Genesis 7:1-11

1 When everything was ready, the LORD said to Noah, “Go into the boat with all your family, for among all the people of the earth, I can see that you alone are righteous.

2 Take with you seven pairs—male and female—of each animal I have approved for eating and for sacrifice, and take one pair of each of the others.

3 Also take seven pairs of every kind of bird. There must be a male and a female in each pair to ensure that all life will survive on the earth after the flood.

4 Seven days from now I will make the rains pour down on the earth. And it will rain for forty days and forty nights, until I have wiped from the earth all the living things I have created.”

5 So Noah did everything as the LORD commanded him.

6 Noah was 600 years old when the flood covered the earth.

7 He went on board the boat to escape the flood—he and his wife and his sons and their wives.

8 With them were all the various kinds of animals—those approved for eating and for sacrifice and those that were not—along with all the birds and the small animals that scurry along the ground.

9 They entered the boat in pairs, male and female, just as God had commanded Noah.

10 After seven days, the waters of the flood came and covered the earth.

11 When Noah was 600 years old, on the seventeenth day of the second month, all the underground waters erupted from the earth, and the rain fell in mighty torrents from the sky.

Genesis 7:1-11 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.

Footnotes

• [a]. Hebrew of each clean animal; similarly in 7:8 .