The Flood Subsides

Story: The Flood Subsides

Passage: Genesis 8:1-19

Characters: God, Noah, Some birds, Animals

Summary: The waters began to subside. Noah sent out a raven to test for dry ground and nothing happened. He sent out a dove, and nothing happened. He sent out the dove again and it found an olive branch so he knew there was land out there. He and his family and all the animals disembarked and were commanded by God to multiply and fill the earth.

Notes: I love that God dried the earth with wind. God is able to work outside of physics if He so chooses, but many times, he chooses to work miracles by using the laws of physics which He created in ways they wouldn't normally be used. For example, here He used convective drying! I find it interesting that the ark came to rest on the mountains, but the mountains weren't even visible for another two and a half months. Noah sat there for forty days before he sent out a raven. Then he sent the first dove before waiting a week to send it out again. The fact that the dove found an olive leaf means that the ground was dry for long enough for an olive tree to start growing. The fact that Noah was sending birds out to find dry land seems to imply that he couldn't see the ground/sea from the ark. Was he really cooped up in the ark for nearly 7 months without being able to see the earth? It took almost 3 months for the earth to dry up completely. It is interesting that the flood ended on the first day of the year. We celebrate New Years today as a time to have new beginnings. We set goals and basically reset and start again. So it is interesting that the earth started again on the first day of the year. Another interesting thing is that before humanity got a new start, a dove flew over the waters. In Genesis 1, before humanity got it's first start, the spirit, which is characterized as a dove in the New Testament, hovered over the waters. I don't know if that is significant or not, but I do find it interesting. This really was God giving us a new start. I am also still fascinated by the detail in the numbers of the story. This story could be easily drawn graphically to illustrate each stage of the flood. Can we use this detail to confirm the story? Could those numbers be prophetic? (Harold Camping thought so and we all saw how that turned out lol) The passage says that the animals and people left the ark as families. This means that the pairs stuck together which is obviously vital for them to multiply and fill the earth.

As I finished typing this section, I realized that the flood subsiding really did symbolize creation in a lot of ways. We saw the dove flew over the waters, but also theoretically, the drying process would have started when the rain ended and light broke through. The rain, which connected the water above with the water beneath would have seperated, the water beneath would have parted and dry ground would have appeared. Then we see that plants began growing. Finally, animals and humans walked the earth again. The flood was the destruction of creation, but the flood subsiding was God's recreation. This might be far fetched, but I suspect there is something here.

Questions: Why so much detail? How did the dove know to pick a leaf and bring it back? Where did all of the water drain to? Were fish able to survive the flood on their own? Did Noah let the animals start breeding on the ark?

Lessons: Not all of God's miracles are instant. Sometimes He takes months to work. We need to be patient and trust that He is working and in the meantime, continue to obey and follow Him and walk step by step with Him.