Mga Komentaryo sa Bibliya

Verse 3. - Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female. I.e. of clean fowls, "which he leaves to be understood out of the foregoing verse" (Peele). The Samaritan, Syriac, and LXX. (not so Vulgate, Onkelos, Arabic) insert the word "clean unnecessarily, and also add," καὶ ἀπὸ πάντων τῶν πετεινῶν τῶνν μὴ καθαρῶν δύο δύο ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ," manifestly to make the verse resemble the preceding. To keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.

Verses 4, 5. - For yet seven days. Literally, for today's yet seven - after seven days; thus giving Noah time to complete his preparations, and the world one more opportunity to repent, which Peele thinks many may have done, though their bodies were drowned for their former impenitency. And I will cause it to rain - literally, I causing it, the participle indicating the certainty of the future action (cf. Genesis 6:17; Proverbs 25:22; cf. Ewald's 'Hebrews Synt.,' § 306) - upon the earth forty days and forty nights. The importance assigned in subsequent Scripture to the number forty, probably from the circumstance here recorded, is too obvious to be overlooked. Israel wandered forty years in the wilderness (Numbers 14:33). The scouts remained forty days in Canaan (Numbers 13:26). Moses was forty days in the mount (Exodus 24:18). Elijah fasted forty days and forty nights in the wilderness of Beersheba (1 Kings 19:8). A respite of forty days was given to the Ninevites (Jonah 3:4). Christ fasted forty days before the temptation (Matthew 4:2), and sojourned forty, days on earth after his resurrection (Acts 1:3). It thus appears to have been regarded as symbolical of a period of trial, ending in victory to the good and in ruin to the evil. And every living substance - yekum; literally, standing thing, omne quod subsistit, i.e. "whatever is capable by a principle of life of maintaining an erect posture" (Bush); ἀνάστημα (LXX.; cf. Deuteronomy 11:6; Job 22:20) - that I have made will I destroy - literally, blot out (cf. Genesis 6:7) - from off the face of the earth. And Noah did according to all that the Lord (Jehovah, the God of salvation, who now interposed for the patriarch's safety; in Genesis 6:22, where God is exhibited in his relations to all flesh, it is Elohim) had commanded him.

Verse 6. - And Noah was six hundred years old. Literally, a som of six hundred years, i.e. in his 600th year (cf. ver. 11). The number six "is generally a Scriptural symbol of suffering. Christ suffered on the sixth day. In the Apocalypse the sixth seal, the sixth trumpet, the sixth vial introduce critical periods of affliction" (Wordsworth). When the flood of waters was upon the earth.

Verse 7. - And Noah went in. I.e. began to go in a full week before the waters came (vide ver. 10). "A proof of faith and a warning to the world." And his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him. In all eight persons (1 Peter 3:20); whence it is obvious that "each had but one wife, and that polygamy, as it began among the Cainites, was most probably confined to them" (Poole). Into the ark, because of the waters of the flood. Literally, from the face of the waters, being moved with fear and impelled by faith (Hebrews 11:7).

Verses 8, 9. - 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 into the ark, the male and the female. In obedience to a Divine impulse. Nothing short of Divine power could have effected such a timely and orderly entrance of the creatures into the huge vessel (cf. their mode of exit, Genesis 8:18). The seeming inconsistency of this verse with ver. 2, which says that the clean animals entered the ark by sevens, will be at once removed by connecting vers. 7 and 8 instead of 8 and 9, and commencing a new sentence with ver. 9. It favors this, that "of" is awanting before "everything that creepeth," and that the LXX. begin ver. 8 with "and" (cf. Quarry, p. 373). As God had commanded Noah.

Verse 10. - And it came to pass after seven days (literally, at the seventh of the days), that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.

Verses 11, 12. - In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month. Not

(1) of Noah's 600th year. (Knobel); but either

(2) of the theocratic year, which began With Nisan or Abib (Exodus 12:2; Exodus 13:4; Exodus 23:15; Exodus 34:18; Deuteronomy 16:1; Nehemiah 2:1), either in March or April (Rabbi Joshua, Ambrose, Luther, Calvin, Mercerus, Havernick, Kalisch, Alford, Wordsworth); or

(3) of the civil year, which commenced with the autumnal equinox in the month Tisri, "called of old the first month, but now the seventh" (Chaldee Paraphrase; Exodus 32:16; Exodus 34:22), corresponding to September or October (Josephus, Rabbi Jonathan; Kimchi, Rosenmüller, Keil, Murphy, Bush, Ainsworth, 'Speaker s Commentary ). In support of the former maybe alleged the usual Biblical mode of reckoning the sacred year by numbers, and in defense of the latter that the ecclesiastical year did not begin till the time of the Exodus. In the seventeenth day of the month. "The careful statement of the chronology, which marks with such exactness day and month in the course of this occurence, puts all suspicion of the history to shame" (Havernick). The same day were all the fountains of the great deep - i.e. the waters of the ocean (Job 38:16, 30; Job 41:31; Psalm 106:9) and of subterranean reservoirs (Job 28:4, 10; Psalm 33:7; Deuteronomy 8:7) - broken up. "Byamctynomy because the earth and other obstructions were broken up, and so a passage opened for the fountains" (Peele). "The niphal or passive form of בָּקַע denotes violent changes in the depths of the sea, or in the action of the earth - at all events in the atmosphere" (Lange). And the windows of heaven were opened. Arubboth, from arabh, to twine - network or lattices; hence a window, as being closed with lattice-work instead of glass (Ecclesiastes 12:3); here the flood-gates of heaven, which are opened when it rains (cf. Genesis 8:2; 2 Kings 7:19; Isaiah 24:18; Malachi 3:10). And the rain was - literally, and there was (happened, came) violent rain; גֶּשֶׁס, different from מָטָר, which denotes any rain, and is applied to other things which God pours down from heaven (Exodus 9:18; Exodus 16:4) - upon the earth forty days and forty nights (cf. Genesis 7:4). Though the language is metaphorical and optical, it clearly points to a change in the land level by which the ocean waters overflowed the depressed continent, accompanied with heavy and continuous rain, as the cause of the Deluge (contrast with this the works of the third and fourth creative days); yet "the exact statement of the natural causes that concurred in the Deluge is a circumstance which certainly in no wise removes the miraculous nature of the whole fact - who has unveiled the mysteries of nature? - but which certainly shows how exact was the attention paid to the external phenomena of the Deluge" (Havernick).

Verses 13, 14. - In the selfsame day - literally, in the bone, or strength, or essence (Genesis 2:23) of that day - in that very day (cf. Genesis 17:23, 26); "about noonday, i.e. in the public view of the world" (Peele) a phrase intended to convey the idea of the utmost precision of time" (Bush) - entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah's wife, and the wives of his three sons with them, into the ark. Not inconsistent with vers. 4, 5, which do not necessarily imply that the actual entry was made seven days before the Flood; but merely that Noah then began to carry out the Divine instructions. The threefold recital of the entry - first in connection with the invitation or command (ver. 5), and again in the actual process during the seven days (ver. 7), and finally on the day when the Flood began (ver. 15), - besides lending emphasis to the narrative, heightens its dramatic effect. They, and every beast after his Mad, 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 (literally, wing). The creatures here specified correspond with the enumeration - viz., chay-yah, behemah, remes - in Genesis 1:25, q.v. The last clause, kol-canaph, Kalisch, following Clericus, translates, though, according to Rosenmüller, without satisfactory reasons, "every winged creature," and so makes "three classes of winged beings - the eatable species (עופ), the birds which people the air and enliven it by the sounds of their melodies (עִפור), and the endless swarms of insects (כָּנָפ), the greatest part of which possess neither the utility of the former nor the beauty of the latter. Gesenius, however, translates it "birds of all kinds," and Knobel regards it as synonymous with "every bird." The LXX. give the sense of the two clauses: καὶ πᾶν ὄρνεον πετεινὸν κατὰ γένος αὐτοῦ.