Genesis 7: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD tells Noah to go into the ark with his household, and to take clean animals and birds by sevens and other animals by twos, because in seven days rain will come for forty days and nights. Noah does everything he is commanded, and in the six hundredth year of his life the fountains of the great deep break open and the sky is opened. The waters rise until the high mountains are covered, and every living thing on dry land dies; only Noah and those with him in the ark remain. The waters stay high on the earth for a hundred and fifty days.

Claim by Claim

1. 7:1
   • The LORD spoke to Noah.
   • The LORD told Noah to go into the ark.
   • The LORD told Noah to bring his whole household into the ark.
   • The LORD said he had seen Noah righteous before him.
   • The LORD said Noah was righteous in this generation.
2. 7:2
   • The LORD told Noah to take of every clean animal by sevens.
   • It is unclear whether 'by sevens' means seven pairs or seven animals.
   • The clean animals were to be taken as male and its mate.
   • The LORD told Noah to take of animals that are not clean by twos.
   • The unclean animals were to be taken as male and its mate.
3. 7:3
   • The LORD told Noah to take of the birds of the sky also by sevens.
   • The birds were to be taken male and female.
   • The purpose was to keep offspring alive on the face of all the earth.
4. 7:4
   • The LORD said that in seven more days he would send rain on the earth.
   • The LORD said the rain would last forty days and forty nights.
   • The LORD said he would wipe out every living thing he had made from the face of the ground.
5. 7:5
   • Noah did everything the LORD commanded him.
6. 7:6
   • Noah was six hundred years old.
   • The flood of waters came upon the earth.
7. 7:7
   • Noah went into the ark.
   • Noah's sons went into the ark.
   • Noah's wife went into the ark.
   • Noah's sons' wives went with him into the ark.
   • They entered because of the waters of the flood.
8. 7:8
   • Clean animals were involved.
   • Animals that are not clean were involved.
   • Birds were involved.
   • Everything that creeps on the ground was involved.
9. 7:9
   • They went to Noah into the ark two by two.
   • They went in male and female.
   • This was as God had commanded Noah.
10. 7:10
    • After seven days the waters of the flood came upon the earth.
11. 7:11
    • It was the six hundredth year of Noah's life.
    • It was the second month.
    • It was the seventeenth day of the month.
    • On that day all the fountains of the great deep were split open.
    • On that day the windows of the heavens were opened.
12. 7:12
    • Rain fell upon the earth.
    • The rain lasted forty days and forty nights.
13. 7:13
    • On that same day Noah entered the ark.
    • Shem, Ham, and Japheth entered the ark.
    • Shem, Ham, and Japheth were Noah's sons.
    • Noah's wife entered the ark.
    • The three wives of Noah's sons entered the ark with them.
14. 7:14
    • Every wild animal after its kind entered.
    • Every domestic animal after its kind entered.
    • Every creeping thing that creeps on the earth after its kind entered.
    • Every bird after its kind entered.
    • Every bird of every wing entered.
15. 7:15
    • They came to Noah into the ark.
    • They came two by two.
    • They came of all flesh that has the breath of life in it.
16. 7:16
    • Those that entered came male and female of all flesh.
    • They came as God had commanded him.
    • The LORD shut him in.
17. 7:17
    • The flood was on the earth forty days.
    • The waters increased.
    • The waters bore up the ark.
    • The ark was lifted above the earth.
18. 7:18
    • The waters prevailed on the earth.
    • The waters increased greatly on the earth.
    • The ark moved on the surface of the waters.
19. 7:19
    • The waters prevailed exceedingly on the earth.
    • All the high mountains under the whole heavens were covered.
20. 7:20
    • The waters prevailed fifteen cubits upward.
    • The mountains were covered.
21. 7:21
    • All flesh that moved on the earth died.
    • The birds died.
    • The domestic animals died.
    • The wild animals died.
    • Every swarming thing that swarms on the earth died.
    • All mankind died.
22. 7:22
    • Everything with the breath of the spirit of life in its nostrils died.
    • This was of all that was on the dry land.
23. 7:23
    • Every living thing on the face of the ground was wiped out.
    • This included man.
    • This included animals.
    • This included creeping things.
    • This included the birds of the heavens.
    • They were wiped off from the earth.
    • Only Noah remained.
    • Those with him in the ark remained.
24. 7:24
    • The waters prevailed upon the earth for a hundred and fifty days.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

7:1

"LORD" printed in capitals stands where the Hebrew has God's personal name, the four letters YHWH, which Jewish readers traditionally did not pronounce aloud; "God" elsewhere translates the ordinary Hebrew word for deity. "Ark" translates a Hebrew word meaning a box or chest, not any of the normal words for a ship or boat; the only other place it appears is the basket in which the baby Moses is set afloat. "Righteous" is a courtroom word: someone whose conduct would stand up if examined, in the right rather than in the wrong.

7:2

"Clean" and "not clean" divide animals into those fit and unfit for sacrifice and for eating, a distinction spelled out much later in Israel's law, and assumed here without explanation. The Hebrew literally says "seven seven," which can mean seven animals of each kind or seven pairs; translators divide over it, and the phrase "the male and its female" that follows can be read either way.

7:3

"To keep seed alive" uses "seed" in its usual King James sense of offspring or descendants, not plant seed. The point is that each kind of creature will still have a breeding line after the flood.

7:4

Forty days and nights is a standard span in Hebrew narrative for a long, complete stretch of time, the way English uses "a month of Sundays"; it recurs at Sinai and in the wilderness wanderings. The verb behind "wipe off" means to blot out writing or scrub a dish clean.

7:6

Genesis gives the people before the flood lifespans of many centuries; the ages are part of the same reckoning that runs through the genealogy in chapter 5, not a separate claim being made here.

7:8

"Crawls on the ground" covers the small creatures that stay low: lizards, mice, snakes, beetles and the like.

7:9

Verse 2 said seven pairs of clean animals, and this verse says two by two. The two are not a contradiction so much as two ways of describing the same procession: "two and two" here means they came in male and female pairs, which is the detail the verse is tracking.

7:11

Months are counted from the start of the year, but Genesis does not say which reckoning is in use, Israel later used both an autumn and a spring new year, so the date fixes the day within Noah's six hundredth year without telling us the season. "The springs of the great deep" and "the windows of the sky" describe the world as the ancient Near East pictured it: a vast body of water beneath the land, and more water held above a solid sky, both now let loose. The flood comes from below as well as above, not from rain alone.

7:13

"In the selfsame day" simply means on that very same day. Shem, Ham and Japheth are Noah's three sons, named earlier in Genesis 5 and 6; with Noah, his wife and the three sons' wives, the ark carries eight people.

7:14

"Of its kind" repeats the phrase used through the creation account in chapter 1; it marks the sorts of creature as they were made, and does not correspond to any modern biological category such as species.

7:16

"The LORD shut him in" is literal, the door is closed from outside by God, not by Noah.

7:17

"Bare up" is the old past tense of "bear," meaning carried or lifted, and "was lift up" is an old form of "was lifted up." The ark has no rudder, sail or oars anywhere in this story; it does not sail, it floats.

7:19

The Hebrew word translated "earth" here can mean the whole world or a particular land or region, and the same double sense runs through the chapter; the phrase "under the whole sky" pushes toward the wider reading, but the ambiguity is in the original.

7:20

A cubit was roughly eighteen inches, about the length of a forearm from elbow to fingertip; fifteen cubits is something over twenty feet. The Hebrew does not make clear whether the water stood that deep above the mountaintops or rose that much beyond its earlier level, a depth of twenty feet over the peaks and a hull draft deep enough to clear them have both been read out of the line.

7:21

"Creeping thing" covers the small creatures that move close to the ground: reptiles, rodents, insects and the like. It is one of the standard categories Genesis uses when it wants to list the whole animal world.

7:22

"Breath of life in its nostrils" is the ordinary Hebrew way of saying a creature is alive and breathing; the same phrase is used of the first human in chapter 2.

7:24

A hundred and fifty days is about five months. Whether this stretch includes the forty days of rain or follows them is not stated, and the chronology of the flood has been counted both ways since antiquity.