CPCC Bible Study: Genesis 7

This is a long term, in depth, wide focus study of Genesis. Looking at the history, and the historical impact of the First Book of the Bible, studying the Hebrew as well as modern translations to discuss what it means to us today.
The quote for chapter Seven is:
"...everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died." verse 22 (RSV)

A Great Deluge Sidenote
According to Josephus:

"Now all the writers of barbarian histories make mention of this flood, and of this ark; among whom is Berosus the Chaldean. For when he is describing the circumstances of the flood, he goes on thus: "It is said there is still some part of this ship in Armenia, at the mountain of the Cordyaeans; and that some people carry off pieces of the bitumen, which they take away, and use chiefly as amulets for the averting of mischiefs." Hieronymus the Egyptian also, who wrote the Phoenician Antiquities, and Mnaseas, and a great many more, make mention of the same. ..."
Josephus, Antiqities of the Jews Book 1, chapter 3, see link below

As the writer of old said, very nearly EVERY ancient civilization worthy of the title "ancient civilization" from the Navajo to Uruk has a story of a world wide flood. In most of the stories, such as India's Shatapatha Brahmana we see a very similar tale to the account in Genesis, in that the hero of the story, known there as Manu, is faithful, and as such is warned by one of the gods to build a boat.... and so on, including similar accounts from elsewhere in Southeast Asia and Africa. See links below.
As we mentioned during the discussion of giants, the King of the city of Uruk went on several adventures, including the famous episode where he went to visit the man who had survived the Great Flood. That link to "Gilgamesh" is below.
And we should emphasize here and now, the Great Flood is always distinct and separate from the more mundane events such as the seasonal flooding of the Nile or Euphrates. And it is also a different event than the swamping of Atlantis or the subsidence of Dwarka on the coast of India. See links to looks at those lost cities below.

This is one of the universal myths that convinced Immanuel Velikovsky that humanity, as a species, shared a common memory that persisted from the ancient past and has been relayed as oral histories and religious texts ever since. An overview of one of his essays on the subject is quoted here and linked below:

"The scriptural deluge is regarded by historians and critical exegetes as a legendary product. 'The legend of a universal deluge is in itself a myth and cannot be anything else.' It is 'most nakedly and unreservedly mythological.'
"The tradition of a universal deluge is told by all ancient civilizations, and also by races that never reached the ability to express themselves in the written symbols of a language. It is found all over the world, on all continents, on the islands of the Pacific and Atlantic, everywhere."
- Immanuel Velikovsky (1895 - 1979) Varchive.org link below.

Of course, today, physical evidence of very nearly world-wide events on the scale of Noah's flood has been found from one side of the globe to the other. While the 'science' of Catastrophism has come and gone as the fashion of the day in the hard sciences, it does have some merit. Sudden, massive, cataclysmic, historically 'short term', events, have happened in both the ancient past... do we really have to point at the infamous "Dinosaur Killer" asteroid? OK, there, we did it.... and the list must include the "Year Without A Summer" brought about by the eruption of Tambora in 1815. All the way up to the modern technological nightmares that would be caused by another Carrington Event if it happened today. See related links below.

Short note to explain obscure reference:
The Carrington Event was a Coronal Mass Ejection from the Sun that directly impacted the Earth. The CME occurred on 1 September 1859 and hit our planet some eighteen hours later. The geomagnetic storm caused the polar auroras to be visible in the tropics, as well as blacking out telegraph networks, and starting fires in the equipment due to static discharges.
If such an event were to happen today widespread power outages could be expected, and satellites in orbit would be destroyed. On a more personal level, unshielded electronic devices (TVs, computers, even some automobiles) would be decimated. See Space.com link below for more.

Even considering "modern" human history, going back just a few thousand years, "Noah's Flood" is a blip of time. But the fact that it is related everywhere indicate that it was a humanity changing event recorded, for our study, in Genesis 7.
which we now rejoin
end note

Verse 1
The amount of time it took Noah to build and stock the ark has passed since we turned the page at the end of chapter 6.
And said YHWH to Noah, "bo" (go in / come in /bring / etc) 'you and yours'....
and then we have a restatement, this is now the third time, that GOD sees Noah as righteous. It is interesting to note that this time around a qualification is added, "dor zeh" (generation this). Perhaps it means that there wasn't a lot of competition for the position, but that is just speculation.

2
Commentary: and here is where those cute critters parading two by two behind Noah to an impossibly small Ark in every elementary Sunday School classroom in the world falls apart. Pay close attention to the numbers and two very specific words: "Clean" and "Unclean". And we'll explain why those two terms are very important in a moment.
... of every "behemeh" ('animal' / cattle (the word is as used in Genesis 1 : 25 and 2 : 20, and in terms of the cursing of the snake in 3 : 14)) "tahor" (clean / pure).... "shebah / shibah" (seven (the prime number)) "shebah / shibah"(the number is repeated in the Hebrew text) 'a male and his female'....
The meaning here is somewhat confused and disputed, and in some arenas, Christian, Jewish, and others, even Violently Disputed. It could mean there were SEVEN animals of a clean species, Which is how the Geneva Bible, the 1611 KJV, and most English translations since word it, leaving out one of the sevens.
Or it could be there were Seven and Seven, a male and his female, making FOURTEEN of them. Which is exactly how Jerome of Stridon took it in the Vulgate:

"ex omnibus animantibus mundis tolle septena septena masculum et feminam de animantibus vero non mundis duo duo masculum et feminam"
"Of all clean beasts take seven and seven, the male and female. But of the beasts that are unclean two and two, the male and female."
https://vulgate.org/ See link below.
Analysis of the above:
There is a non-Biblical text that clearly states that there were seven pairs of clean animals, and two pairs of unclean animals. However, the epic work "The Legends of the Jews" complied by Louis Ginzberg in 1909 is simply that, legends, and some of them are clearly tall tales and other morality lessons that have grown up around the Biblical narrative. The reference we're discussing here is in chapter four of volume one. See link below.
The credibility of the overall text in "The Legends..." is beyond the scope of this study. But we will say that a great deal of the information in the text is, well, obviously more interesting than it is accurate, and leave it at that. end analysis

Remember, in Genesis 5, it was the males that were mentioned, so it well could be SEVEN males, and his female (making 14 of each kind). In either case... it wasn't two of each species.
And now we'll deal with those two very specific, and VERY Jewish words: Clean and Unclean. As we discussed in a previous chapter, there has been NO dietary or any other official criteria to discriminate between an unclean animal, such as the rock badger (see Deuteronomy 14 : 7), or a domestic sheep, which is not only clean, but the absolutely pinnacle of the list of acceptable sacrificial animals culminating in Revelation 5.
As a point of order, clean and unclean, those that 'divide the hoof and chew the cud', and those that don't, are not defined until Leviticus 11. Perhaps Noah had some Patriarchal insight into what was and what wasn't, but such knowledge isn't communicated to us in either Genesis or any of the other books related to it that we've already discussed, and are linked below.

3
Birds. Seven and seven.
Yes. Go read the original. It does not separate birds of prey, golden eagles (unclean), from doves (clean, see Luke 2: 24). They all get berths on the boat.

4
We have the first weather forecast in history.
The first number used is the mythical prime number we've run into several times before, "sheba" (seven), again invoking the Week of Creation, the Sabbath, and other uses.
The next number is fairly new to Genesis "arbaim" (forty). It was used with years in chapter five in the life of Kenan. But here is 'forty days'. We also see this period in Genesis for embalming. And then in Exodus when Moses climbs a mountain. ... and, of course, in the New Testament, when Christ goes into the wilderness. But we are way ahead of ourselves there.
And a restatement of the purpose of the action.

5 - 7
Noah did as he was told by YHWH.
Noah was six hundred years old and did as he was told with his family.

8
Clean animals and unclean animals and birds and "ramas" (moves / creeps / etc) animals...
In the original, birds are listed separately. Then we see "ramas". The term was used in the first few days of creation in chapter one, and it seems to describe living creatures that they didn't have a common name or description for. In this case, while 'clean' and 'unclean' and 'birds' are clearly listed, there were a lot of other critters running around that didn't fit neatly into those categories.

9
... "shenayim shenayim" (two 'by' two) they went to Noah into the ark....

This goes back to the end of chapter six where the animals were mentioned as going two by two. And it is these two verses that those that make those cute parades of animals in that children's classroom have in mind. This is also cited as proof of textual contradictions that this story is fiction by those of such a mind as to discount the entire Bible.

There is no contradiction. The clean animals went on the boat in sets of two, the Male and his Female... there were just seven sets of two instead of two twos for the others.

10
Seven days pass, and the "mayim" (water) "mabbul" (flood (this word is only used 13 times in the OT. All but one are in Genesis in the Noah story, the other is in Psalm 29 : 10, which references it)).

11
Date check. Then...
... "baqa" (cleave / break open) "mayan (etc)" (spring) 'of the' "tehom" (sea / abyss / etc (the same word used in Genesis 1 : 2)), "rabbah" (much / many / great), "arubbah" (window / lattice / sluice ) of "shamayim" (heaven / sky) "pathach" (appear / open).
The word "rabbah" is set off by itself between the deep ocean and the "arubbah shamayim" 'windows of heaven' (the term used in some translations 'floodgates' is more editorial than accurate). What would that seem to mean? A lot of water was suddenly coming up from deep underground and was looking for somewhere to go, and it was being met on its way downtown by more water falling from the sky. We'll get more into where the water from "upstairs" may have come from in the next chapter.

12
Paraphrase: "it rained, and such, for forty days and nights."

Remember what we've said about poetic repetition for emphasis?

13
Passenger manifest.
Everybody on the cruise is defined by their relationship to the captain.

14 through 16
the critters, two by... etc. Then we come to the punchline:
... and "sagar" (shut / closed) 'in' YHWH "baad" (behind).
After an extensive review of what's on the ark and who commanded them to be there, the Almighty closes the door to the thing.

17 - 20
"arbaim" (forty) days, the water "rabah" (increases, becomes great, etc), reaches 'flood stage' and then some... the boat floats...,
and "gabar" (mighty / strong / prevail) the waters...
The statement about the waters is repeated. With some new information this time. The beginning of verse twenty specifies that the water was fifteen cubits deep, and implies that this was how much of it was over the summits of the mountains. It had to be because to cover a real mountain the flood had to be deeper than twenty-two feet (just under seven meters, depending on your 'cubit') above sea level.

21
... and "gava" (perished) .... everything.

At this point, the "reset button" has been pushed, and, except for the old man on his zoological cruise ship, the Earth looks like it did in the first verse of Genesis.

22
See discussion of verse 21, include "breath of spirit of life".
We've seen a version of this phrase before. "neshamah ruach chay". This is the same idea seen in verse seven of chapter two when God breathed LIFE into Adam. In this case, it is the breath of life that is no longer present in whatever wasn't in the Ark that needed air to live.

23
a recap of what just happened, including 'whodoneit', a list of what died.... and a reminder about the ark.

24
waters prevailed, 150 days.

We'll check the rain gauge:
The period of active rain falling (and, evidently, the 'fountains of the deep' flowing) was 40 days and nights, verses 12 and 17, although that could be the time it took the water to cover the mountains. The flood covered everything for 150 days. And then as we'll see in the next chapter, it takes another 150 days for them to dry up. Giving a total of, give or take, a year of 'high water'.
Ahhh, yes, a question from over in the arboretum:

"But what about the plants?"

A Botanical Tangent:
There is no record in either scripture or other ancient works, such as The Epic of Gilgamesh (see PDF linked below), about what happened to the flora across the rest of the Earth, during the Flood. At the end of chapter six, Noah is told to lay in food for the animals and people in the cargo section of the ark. That would include the seeds of the various grains and other crops. But as for trees and wildflowers and whatever, we don't have a clue.
As we'll see in chapter 8, some plants did survive, and, evidently, flourished not long after their prolonged bath. The dove he sent out on a scouting mission returned with an olive leaf in her mouth.

You can follow some of the links below to see various research about what happens to plants and seeds that end up under water for prolonged periods of time, but we can quickly summarize it like this.
Most plants... now hear this, we said "MOST" plants... can survive being totally under water for perhaps a day, of course some can last a bit longer. It depends on the type of plant and where it is in its life cycle. And it also depends on what happens when the floodwaters recede. Many plants will sustain damage, and shed leaves, perhaps be stunted for awhile, then recover, there's some background information from Penn State University linked below that covers it nicely.
There's another link below that describes something akin to "hibernation" once the plant senses that it has been watered a bit more than it wanted to be. See the "three gases" article linked below for how that works.

As for seeds that are either in the ground or perhaps end up floating around in the flood. That's a similar story. Most can handle being 'underwater' for a few days before they suffer damage. Beyond that, the germination rate suffers. And then there are some seeds that really don't mind being wet for some time, most famously perhaps being palm fruits that happily float along on ocean currents to then sprout on some deserted island in the middle of the Pacific.
On the scientific side, even Charles Darwin experimented with seeds being stored underwater. He found that many were no worse for the wear after being submerged for up to a month. See PBS link below for a brief on his work, and a couple of other sources talking about farm crops, which is where most of the research has been conducted.

But then we have to step back from the laboratory and remind everybody who, or rather, Who, was outside of the ark after closing the door.
This was no ordinary rainstorm and, most likely, that olive tree had a bit of assistance in staying alive during the storm.
Which we also have to say for those inside the ark, and we'll look at further in the next chapter.
end tangent

End chapter 7

English / Hebrew: Interlinear Bible: Genesis 7 https://biblehub.com/interlinear/genesis/7.htm

The 1560: http://www.genevabible.org/geneva.html

The Book of Jubilees: Vulgate, Chapter 7 https://vulgate.org/ot/genesis_7.htm
-and- Chapter 19, in English! https://sacred-texts.com/bib/jub/jub19.htm

"This is a massive collation of the Haggada--the traditions which have grown up surrounding the Biblical narrative. These stories and bits of layered detail are scattered throughout the Talmud and the Midrash, and other sources, including oral. In the 19th century Ginzberg undertook the task of arranging the Haggada into chronological order, and this series of volumes was the result."
The Legends of the Jews sacred-texts

The Complete Book Of Enoch, standard English version https://ia601001.us.archive.org/19/items/TheCompleteBookOfEnochStandardEnglishVersionJayWinter/The%20Complete%20Book%20of%20Enoch%2C%20Standard%20English%20Version%20-%20Jay%20Winter.pdf

"The Epic of Gilgamesh https://uruk-warka.dk/Gilgamish/The%20Epic%20of%20Gilgamesh.pdf

Flooded plants-
From Penn State: "It is very difficult to determine the long-term effect of being underwater on trees and shrubs. Some woody plants tolerate wet soils better than others. All will suffer from a lack of oxygen when the floodwaters fill all the air spaces between the particles of soil." https://extension.psu.edu/gardens-after-flooding

"A tale of three gases - how plants prepare to survive flooding" https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/news/how-plants-prepare-to-survive-flooding

Wet Seeds- Darwin: "Does Sea-Water Kill Seeds?" https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/02/2/l_022_03.html

Other research:
Corn and Soybean Survival in Saturated and Flooded Soils https://cropwatch.unl.edu/corn-and-soybean-survival-saturated-and-flooded-soils

"The primary damage to seeds from flooding or saturated soils is oxygen deprivation." https://www.beckshybrids.com/resources/agronomy-talk/agronomy-talk-early-season-flooding

Genesis Study Index Page

NOTE: The Bible Study Lesson presented above is posted as a reference document to begin a conversation of the topic. And that's it. Please accept it at such.

http://centralparkchurchofchrist.org

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