[In this sixth millennium when the world has witnessed and experienced tidal waves, tsunamis and sea surge “of biblical flood proportions” the releasing of water from the heavens as well as from the deep is no longer inconceivable. Blow by blow accounts presented by international media on television screens and cellphone videos taken by survivors of natural calamities make us realize the destructive power potential of unleashed forces of nature. For sure the Creator of the heavens and the earth did not have to resort to extra H20 to bring on this flood during the time of Noah; like His ‘miracles’ recorded in Scripture and investigated and studied endlessly by skeptics including scientists, climatologists, meteorologists, etc.—surely the God Who controls and sustains His universe uses natural means in bringing on what human limited thinking perceive to be ‘miracles’. Scientists now better understand how the universe functions and can attest to cause and effect phenomena that the more ignorant among us attribute to the workings of the gods. Even if one could perfectly explain away the science behind ‘miracles’, there is still that strange factor of ‘timing’ . . . let’s call it ‘Divine Clockwork’ for now.
There is discussion as to whether this was a worldwide phenomenon or confined to this area in the biblical account. With archeological evidence plus mention of ‘a flood’ in the records of primitive people, one can arrive at conclusions—accept or reject the historicity of this narrative.
Commentary is from P&H/Pentateuch and Haftorahs, ed. Dr. J.H. Hertz; translation with commentary is from EF/Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses plus additional commentary from RA/Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses; Alter’s translation in prose narrative has been added in the end for straight reading.–Admin1]
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Genesis/Bereshith 7
ENTERING THE ARK
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[P&H] righteous. In VI,9, Noah was described as ‘righteous and blameless.’ Since the present verse was addressed to Noah, whereas VI,9 was spoken of him in his absence, the Rabbis deduced the rule: ‘Utter only a part of a man’s praise in his presence, bt thou mayest speak the whole of a man’s praise in his absence.’ Most people unfortunately give utterance to the whole of a man’s blame in his absence, graciously contenting themselves with only a portion of such blame in his presence.
[RA] for it is you I have seen righteous before me in this generation. God’s words here reflect a frequently used technique of biblical narrative, in which the narrator’s report or evaluation is confirmed by a near verbatim repetition in dialogue, or vice versa. The judgment that Noah is “righteous in this generation” explicitly echoes the narrator’s declaration in 6:9 that Noah is “a righteous man . . . blamless in his time” (the Hebrew for “time” is literally “generations”).
2 From all (ritually) pure animals you are to take seven and seven (each), a male and his mate, and from all the animals that are not pure, two (each), a male and his mate,[P&H] clean beast. According to Rashi, this means ‘of every beast which at a later period would be considered clean by the people of Israel’ (Lev. XI and Deut XIV). But more probably, the distinction between clean and unclean in this passage is based on the fitness of the animal to be used as a sacrifice to God; VIII,20, where it is narrated that Noah offered upon the altar ‘of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl’.
seven and seven. i.e. seven pairs; seven males and seven females. The general direction in VI,19 to take a pair of each kind of animal into the ark in order to preserve alive the various species, is here supplemented by the more specific injunction, when the time arrived for entering the ark, that of the clean beasts, there shall be seven of each species. As Rashi points out, he required additional clean animals for sacrifice on leaving the ark. From the phrasing of the verse, Malbim shows that the command is concerning Noah’s domestic animals.
beasts that are not clean. Of Noah’s domestic animals—such as hares, asses, camels–he was to take two each. The phrase ‘that are not clean’ is itself noteworthy. It is a circumlocution which might have been avoided by the use of the simple word ‘unclean’. The Talmud bases on this verse its admonition to avoid impure and unrefined language in conversation.
[EF] (ritually) pure: An anachronism, referring to later Israelite laws about sacrifice and eating. seven and seen each: The contradiction between this and 6:39 has led scholars to post two different sources for the story. male: Lit.”a man.”
[RA] Of every clean animal take you seven pairs. Clean and unclean evidently refer to fitness for sacrificial use, not for eating, as in the later dietary prohibitions. As scholarship has often noted, two versions of the Flood story, the Priestly and the Yahwistic, are intertwined in a somewhat confusing fashion. According to the former, two of each species are to be brought into the ark and no distinction is made between clean and unclean. According to the latter, seven paris of clean animals and one pair of unclean are to be saved. Abraham ibn Ezra and other medieval exegetes rescue consistency by proposing that when God directed attention to the clean-unclean distinction, He had to add the difference in the numbers because more animals were needed to be sacrificed. (Noah, like his counterpart in the Mesopotamian Flood stores, does in fact offer a thanksgiving sacrifice after the waters recede.) But the tensions between the two versions, including how they record the time span of the Flood, persist, and there are some indications that the editor himself struggled to harmonize them.
3 and also from the fowl of the heavens, seven and seven (each), male and female, to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.
[RA] seed. The Hebrew term means both semen and the offspring that is its product. It is a very concrete way of conceiving propagation and the survival of a line, and seems worth preserving in a literal English rendering.
4 For in yet seven days I will make it rain upon the earth for forty days and forty nights and will blot out all eixsting-things that I have made, from the face of the soil.[P&H] for yet seven days. To give Noah time to carry out the instructions which had been given him.
{EF] in yet seen days: Seven days from now. forty: Used in the Bible to denote long periods of time; also a favorite patterned number.
5 Noah did it, according to all that YHWH had commanded him.
[P&H] according unto all. VI,22. There it refers to the construction of the ark; here it implies the strict fulfilment of the directions enumerated in the preceding verses.
6 Noah was six hundred years old when the Deluge occurred, water upon the earth;
7 and Noah came, his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him, into the Ark before the waters of the Deluge.
8 From the pure animals and from the animals that are not pure and from the fowl and all that crawls about on the soil–
9 two and two (each) came to Noah, into the Ark, male and female, as God had commanded Noah.
[P&H] two and two. In couples.
10-24. ‘THE WINDOWS OF HEAVEN WERE OPENED’
10. After the seven days it was that the waters of the deluge were upon the earth. 11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second New-Moon, on the seventeenth day after the New-Moon, on that day: then burst all the well-springs of the great Ocean and the sluices of the heavens opened up.[P&H] in the second month. The Rabbis differ as to whether the year here reckoned as beginning in Nisan or Tishri. On the view that the year commenced with Tishri, the Flood began about November, which is the time of the rainy season. More probably, the Flood began in May, which is the time of the inundation of the Babylonian plain.
the great deep. The tehom of I,2. There was a seismic upheaval; the earth was swept by a gigantic tidal wave, and simultaneously there was a torrential downpour of rain.
windows of heaven. For the expression, II Kings VII,2,19; Mal III,10; as if the vast reservoirs of water thought of as stored above the sky (I,7) were coming down through special openings, constantly and in resistless strength.
[EF] then burst . . .: Cassuto (1972) suggests that the poetic verses here and elsewhere in the Flood story are fragments of an Israelite epic. well-springs . . . sluices: The normal sources of rain function here without any restraint (Cassuto). Ocean: The world returns to the primeval chaos of 1:2.
12 The torrent was upon the earth for forty days and forty nights.
[P&H] rain. lit. ‘heavy rain.’ There was a continuous downpour for the period of time specified.
13 On that very day came Noah, and Shem Ham, and Yefet, Noah’s sons and Noah’s wife and his three sons’ wives with them, into the Ark,[P&H] After a summary of the Flood-story (v. 6-12) we have a more detailed description of the event.
selfsame day. i.e. the day determined by God.
14 they and all wildlife after their kind, all herd-animals after their kind, all crawling things that crawl upon the earth after their kind, all fowl after their kind, all chirping-things, all winged-things;
[P&H] every bird of every sort. lit. ‘every bird of every wing’; i.e. every species of winged creatures.
15 they came to Noah, into the Ark, two and two (each) from all flesh in which there is the rush of life.
16 And those that came, male and female from all flesh they came, as God had commanded him. YHWH closed (the door) upon him.[P&H] The LORD shut him in. This means either literally that God fastened the door so that it withstood the violence of the storm; or it is a beautifully naive figure of speech to denote the Divine protection which encompassed Noah. Hence the employment of the term Lord, Adonay, for this act of Divine mercy (II,4).
[EF] YHWH closed: Another sign of God’s control over the events (and his protection of Noah).
17 The Deluge was forty days upon the earth. The waters increased and lifted the Ark, so that it was raised above the earth;[P&H] the waters increased. After it had rained for forty days, the waters were sufficiently deep to bear the ark, which, as Rashi remarks, had previously been like a heavily-laden ship struck in shallow water and unable to move.
[EF] 17-20 increased . . . swelled and increased exceedingly . . . swelled exceedingly, yes, exceedingly . . . swelled: The structure here mirrors the action: the surging and growing of the waters.
18. the waters swelled and increased exceedingly upon the earth, so that the Ark floated upon the face of the waters.
[P&H] the waters prevailed. They covered the earth. It will be noted that there were three stages in the increase of the waters.
- The first was marked by the lifting of the Ark (v. 17);
- the second by the floating of the ark (v. 18);
- the third by the total submergence of the mountains (v. 19).
[EF] swelled: Lit. “grew mighty.” floated: Lit. “went”.
19 When the waters had swelled exceedingly, yes exceedingly over the earth, all high mountains that were under all the heavens were covered.
20 Fifteen cubits upward swelled the waters, thus the mountains were covered.
[P&H] fifteen cubits upward. This means that the waters rose 22 1/2 feet above the top of the highest mountain.
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[P&H] What had been foretold in VI,17 was literally fulfilled.
every man. i.e. the entire human race outside the ark.
22 all that had the breath of the rush of life in their nostrils, all that were on firm-ground, died.[RA] the quickening breath of life. The Hebrew, nishmat rua ahim, is unusual, the first two terms in a way doubling each other (“the breath of the breath of life”). Some recent scholars construe this as a minimizing idiom that implies something like “the faintest breath of life.” But the one other occurrence of the phrase nishmat rua, in David’s victory psalm (2 Samuel 22:16), is part of an anthropomorphic vision of God breathing fire on the battlefield (“From the LORD’s roaring,/the blast of his nostril’s breath”); and so it is more plausible that the doubled terms are intensifiers, underlining the physical exhalation of breath from the nostrils that is the sign of life. In fact, we shall encounter other instances, in the Plagues narrative and in the Sinai epiphany in Exodus, where two synonyms joined together in the construct state signify intensification.
23 He blotted out all existing things that were on the face of the soil, from man to beast, to crawling and to fowl of the heavens, they were blotted out from the earth.[EF] blotted out: Twice repeated, echoing God’s promise in 6:7.
24 The waters swelled upon the earth for a hundred and fifty days.
[P&H] prevailed. Dominated the earth. After 40 days’ downpour, the waters reached their highest point, and remained so for a period of 110 days. After 150 days had passed from the commencement of the Flood, the waters began to diminish.
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