Genesis 7:12

12 The rain fell on the earth for 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 Seven days later the flood started.

11 When Noah was six hundred years old, the flood started. On the seventeenth day of the second month of that year the underground springs split open, and the clouds in the sky poured out rain.

12 The rain fell on the earth for forty days and forty nights.

13 On that same day Noah and his wife, his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives went into the boat.

14 They had every kind of wild and tame animal, every kind of animal that crawls on the earth, and every kind of bird.