Chapter 7
1 Then the LORD said to Noah, "Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation. [Gen 7:1 ESV]
Doesn't say the whole family was righteous...or does it? Is the you plural? Interlinear, as I can understand it, indicates that you is a second person singular masculine. So no, not the whole family, only Noah is here called righteous.
2024 - What about that phrase "in this generation", or in NASB "in this time"? Doesn't that make it sound a little like the standard applied to Noah is different than that of some other time - some other dispensation? In the RCC by James R White, he says that righteousness and justification are the very same thing. What if we read this as Noah was justified in this generation? Look at this verse, back in 6:
9 These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. [Gen 6:9 ESV]. Righteous as in justified by faith. This has always been the only way. Blameless because there were no laws. Adam and Eve had only one and couldn't keep it. After them, God revealed things, sacrifices were made, Enoch walked with God, and now Noah. So there was a "walk" that resulted from righteousness even in the earliest days. Salvation was the same as today, but "there is no sin where there is no law". Noah had to do his best to do what was right in the eyes of God. And that was all that was required. Getting it wrong was not sin because he had no law as to what was right and what was not...other than knowing sacrifices had to be animals to be acceptable. He should have known that one rule.
2024 - But there is more than that...there wee clean animals and unclean, as we see in the next verses. This implies a ceremonial law of some sort.
Of some animals - clean animals and birds - seven pairs of each are brought on board. ESV footnote though indicates that it may have meant seven of each kind, not seven pairs. Guess we aren't really sure about the word used. It is translated several ways in the KJV, though many of the variations are because of the word used with it. It is interesting that the animals were not loaded until the last week before the rain started. MSB note says the extras would be used for sacrifices and for food. I don't think meat was on the menu at this time. And that would be a lot to sacrifice them all. Maybe more to this. Maybe God wanted clean animals and birds to dominate after the flood. The world was going to change, maybe he knew it would take more of these to get going under the coming conditions. In any case, and whether 7 each or 7 pairs, it applied to ALL clean animals and ALL birds. That's a lot more room on the ark than I had thought. And at that time, there was no difference between clean and unclean that we've been told about. This might be Moses projecting backwards from his own time. Never noticed that before. Clean is clean, whether you know it or not. Did Noah only gather animals that were right around there where the ark was being built? Or like the paintings you see, did they come from everywhere of their own volition - drawn by God?
11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. [Gen 7:11 ESV]
We really don't know what these fountains were, nor the windows of heaven, but the implication is that they had not been open before, or at least they had not been open for so long. There was enough water stored up, somewhere somehow, to submerge even the highest mountains.
2021 - If this was not a real flood, but only a local event, why in the world is the date it began given so precisely? Guess it could be that this was the first time it ever rained. But science can't explain, nor does it accept, that possibility either. I think the precision proves that this was a recalled event, not a myth passed down.
2024 - So we are very early in the process of life on earth. Eden had animals, but only so many as could fit into and find food and water inside the garden. So...Not like today with billions upon billions of animals, birds, and "creeping things", but only a relatively few. And maybe there also weren't many different species. Perhaps just so many as could fit into an ark of the specified size. They all ate fruit and veggies or grass. There were no carnivores. Now, if you apply the pressures that evolutionist say bring about change in species, you see that there was no pressure at all for animals to change from their created forms before the flood. They were told to multiply, not to multiply, evolve, and fill every niche of possible survival. There was no factor to drive that change. They became more, but not more kinds.
We know from the sudden and drastic shortening of human lifespans after the flood that something changed about the "environment" - a sure and certain climate change that we ought to recognize as God's plan - that made survival in the post-flood conditions of much shorter duration. Perhaps that same "change" applied pressure, tremendous pressure, to survive in whatever way might be possible. Eden was also destroyed in the flood. That food source was gone. After the flood, animals first became carnivorous, as did man. So after the flood, there was pressure for both the tiger and lynx, the wolf and the fox, the eagle and the sparrow. Not only did the animals multiply, but the species multiplied. That is why no ark today could hold two of everything, but back then, we know exactly how big an ark was needed to hold two of every species.
This is a FB post!
This verse:
19 And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. [Gen 7:19 ESV]
Lest there be any doubt, the Bible says the whole earth, all the way up over the highest mountains, was covered with water. It does not say that the earth's topography was unchanged by this flood, or that the mountains afterward were no higher than the ones before. We don't know what all went on with the planet during this supernatural, worldwide event. Also this:
20 The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. [Gen 7:20 ESV]. Precision again, just as with the exact day it started. The water didn't just barely cover the highest mountain, but exceeded its height by 22.5'. No man could stand on that peak and escape drowning. It was just too deep. No one who grabbed a log to hang onto would make it 40 days with no food. This was not survivable, but for those prepared by God.
24 And the waters prevailed on the earth 150 days. [Gen 7:24 ESV]
Nothing unprepared could have survived for 150 days.
2024 - Oh my...If we go with that concept that the number of species at the time of the flood was much smaller than those we have today, and we run with that idea, can we not also say that perhaps the whole planet was not yet covered with animals, and beyond that conjecture, that mankind certainly did not yet cover the earth? Think of a circle of civilization centered on the Garden of Eden, but of limited radius, a radius that had expanded every year, but did not yet encompass the sphere of the earth. To wipe out all life in a flood may not have required that the globe be underwater, but only the part where creatures imbued with the breath of life could be found! It says nowhere that all the plants on the earth were killed. They don't breath, fish don't breath. In this way, you can have a geographically limited flood that does everything Genesis says it did! The raven found carrion, the dove's flight range didn't reach any place where there were still plants.
2024 - A couple hours later. Not sure this works at all. There are fossils everywhere. If these are for the most part a result of the flood, then they'd only be "thick" in parts of the world that were flooded and almost entirely absent elsewhere. That is not - I don't think - what we see.
The dinosaurs - the big ones - have to be seen as going extinct in the flood. Only small versions of them remained...or they just didn't get big anymore and lost the post-flood competition for resources. Starting to sound really "stretched" out there trying to "make things fit". Shouldn't have to do that, because they DO fit.