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.

Noah and the flood

Story: Noah and the flood

Passage: Genesis 6:9-7:24

Characters: The Lord, Noah, Noah's family

Summary: Noah was righteous but the earth was corrupt. God decided to destroy all flesh because they filled the earth with violence. He had Noah build an ark and fill it with animals and food. God flooded the earth and Noah and his family survived the flood in the ark. The rain fell for 40 days and water covered the earth for 150 days.

Notes: Noah stood out from his culture. He trusted God and walked with Him even when God did not make human sense. Noah made God his god. The earth was corrupted by humans, yet God wanted to destroy anything with the breath of life in it. I feel like this destruction of His creation would have been difficult and it is significant that God felt that it had come to this. But it had to be done because it was the just thing to do and God is a just God. However, God showed humanity mercy again by allowing Noah and his family to survive. There were only two of a kind of unclean animals on the ark, but there were seven pairs of unclean animals. This would mean there were more clean animals in the new world. Noah was 600 when the flood occurred. The exact day of the flood is given in the passage relative to Noah's birth. God personally was taking care of Noah. All Noah had to do was build the boat. God brought all the animals to him over a period of seven days. Then He closed the ark Himself. There is so much detail in this story compared to the others, the depth of the water, the time it rained, the time it took for the water to recede, the day the flood started, etc. Either there is some imprtance here we don't realize yet or Noah was just really good at writing things down that happened. My top two guesses are either that these are things we will be able to confirm someday, or Noah was the world's first journaler. I bet if he had a blog, it would be crazy detailed and entertaining. "Today I am 599 years old and 374 days. I just added one and a half cubits of height to this thing God told me to build. My wife made an awesome dinner of plantains today. I ate exactly 3." But I digress. The text says that God destroyed all creatures on the face of the earth. By a loophole though, Noah and his family were above the face of the earth. I don't know if that was intentional by God or if it just happened that way, but I found the wording in the end of chapter 7 interesting because of that.

Questions: Why so much detail? Why the exact date the flood started? What made animals clean back then? Was it the same criteria we see in the Mosaic law? How did Noah's friends react to his strange actions? His family? How would I react if God told me to do something outrageous like that? Would I acknowlege that God is my god or would I try to follow my own wisdom?

Lessons: Obedience to God is very important. If Noah did not walk with God and follow his unusual instructions, he would not have survived. If he was worried about his image or his success with his friends, he would have been wiped out. Walking with God means obeying Him even when it makes zero sense, seems to reflect poorly on you, and does not advance your status. We are not meant to follow earthly logic, but Godly logic, which is the logic which created earthly logic.