Genesis 7:12

12 The rain was on the eretz forty days and forty nights.

Genesis 7:12 Meaning and Commentary

Genesis 7:12

And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights,
&c.] So long it was falling upon it, after the windows of heaven were opened. Aben Ezra would have it, that all things were in such confusion, during the flood, that there was no difference between day and night, since, it is said, "day and night shall not cease any more"; and that after the waters ceased, then Noah knew that forty days and nights had passed, for God had revealed this secret to him; but the text seems more to make against him than for him.

Genesis 7:12 In-Context

10 It happened after the seven days, that the waters of the flood came on the eretz.

11 In the six hundredth year of Noach's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the same day all the fountains of the great deep were burst open, and the sky's windows were opened.

12 The rain was on the eretz forty days and forty nights.

13 In the same day Noach, and Shem, Ham, and Yefet, the sons of Noach, and Noach's wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, entered into the teivah;

14 they, and every animal after its kind, all the cattle after their kind, every creeping thing that creeps on the eretz after its kind, and every bird after its kind, every bird of every sort.