Genesis 7, The Great Flood

The downward spiral of humanity has led to violence and depravity.  So God has chosen Noah and his family to be protected while He prepares to destroy the sinful world in a flood.

Genesis 7: 1-5, Go into the ark
The LORD then said to Noah, "Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. Take with you seven of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.

Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made."

And Noah did all that the LORD commanded him.

"Seven" may mean "seven pairs".  In verse 2 we have the first mention of a distinction between "clean" and "unclean" animals.  We will see this distinction made again in Exodus.  The "clean" animals were probably available for sacrifice.

The numbers three, seven and forty appear to have significance to the Hebrews.  Seven is important, of course, because of the creative week.  But forty is also a common number, whether in days or years; at times it may be an approximate length of time, forty years being equal to a generation.

Genesis 7: 6-10, The inhabitants of the ark

Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth. 

And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground,  male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah.

And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth.

Both "clean" and "unclean" animals are to be saved here.  The humans to be saved involve Noah and his family, including daughters-in-law.

Genesis 7: 11-12, The great flood begins
In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month--on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.

It is more than rain that causes the flood.  The Second Day of Creation is reversed; when once the "deep" and the "heavens" were separated, they have now been joined into a chaos of water.

Genesis 7: 13-16, Enter the ark

On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark. They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings.

Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark. The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. 

Then the LORD shut him in.

There is a lot that is to be in this ark!  "Everything with wings"!  "Every creature that moves along the ground..."

Genesis 7: 17-24, Flood and disaster
For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet. 

Every living thing that moved on the earth perished--birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; men and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds of the air were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.

The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.

Just as humankind and human corruption have multiplied, now the waters "multiply". (The Hebrew word translated "increased" in verse 17 is the same word used for "multiply" in Genesis 1, says Alter.)

According to the NIV footnotes, one could translate "the waters rose and covered the mountains..." to "The waters rose more than twenty feet, and the mountains were covered."

This is a dramatic, cataclysmic event. Bible scholars debate whether this is intended to be a universal flood or whether "the whole earth" might be understood to be the "inhabited earth that we know".  A respected Christian chemistry professor ("RJS") has this to say on one interpretation of the Great Flood passage in Genesis.

We continue to read about the Great Flood in the next chapter.