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📚And the LORD said to Noah, “You, and all your household, come into the ark. For I have seen you as righteous in my eyes in this generation. 2 📚You shall take for yourself seven of every clean beast, the male and its female, and two of beasts that are unclean, the male and its female,3 also seven each of the birds of the air, the male and the female, to keep offspring alive on the surface of the whole earth. 4 📚For in seven more days I will cause it to rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and I will destroy from the surface of the earth every living substance that I have made”.
5 📚And Noah did according to all that the LORD commanded him.
6 📚And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was on the earth. 7 📚And Noah went into the ark, and with him, his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives, because of the waters of the flood. 8 Of clean beasts and of unclean beasts and of birds and of every creeping thing on the earth, 9 📚two by two, the male and the female, went in to Noah into the ark, as God had commanded Noah. 10 📚And it came about after seven days that the waters of the flood were on the earth.
11 📚In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, that very day, all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
7:11 The waters of the flood came from two sources – water underneath the ocean bed which was released, and torrential rains from above. Before the flood there may have been huge quantities of water trapped under pressure beneath the ocean floor. Whatever was there now burst out and, together with the large amount of rain falling from the sky, greatly raised the level of the water in the oceans, and covered the hills and mountains.⚜
12 📚And the rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights.
13 📚On that very day Noah and Shem and Ham and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, went into the ark, 14 📚they, and every beast according to its kind, and all the cattle according to their kind, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth according to its kind, and every bird according to its kind, every bird of every sort. 15 📚And they went into the ark to Noah, two by two of all flesh which had the breath of life. 16 📚And those that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him. And the LORD shut him in.
7:16 God shut the door, not to keep Noah from getting out, but to keep anyone else from getting in. God’s judgment was to be complete on a very wicked generation. The day of opportunity to be saved was over. Justice now triumphed over wickedness. Compare Prov 1:24-33; 29:1; Isa 55:6-7; 2 Cor 6:2.⚜
17 📚And the flood kept coming on the earth for forty days, and the waters increased, and lifted up the ark, and it rose up above the earth. 18 📚And the waters were powerful and greatly increased on the earth, and the ark went on the surface of the waters. 19 📚And the waters grew exceedingly powerful on the earth, and all the high mountains 📖 that were under the whole heaven, were covered. 20 📚The waters powerfully rose fifteen cubits 📖 higher, and the mountains were covered.
21 📚And all flesh that moved on the earth, both of fowl and of cattle and of beast and of every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every man, died. 22 📚All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was on the dry land, died. 23 📚And every living thing which was on the face of the earth was destroyed, both man and cattle and creeping things and the birds of the sky. They were destroyed from the earth, and only Noah, and those who were with him in the ark, remained alive.
24 📚And the waters remained powerful on the earth for a hundred and fifty days.
7:24 From the language of verses 19-24 it seems clear that the flood was worldwide. This is indicated by the height of the waters (see Gen 8:4), the extent of the destruction (see Gen 9:15), and the length of time the flood waters remained on earth (Gen 8:13-14). These things could be said of no local flood. See also 2 Pet 3:3-7. We cannot set a date for the flood, nor is it necessary that we do so (see note on Gen 5:5-32). The date is not important. The important thing is the spiritual lessons we can learn from that event. These are: Sin will bring God’s judgment; God is grieved when He must judge and condemn men to destruction, but will do so for the sake of His justice, and for the good of those who remain. He will save those who trust in Him. The ark is a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ who saves His believing people from God’s wrath against sin.⚜