the water of 1 Peter 3:21 as baptism, which saves by the inward grace and not by the bare outward sign (Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament).
who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In the ark a few people, only eight souls, were saved through water.And this water symbolizes the baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body, but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God—through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,Peter reads the flood a second way. Scoffers deny that judgment will come, and he answers them from the flood. The present heavens and earth are reserved for fire on the day of judgment (2 Peter 3:5 to 7).
through which the world of that time perished in the flood.Peter's verb here, kataklyzo, belongs with the noun kataklysmos, which Jesus uses for the flood in Matthew 24:38 to 39.
How the Flood Has Been Taught
five readings from Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Matthew Henry and John Wesley
died 165 · Justin Martyr
Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter CXXVII
The One who shut Noah in
The quotation1 quotation
“When 'God shut Noah into the ark,' you must not imagine that the unbegotten God Himself came down or went up from any place.”
Justin Martyr · Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter CXXVII · on Genesis 7:16Patristic
died 202 · Irenaeus
The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, Sections 18-19
Wickedness spread over the whole race before the flood
The quotation1 quotation
“And for a very long while wickedness extended and spread, and reached and laid hold upon the whole race of mankind, until a very small seed of righteousness remained among them: and illicit unions took place upon the earth, since angels were united with the daughters of the race of mankind; and they bore to them sons who for their exceeding greatness were called giants.”
Irenaeus · The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, Sections 18-19 · on Genesis 6:1 to 8Patristic
1662 to 1714 · Matthew Henry
Commentary on the Whole Bible
Noah made a vessel of mercy in a generation of wrath
The quotation1 quotation
“It also magnifies his grace towards Noah that he was made a vessel of God's mercy when all mankind besides had become the generation of his wrath: distinguishing favours bring under peculiarly strong obligations.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible · on Genesis 6:8Puritan
1662 to 1714 · Matthew Henry
Commentary on the Whole Bible
The call to come into the way of salvation God has provided
The quotation1 quotation
“There is much of our gospel duty and privilege to be seen in Noah's preservation in the ark. The apostle makes it a type of our baptism, that is, our Christianity, 1 Pet. iii. It is our great duty, in obedience to the gospel call, by a lively faith in Christ, to come into that way of salvation which God has provided for poor sinners.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible · on Genesis 7:16Puritan
1703 to 1791 · John Wesley
Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament
Rain such as was never known before
The quotation1 quotation
“The rain, which ordinarily descends in drops, then came down in streams. That God binds up the waters in his thick clouds, and the cloud is not rent under them; but now the bond was loosed, the cloud was rent, and such rains descended as were never known before or since.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament · on Genesis 7:11Evangelical
Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry, John Wesley
How Far the Waters Reached
the extent of the flood as the church and its scholars have read it, each reading with its holders
Many faithful readers hold the Deluge of Genesis 7 as literal, global history, the traditional, young-earth reading. Others read it as a real, catastrophic judgment described in the totalizing language its narrator and its original hearers knew, without settling the question of its geographic extent. Both readings are widely held, and both meet in Peter's use of the flood in 2 Peter 3:6 to 7.
A flood over the whole earthheld in Protestant commentary and by young-earth creationists
Most of the church held this reading through the nineteenth century. Keil and Delitzsch held it in their commentary on the Pentateuch (English 1866). Jamieson, Fausset and Brown held it in 1871 and read the fifteen cubits of Genesis 7:20 as twenty-two and a half feet above the summits of the highest hills. John Whitcomb and Henry Morris set it out with a flood geology in The Genesis Flood (1961). The case rests on the stacked totals of Genesis 7:19 to 23 and on the ark's purpose if animals could have moved away.
Readers of a regional flood reply that “all the earth” in Genesis 41:57 means the lands around Egypt, and that Psalm 104:9 says the waters may never again cover the earth.
A regional flood, or an extent left openheld among old-earth evangelicals
Hugh Ross holds that the flood covered the region where all people then lived, in Navigating Genesis (2014). John Walton and Tremper Longman leave the extent open in The Lost World of the Flood (2018).
The global reading answers that regional floods still come, while Genesis 9:11 says that never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.
Books to Read Next
works on the flood from both readings and from the ancient world
Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown · 1871
The commentary is still widely read, and its notes take Genesis 6 to 9 verse by verse.
The Genesis Flood
John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris · 1961
It shaped a generation of young-earth creationists.
In print: find it wherever books are sold.
The Lost World of the Flood
John H. Walton and Tremper Longman III · 2018
Its authors are two evangelical Old Testament scholars.
In print: find it wherever books are sold.
Genesis
Derek Kidner · 1967
Kidner's short commentary in the Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries sets out both readings of the flood's extent.
In print: find it wherever books are sold.
Atra-Hasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood
W. G. Lambert and A. R. Millard · 1969
The standard edition gives the Babylonian flood story in full, so a reader can set it beside Genesis.
In print: find it wherever books are sold.
Eight Brought Through the Water
Noah built because God spoke, entered because God called, and was kept because God shut the door and remembered him. The text asks the reader to do as Noah did: take God's warning as true, go in by the one door God provides, which is Christ, and trust the God who keeps His covenant.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible TBESH and TBESG lexicons and the word index.
- Gordon J. Wenham, The Coherence of the Flood Narrative, Vetus Testamentum 28 (1978)
- John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Flood (1961)
- John H. Walton and Tremper Longman III, The Lost World of the Flood (2018)
- Hugh Ross, Navigating Genesis: A Scientist's Journey through Genesis 1 to 11 (2014)
- W. G. Lambert and A. R. Millard, Atra-Hasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood (Oxford, 1969)
- C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, volume 1, The Pentateuch (English 1866)
- Derek Kidner, Genesis (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, 1967)
- Augustine, City of God 15.26.
- Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), on Genesis 7:20.
- John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, on 1 Peter 3:21.
Keep Studying
Read it4
Studies8
People and groups4
Places1
Symbols7
Doctrines7