SERIES A --- YHVH’S PIONEERS -- LESSON 6

NEW LIFE

THE GREAT FLOOD

From Genesis 7:11-8:22

On the seventeenth day of the second month, when Noah was six hundred years old, the heavens opened, and the rains poured forth from them. From the depths of the earth great fountains of water gushed out. The waters poured out on the earth for forty days and forty nights. On the day the rains began, Noah and his wife and their sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives went into the ark. With them went the birds, the reptiles, and the wild and domestic animals. These creatures came into the ark in pairs, male and female, as YHVH had Commanded. When everyone and everything was on board, YHVH closed the great door of the ark. For forty days the waters continued to flood the earth, rising above the ground and lifting the ark with it. As the waters rose higher and higher, the ark floated safely on the surface of the flood, rising more than twenty feet above the peaks of the highest mountains. In this great flood all living creatures of the earth perished, birds, wild and domestic animals, reptiles and people, everything that had the breath of life in it. YHVH destroyed all living creatures except Noah and his family. For a hundred and fifty days the waters remained on the earth. Throughout that time YHVH never forgot Noah and the animals in the ark with him. When the rains and torrents of waters ceased, YHVH sent a wind across the earth and the floods began to go down. The waters receded slowly. On the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters continued to go down until the first day of the tenth month, when the peaks of the mountains became visible. Forty days later Noah released a raven through a window of the ark. The raven flew about until there was a place to land. Then Noah released a dove to find out if the water was gone. But the dove could not find any place to rest, because water still covered the earth; so, she returned to the ark. Seven days later Noah released the dove again. Toward evening she returned with a freshly picked olive leaf in her beak. Then Noah knew that the water was gone from the earth at last. He waited another seven days to send out the dove again and this time she did not return. On the first day of the first month, when Noah was six hundred and one years old, the water dried from the earth. Noah removed the covering from the ark and found that the water was gone. By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the ground was dry. YHVH spoke to Noah at this time. [Leave the ark with your wife, your sons, and their wives. Bring with you all the birds, animals, and reptiles so that they may reproduce in great numbers on the earth.] Noah obeyed Adonai and left the ark with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives. Every animal, reptile, and bird left the ark with him in pairs and families. Then Noah built an altar to Adonai, offering on it some of each kind of clean animal and bird. These he presented to Adonai as burnt offerings. Adonai was pleased with the fragrant offering and made a promise to Himself. [Never again will I curse the ground because of man’s sin, although he is wicked from the days of his youth. I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done at this time. As long as the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter day and night shall never cease.]

COMMENTARY

THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST

When the crushing flood of waters receded, all people and animals had been destroyed. But fresh life began to spring up from the ground. One year after entering the ark, Noah and the animals with him would emerge. They would find a fresh new world in which to live. Bible history does not flow generation to generation throughout ancient times. Instead, there are gaps, or periods of silence, filled only by ancient history and archaeology. For example, the account of Abraham, which begins toward the end of Genesis 11, took place about 2000 B.C. All of the rest of the Old Testament happened within the next two-thousand-year span. Probably an even greater period of history took place between the early part of Genesis 11 and Abraham’s story in the latter part of Genesis 11. It is estimated that as much as twenty-five hundred years went by between the Tower of Babel and Abraham. As much as three thousand years went by between Noah’s life and Abraham’s. In either case, it is more time than has gone by since the coming of Moshiach, or more time than the entire balance of the Old Testament record after Genesis 11. The world’s history in these early years focused on a crescent-shaped stretch of rich land known as the Fertile Crescent. Above the crescent was a vast area of mountains and below it an equally vast area of desert. For the most part, early mankind avoided the mountains and deserts and built his civilization in the broad river valleys of the Fertile Crescent and in Egypt. Toward the eastern side of the crescent Mesopotamian culture arose. Toward the west, Canaanite, Syrian, and later Israelite culture took root. This western edge became a bridge between Egypt and Mesopotamia, and thus became a very important link between two great cultures. Civilization arose in the Near East. Today oil and politics focus the world’s attention to the same area.