Genesis 7

16. and the Lord shut him in--literally, "covered him round about." The "shutting him in" intimated that Noah had become the special object of divine care and protection, and that to those without the season of grace was over ( Matthew 25:10 ).

17. the waters increased, and bare up the ark--It seems to have been raised so gradually as to be scarcely perceptible to its occupants.

20. Fifteen cubits upward . . . and the mountains were covered--twenty-two and a half feet above the summits of the highest hills. The language is not consistent with the theory of a partial deluge.

21. all flesh died . . . fowl . . . cattle, and . . . creeping thing--It has been a uniform principle in the divine procedure, when judgments were abroad on the earth, to include every thing connected with the sinful objects of His wrath ( Genesis 19:25 , Exodus 9:6 ). Besides, now that the human race was reduced to one single family, it was necessary that the beasts should be proportionally diminished, otherwise by their numbers they would have acquired the ascendancy and overmastered the few that were to repeople the world. Thus goodness was mingled with severity; the Lord exercises judgment in wisdom and in wrath remembers mercy.

24. an hundred and fifty days--a period of five months. Though long before that every living creature must have been drowned, such a lengthened continuance of the flood was designed to manifest God's stern displeasure at sin and sinners. Think of Noah during such a crisis. We learn ( Ezekiel 14:14 ) that he was a man who lived and breathed habitually in an atmosphere of devotion; and having in the exercise of this high-toned faith made God his refuge, he did not fear "though the waters roared and were troubled; though the mountains shook with the swelling thereof" [ Psalms 46:3 ].