Genesis 7:12

12 and rain fell on the earth for forty days and 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 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,

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

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

14 With them went every kind of animal, domestic and wild, large and small, and every kind of bird.