Treasures New and Old

Genesis: Chapters Seven & Eight: The Flood

We look this month (and over the next two months) at what God has said about the “Great Noah’s Flood” (Actually it was God’s flood. Noah gets blamed, but mankind was to blame from the great flood due to their unbridled wickedness upon the earth.) as we examine Genesis, Chapters 7 and 8.

This month we will concentrate on most of Chapters 7 and 8 and some lessons we can learn from them.

Next month we will mostly concentrate on geological evidences of the flood as geologists and archeologists have collected clear and irrefutable evidence that the worldwide flood did, indeed, happen just like God has recorded in the Bible.

Finally, the following month we will look at the last few verses in Chapter 8 and provide a few more evidences of the flood, but will concentrate on the covenant relationship that God instituted with Noah. By the way, the covenant with Noah is the first use of the word in the Bible and, thus, one could claim the first covenant that God made with man. However, many look at the promise of a victory over the serpent by the seed of the woman (Christ) as the first covenant and it is called the Adamic covenant.

General Outline:

• Noah and family given notice (7:1-7:10)
• The great deep opens (7:11-12)
• Noah and family and creatures shut in the ark by God (7:13-16)
• The flood comes (7:17-7:24)
• The waters start to subside (8:1-3)
• The ark rests on the mountains of Ararat (8:4-5)
• Noah tests the dryness of the earth (8:6-12)
• Ground finally dry 370 days after flood started (8:13-14)
• Noah commanded to leave the ark (8:15-19)
• Noah builds alter and offers sacrifice (8:20)
• God covenants with Noah (8:21-22)

Noah and family are called into the ark with all animals

Genesis 7:1-4: “And the LORD said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female. Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth. For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from the off the face of the earth.”

Quick recap:

• Clean animals – “by sevens”; the Hebrews actually reads: sheba’ shib’ah sheba’ shib’ah (Strong’s H7651): “take to you seven seven the male and his mate”. This states that Noah actually took fourteen of every clean animal, seven males and seven females.

• Unclean animals – one pair (male and female)
  

• All fowl – also by sevens (seven pair of male and female)

Noah obeys the Lord’s commands

Genesis 7:5-10: “And Noah did according unto all that the LORD commanded him. And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth. And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood. Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth, There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah. And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.”

Quick recap:

• “Creeping things“: Some scholars believe may include the following: reptiles: such as lizards, snakes, or turtles; insects: like ants, beetles, and other ground-dwelling insect; amphibians: such as frogs, toads, or salamanders.

• Although some of the above have the breath of life (lungs), the references here in Verses 8 and 14 may include them.
  

• What matters is that all life that God wanted preserved were found on the ark.

• The Hebrew word (Strong’s H7430) means to glide (snake?), to crawl with short steps (salamanders?), or to creep (bugs?).

The great deep and windows of heaven pour forth

Genesis 7:11-16:

In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark; They, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort. And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life. And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in.

Quick recap:

• Two sources of water: The great deep and the windows of heaven.

• Scientists believe that large pockets of water were at one time captured deep within the earth (miles) all around the planet and that these were the sources of the great deep water.
  

• Scientists also believe that a canopy of either water or ice surrounded the earth at the top edge of the atmosphere. It would explain temperate tropical conditions around the globe as well as longer life due to extra radiation protection from the sun.
  

• “Two by two“: (Verse 9) Solidifies the seven pair of clean animals and fowls as well as the single pair of unclean and is not an apparent contradiction as some might try to argue.
  

The flood rages across the whole earth

Genesis 7:17-24:

And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bore up the ark, and it was lifted up above the earth. And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the water. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beasts, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty days.

Quick recap:

• “Fifteen cubit“: If a standard cubit used (18 inches): so 15 x 18 inches = 270 inches = 22.5 feet (6.86 meters). If a Royal Cubit (20.4 inches): 15 cubits x 20.4 inches = 306 inches = 25.5 feet (7.8. meters).

• “High hills“: The Hebrew words (Strong’s H1364) refer to very high (can also be very proud), arrogantly high. These are references to mountain and their tops.

• “Mountain” in Verse 20 (Strong’s H2022) is Hebrew for a whole mountain range. No question that this was a global flood and all the earth was totally covered as much as twenty-two to twenty-five feet above the highest point.

• No mention that plant life was destroyed. Seeds from plants have an amazing survival rate, even within a flood. Also, no mention of aquatic life destroyed. I assume that many were, but that there were sufficient pockets of safe waters where they could survive.

• The deeps and windows open up and rain upon the earth for forty days, but the water was so deep that it took 150 days for the first sign of dry land.

The ark lands and rests on the mountains of Ararat

Genesis 8:1-5: “And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged; The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained; And the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated. And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.”

Quick recap:

• “Rain and flooding“: Forty days and forty nights: Genesis 7:12 states that rain fell on the earth for forty days and nights, causing the waters to rise and flood the earth.

• “Waters prevailing“: 150 days: Genesis 7:24 mentions that the waters “prevailed upon the earth” for 150 days. This likely includes the initial forty days of rain with additional time during which the water remained at their peak height.

• “Ark rested“: On the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat (Genesis 8:4).

• “Drying of the earth“: The tops of the mountains were visible by the first day of the tenth month (Genesis 8:5). Noah sent out a raven and a dove to test whether the earth had dried. Finally, the dove did not return indicating dry land (Genesis 8:8-12).

• “Earth fully dry“: By the twenty-seventh day of the second month of the following year, the earth was completely dry, and Noah and his family left the ark (Genesis 8:14-19).

• “Total duration“: From the start of the rain (Genesis 7:11) to the time the earth was dry (Genesis 8:14), the flood lasted approximately a year and ten days depending on the interpretation of the calendar used (most likely a lunar calendar of 360 days).

Noah tests to see if the flood has receded

Genesis 8:6-12:

And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made: And he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth. Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground; But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth: then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark. And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark; And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. And he stayed yet other seven days; and sent forth the dove; which returned not again unto him any more.

Quick recap:

• “A raven and a dove“: Noah begins to test the dryness of the land. He knows he has already landed somewhere because the ark has stopped its floating and swaying movements (and they may have heard a great bump when the bottom moored on the rocks).

• It wasn’t until the dove returned with an olive leaf that Noah knew things were ready for them to disembark from the ark. I note that sufficient time had to pass for the seed of an olive tree to take root and spring up a shoot and perhaps even a very small young plant in order for the dove to collect the leaf.

The flood waters dry up

Genesis 8:13-14: “And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth: and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and, behold, the face of the ground was dry. And in the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dried.”

Quick recap:

• One can assume that the days and months that God is referring to are Hebrew calendar reckonings since God is having Moses pen these events in the Book of Genesis.

How long was the flood on the earth? A deeper look

• All dating based not on a calendar from creation, but instead based on Noah’s life.

• Noah: Six hundred years old, second month, seventeenth day of month (let’s call this: 2/17/600 NA – Noah’s Age).

• Rained forty days/nights, and water rose continually: now at 3/27/600 NA.

• Covered highest mountain be fifteen cubits (approximately 26.25 feet).

• Waters prevail 150 days (note, this is five months if the months are thirty-day months).

• Ark hits bottom on top of a mountain in seventh month, seventeenth day of the month (exactly five months – so that would be 8/17/600 NA).

• Waters continue to recede until tenth month; first day of the month the tops of mountains were seen (about two more months and fourteen days – so now we are at 150+74 = 224 days or at 10/1/600 NA).

• Noah removes the ark cover (window) when he was 601 years old, first month, first day (Noah’s birthday by the way) and the waters have receded. Ground looks dry but is still soggy (assumption) and not safe to walk on. Also, there may not be any vegetation yet. We are now at 1/1/601 NA.

• Assuming a 360-day year back then, we now have 313 days since the flood started.

• At 601 years, second month, twenty-seventh day God lets them leave the ark – we are now one year and ten days since the flood began. So, we are now at 2/27/601 NA).

• • 2/17/600 NA Noah locked in, rain starts

• • 3/27/600 NA rain stops

• • 8/17/600 NA waters receded so ark “lands”

• • 10/1/600 NA mountain tops seen

• • 1/1/601 NA land dry but may be too soggy

• • 2/6/601 NA first dove released

• • 2/27/601 NA Noah’s family leaves the ark

• • 1/1/600 NA mountain tops seen

• Waste could have been collected in troughs along the chambers and pushed into the moon pool.

• All life with the breath of life was to die and, therefore, animals had to be preserved. Insects do not technically breath and may have survived in other ways (as eggs or larvae attached to floating debris).

• Again, creeping things (Strong’s H7431) in the Hebrew means animals that creep along the ground: snakes, reptiles, mice. etc.

• Two of every kind (male and female) were brought into the ark. But they may not have needed to be adult (as in rhinos, dinosaurs, elephants, etc.). Clean animals and fowls had seven each brought aboard.

• All of the fowl kinds were brought into the ark.

• No mention of sea life even though sea life includes breathing animals like whales, dolphins, etc. Presumably these were protected from the devastation supernaturally by God outside the ark.

• All the cattle kind which includes cattle, elk, deer, horses, etc.

• We can assume some special dispensation was at work during this time in include:

• • God may have supernaturally brought all the animals to Noah so that he did not have to go get them all.

As the Days of Noah . . .

At this point, I would like to take a break and do a comparison of the number of references that exist in the New Testament to words found in Genesis, Chapters 1 through 11. Many of these references were words from Christ Himself. So many regard Genesis, Chapters 1-11 as myth, but the Lord Himself referred to those chapters as having actually taken place. So, did the Lord mess up and quote fiction as fact, or is He correct and the beginning of the earth through the Tower of Babbel did really happen as the Bible says it did?

New Testament References to Genesis 1-11 (Brown)

“It’s obvious there is plenty of scientific evidence for the flood. Who are you going to believe? Scientist who weren’t there and who make mistakes? Or the Word of God – God who was there when it happened and who tells us what happened? What we see in God’s world agrees with what we read in God’s Word.

The following proof topics are adapted from the sources listed. The text following each topic is my adaptation of their and other publicly available information.

Geologist Andrew A. Snelling, B.Sc.(Hons), Ph.D. (Geology) was Senior Research Scientist and Editor of the CEN Technical Journal (now Journal of Creation) at Creation Science Foundation (Now Creation Ministries International). He worked for Answers in Genesis USA when this was written.

1. Sea creatures buried high in continental mountains

Many marine creatures fossils that are obviously found in the oceans have been collected in mountains like the Himalayas. This could only happen if the ocean waters rose over the continents.

2. Rapidly buried plants and animals

There are fossils of plants, bees, bats, fish (busy eating another fish), animals that are giving birth, and delicately preserved fossilized jellyfish, etc. These organisms today never fossilized slowly (over millions of years), like the theory of evolution claims. They have been buried rapidly by a flood of mud and water instantly covering them.

3. Rapidly deposited sediment layers across the continents

Limestone layers in the Grand Canyon, Pennsylvania, England, and the Himalayas are full of fossils in exactly the same order. There are chalk beds like the white cliffs of Dover, Europe, Middle East, Kazakhstan, Texas, and Western Australia, etc. which are all similar beds with the same fossils!

4. Long transport distance of sediments

The Coconino Sandstone of the Grand Canyon and the Navajo Sandstones in Zion National Park (huge white cliffs) have grains which are from as far north as Wyoming. The same grains from the Appalachians are found all the way across North America.

5. Rapid or no erosion between sediment layers

There is a several miles long knife edge, flat, featureless boundary between rock layers of the Coconino Sandstone and the Hermit Shale. Trying to explain this anomaly, evolutionary geologist claim there is ten million year of material missing in that boundary. What happened in ten million years of weather and erosion, and where did all that material go? You’d get a bumpy topography, not a flat, featureless boundary line.

6. Whole rock layer sequences deposited rapidly in quick succession

The walls of the Grand Canyon (bottom to top), are believed by evolutionists to be representing 300 million years of slow and gradual sedimentary deposition. However, the plateau appears to be pushed up (during the flood), with rock layers bent, twisted, and folded . . . WITHOUT FRACTURING! This can only happen if those layers were soft because if they had been hard, they would have fractured badly. This speaks to rapid and recent deposit before the lifting. The 300 million years simply never happened. Those rock layers must have been rapidly deposited in quick succession during the global flood to be so soft and pliable.

(The following proof topics adapted from Harold Coffin, Ph.D. Geology, palobotany. Taken from Origin by Design and periodicals such as Creation Research Society Quarterly.)

7. Fast moving water

We have all seen or heard that fast moving water can erode away dirt, sand, rocks, and even large boulders. When the water fans out and slows down, all the dirt, sand and rock are naturally dropped (often miles away from their origin). This sediment often contains minerals that are weathered away quickly. For example, in the San Francisco area (and many other areas in the world), there are beds of sediments hundreds of feet thick that contain minerals that should have been eroded if not buried quickly. These sediments were not laid down slowly over thousands of years. Otherwise, the minerals would have been gone by constant weathering. Such beds require a great quantity of water moving, and the sediment was deposited and buried quickly.

8. Conglomerate deposits

Stones that are rolled around by waves or currents become rounded and are called wash rock or conglomerate, and these beds are common all over the world. Note, conglomerate absolutely requires strong water currents to round off the edges. One bed studied in Alberta, Canada, contained football size granite rocks likely washed several hundred miles from the Rocky Mountains, the nearest source of that kind of granite. This bed is nearly one hundred feet thick and covers several hundred square miles. Similar and bigger beds are present east of San Diego, along the Columbia River, in Washington and Oregon, on the east side of the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming, in the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and along the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia, Canada, and other North American locations. The northwest region of the Swiss Alps has mountains of uplifted conglomerate washed off the Alps. Obviously, great sheets of moving water dumped detached rock into thick layers for hundreds of miles in all directions, and no such deposits like these are being formed today.

9. The Redwall and other beds

Many beds (like the Redwall of the Grand Canyon), can be traced for thousands of miles extending north to Canada, east to Niagara Falls in New York, south to Mammoth Caves in Kentucky, as well as on the top of Mt. Everest. These widespread, thin bands of clay are called tonsteins and also appear in or between coal seams. Some of these layers (only one or two inches) spread across thousands of square miles in Europe. Such massive and far-reaching beds require continent wide, if not world-wide, flooding. Indicators in these beds show a generally east to west movement of water as opposed to modern rivers and seas which produce currents in various directions based on the country topography.

Coal is composed of buried plant material (trees, peat, other plants) that have been subjected to heat, pressure, and chemical action (which can actually happen fairly quickly). In the United States and Canada, there are beds that are over one hundred feet thick. Some coal seams in Europe and Australia are several hundred feet thick. Geologists claim that coal is produced from buried marches and peat bogs. Since it takes several feet of peat to be compressed into one foot of coal, seams of coal several hundred feet thick would require peat bogs over a thousand feet thick. No peat bogs of such depths are found in the modern world. Therefore, such thick coal seams require conditions in the past that are not happening in the present world and require massive water movements on a very large scale. Noah’s world-wide flood laid down sediments over very broad geographical areas, and that is what we see in the geological record.

10. Decay rate of fish fossils

Fish fossils are common and are generally intact. Testing recently dead fish in water has shown that dead fish will disintegrate, and their skeletons will fall apart and scatter in less than a week. So, the abundant remains of intact fossil fish skeletons indicate rapid burial sufficiently deep to prevent oxidation, bacterial decay, and breakage due to feeding by other animals. Fish that die today completely decay and seldom leave any trace of themselves.

One bed contained numerous fossil fish scales (not bones) that extend over several Southwestern states. Surprisingly, very few fish bones are found in the same bed. This seems to indicate that scales rubbed off fish that were starting to decay and were swept away by water and buried well away from where the fish bones were buried. Only broad expanses of moving water could do this. In Brazil, fish fossils are found with the skin, muscles, organs, etc. all preserved. The fish look like they had just been caught, but they are petrified and hard as stone. They are abundant and distributed over several thousand square miles. The large plateau where these fossils are found is well above sea level and a good five hundred miles from the Atlantic Ocean.

11. Massive plant and animal graveyards

Massive graveyards of thousands and millions of plants, fish, dinosaurs, and mammals are seen all over North America, Europe, and Africa. For example, from Utah and Colorado north to Alberta-Saskatchewan, Canada, thousands of dinosaurs are found collected in beds such as the Morrison Formation. Dinosaur National Monument in Utah has a display where numerous dinosaurs are exposed still embedded in the rock. Agate Fossil Beds National Monument has numerous fossil mammals jumbled together, as well as other parts of the world. Interesting, the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, sits on top of a great mass of sea animals (and how far upstream is that from the ocean?). The Messel site near Frankfort, Germany, has a collection of animals and plants clumped together. These sites reveal the following: (1) A burial of great quantities of animals together. (2) Rapid burial with excellent preservation. (3) The presence of species not currently found in those areas. (4) The mammal positions suggest death by drowning. Geological processes today cannot account for these unusual conditions. Only a world-wide catastrophe (flood) is the most logical explanation.

12. Widely diverse fossil mixtures

A factor generally ignored by evolutionist that claim millions of years and millions of layers that needs further consideration is the widely diverse animals mixing from different geographical areas and habitats not seen today. For example:

• The Geiseltel lignite (soft coal) deposit in Germany is an amazing mixture of a huge variety of plants and animals with insects, mammals, birds, trees, and fungi.

• The Santana Formation of Brazil is a mixture of water animals of various habitats. What today are open ocean fish, bottom dwelling fish, fresh water fish, and sharks along with plants are all mixed together.

• The petrified forests in Yellowstone contain trees from a number of different environments. Species range from temperate (pine, redwoods, and willows) to tropical and exotic (figs, laurels, breadfruit, catsura, and cinnamon) and from semi-desert to rain forest types. If fossil pollen from the conglomerate beds containing the Yellowstone petrified trees are included, more than two hundred species have been identified.

• How could such unusual mixtures be brought together and buried except by unusual catastrophic transportation by water (world-wide flood)?

• An unexpected fossil mixture is seen in amber (petrified pitch). Not just insects (perhaps caught in sticky pitch), but pieces of leaves and flowers blown into the pitch. How could sea animals such as coral be included? Waves or strong currents from the sea carried bits of coral that stuck in the pitch before it petrified.

In Closing (for now)

Wow, this month had a lot of information to cover. Yet there is still much to share regarding one of the most important events covered in the Bible. One many rejects, others ignore, and some call it a myth or allegorical of the actual event. God’s Word is true and will one day be totally exonerated. Meanwhile, we have faith that what is recorded in the Scriptures is exactly what happened and the way it happened.

Maranatha!

Bro. Joe

(If you desire to more specifics what scholars believe/conjecture/have studied about the flood, find creationist material from places like Answers in Genesis, Institute for Creation Research, Dr. Morris, and there are many more.)

Brown, W. (2001). In the Beginning. Phoenix, AZ: Center for Scientific Creation.

Coffin, H. (1983). Origin by Design. Hagerstown, MD: Review & Herald.

Creation Research Society Quarterly. (2025). https://www.creationresearch.org/crsq-journal

Snelling, A. (2009). Earth’s Catastrophic Past. Dallas, TX: Institution of Creation Research.

Strong, J. Strong's Hebrew and Greek Dictionaries. Meyers, R. (2005). e-Sword. [computer software] . Franklin, TN: Equipping Ministries Foundation. (Original work published 1890)