Genesis 7:2-12

2 Take with you seven pairs of each kind of ritually clean animal, but only one pair of each kind of unclean animal.

3 Take also seven pairs of each kind of bird. Do this so that every kind of animal and bird will be kept alive to reproduce again on the earth.

4 Seven days from now I am going to send rain that will fall for forty days and nights, in order to destroy all the living beings that I have made."

5 And Noah did everything that the Lord commanded.

6 Noah was six hundred years old when the flood came on the earth.

7 He and his wife, and his sons and their wives, went into the boat to escape the flood. ¹

8 A male and a female of every kind of animal and bird, whether ritually clean or unclean,

9 went into the boat with Noah, as God had commanded.

10 Seven days later the flood came.

11 When Noah was six hundred years old, on the seventeenth day of the second month all the outlets of the vast body of water beneath the earth burst open, all the floodgates of the sky were opened, ²

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

Genesis 7:2-12 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO GENESIS 7

This chapter begins with an order to Noah to come with his family and all the creatures into the ark, that they might be safe from the flood, which would quickly be upon the earth, Ge 7:1-4 and then gives an account of Noah's obedience to the divine command in every particular, Ge 7:5-9 and of the time of the beginning of the flood, and its prevalence, Ge 7:10-12 then follows a repetition of Noah, his family, and the creatures entering into the ark, Ge 7:13-16 and next a relation is given of the increase of the waters, and of the height they arrived unto, Ge 7:17-20 and of the consequences of the flood, the death and destruction of every living creature, except those in the ark, fowl, cattle, beast, creeping things, and men, Ge 7:21-23 and the chapter is closed with an account how long the waters continued before they began to ebb, even one hundred and fifty days, Ge 7:24.

Cross References

• 1. 7.7Matthew 24.38, 39;Luke 17.27.
• 2. 7.11 2 Peter 3.6.