Summer At Sea: Week 1 Day 3
Genesis 7:1-10 (ESV)
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. 2 Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals,[g] the male and his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate, 3 and seven pairs of the birds of the heavens also, male and female, to keep their offspring alive on the face of all the earth. 4 For in seven days I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.” 5 And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him.
6 Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth. 7 And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood. 8 Of clean animals, and of animals that are not clean, and of birds, and of everything that creeps on the ground, 9 two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah, as God had commanded Noah. 10 And after seven days the waters of the flood came upon the earth.
Today I want to do something different because when I read this part of the flood narrative, instead of coming up with coherent thoughts on it, my brain was just racking up questions. Here’s a list of the questions that came to my mind:
Why did God see Noah as righteous?
Why did Noah have to bring seven pairs of the clean animals and one pair of the unclean animals?
Why did they go into the ark seven days before the flood even began?
Why did it rain for forty days and forty nights? And when you add up all the time from entering the ark, waiting for a week for the flood to start, and all the waiting that happened later in the narrative, exactly how long were they on that boat?
Why are we told Noah’s age and why would that be of any significance?
“The seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month” (Genesis 8:4) and the other month/day references in this story must mean something. Would an ancient Hebrew reader have known things about these dates that we don’t?
Looking into all of these, or even one of them, would take more time than I have today, but maybe these questions also spark your curiosity. As my kids always say when I wonder aloud about something, “just search it up.” Maybe give it a go and do some of your own research; if you want a place to start, I have always found Biblehub.com helpful.