God Recalls His Promise
The Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh speaks of a Noah figure named Utnapishtim, and it refers to dimensions for the ship, which made it a perfect cube.1 Of course, that would have also made it unfit for sea—especially this sea. But there are many accounts throughout ancient human cultures that spoke of a universal flood, in which one family survived and re-propagated the human race.2
Criticisms of the logistics in the account are nothing new. Calvin wrote,
“For, formerly, profane men ridiculed Moses, as having imagined that so vast a multitude of animals was shut up in so small a space; a third part of which would scarcely contain four elephants. Origen solves this question, by saying that a geometrical cubit was referred to by Moses, which is six times greater than the common one; to whose opinion Augustine assents in his fifteenth book on ‘the City of God’ and his first book of ‘Questions on Genesis.’”3
I have written separately about the debate concerning the extent of the Flood; but I also gave a few reasons last time from the text itself as to why the Flood must be considered global, since it’s judgment was universal.
One more note, now on the form of Genesis 7:11-8:19. There is another chiastic literary structure here, with numbers featuring in that symmetry: In the first and last pair, there are 7 days of waiting for the flood to come (7:4), then 7 days of waiting for the flood to subside (8:12). In the second and second-to-last pair, the same 7 days of waiting (7:10; 8:10). In the third and third-to-last pair, there is 40 days of flooding (7:17) and 40 days of waiting for the flood to subside (8:6). In the central pairing, we see 150 days of water triumphing over the earth (7:24), then 150 days of the water waning from the earth (8:3).4 And then if we could “look” at the dead center of that scene, Hamilton notes that,
“There is no doubt that the two sources of water are intended to recall the ‘waters above and below’ of 1:6-7. The Flood un-creates, and returns the earth to a pre-creation period when there was only ‘waters.’”5
God closes.
God sustains.
God remembers.
Doctrine. All Noah and his family had to hope in to escape the collapsing world was the promise in God’s word.
God Closes.
It may seem like an insignificant detail, but the Scripture says here, ‘And those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him. And the LORD shut him in’ (v. 16). What is it to shut this door but to close the only way of salvation? Nothing could be more terrifying than to be on the other side of that door, on the outside of the ark.
Calvin commented,
“That door must have been large, which could admit an elephant. And truly, no pitch would be sufficiently firm and tenacious, and no joining sufficiently solid, to prevent the immense force of the water from penetrating through its many seams, especially in an irruption so violent, and in a shock so severe.”6
But this divine closing especially reminds me of those words in Revelation:
“The words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens” (Rev. 3:7).
Whatever final walls exist between one person and another, it is ultimately God who draws the line in the sand, as we already saw in 3:15 in the words “I will put enmity.” God will divide between the two cities. Here the two seeds and two cities are divided by a door that human ingenuity could hardly move, but which no mere mortals could seal to perfection.
God Sustains
Most people today don’t know much about being lost at sea or even in the woods. It’s actually ironic because this generation—addicted to screens and alienated from real life interaction are more lonely than ever before—but they know nothing of the building fear of feeling like the last person on earth. Have you ever gotten lost in the woods, or in some other way, separated from human contact? Sure, Noah had his family, but there had to be a dawning sense of dread. This is the way Chapter 7 ends, and each of these eight people had to be wondering, “Is this the way it ends?”
“He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. They were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed on the earth 150 days” (7:23-24).
You can be in the middle of civilization and far removed from the love and the life you once knew. You can wake up one day as much a stranger to other people as Noah was to those animals.
R. Kent Hughes, in his Genesis commentary, sets us on the right path in saying, “The only thing that Noah had to sustain him was the bare word of God, God’s promise—the so-called Noah covenant,” remember was given “in abbreviated form”7 before Noah built the ark. Our trouble comes in coveting things outside of that covenant. As the Lord told his prophet Jeremiah to say to Baruch,
“You said, ‘Woe is me! For the LORD has added sorrow to my pain. I am weary with my groaning, and I find no rest.’ Thus shall you say to him, Thus says the LORD: Behold, what I have built I am breaking down, and what I have planted I am plucking up—that is, the whole land. And do you seek great things for yourself? Seek them not, for behold, I am bringing disaster upon all flesh, declares the LORD. But I will give you your life as a prize of war in all places to which you may go” (Jer. 45:3-5).
But God’s word sustains not only by pointing forward by promise, but by pointing back in history,
Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over? (Isa. 51:10)
Several texts in the Psalms and the Prophets can have multiple applications to the mighty deeds of God for Israel in the past. It can be deliverances of the whole nation, as in the Red Sea parting or else of the people treated in one ancestor, such as Noah. The more we know these parts of Scripture, the more we will sense our oneness with our own connection to this people. To the degree that we don’t know this, we will miss out on the sense of being sustained.
What do you base God’s sustaining you on? Is it something He has actually promised in His word or done for you in Christ?
God Remembers
‘But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided’ (8:1). Three elements to focus on here: (i.) the meaning of God remembering; (ii.) the inclusion of the animals in His remembrance; (iii.) the action of God on behalf of those He remembers.
First, what exactly is meant by this divine remembering? God is omniscient and so could never forget. Waltke comments,
“Unlike English ‘remembered,’ which refers merely to mental recall and entails having forgotten, the Hebrew term, especially with reference to God, signifies to act upon a previous commitment to a covenant partner … By acting on his earlier promise to Noah (see 6:18), God shows himself to be a trustworthy covenant partner.”8
So this is a “recall” toward the human audience—yes, another anthropomorphism. This remembrance tends to come with a rescue: “So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow” (Gen. 19:29); or, it comes to us in our destitution: “Then God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her and opened her womb” (Gen. 30:22). But the basis of this divine remembrance is a covenant recall—that is, a glorification of God through His covenant promises. It is God highlighting, for our sake, that His original plan is right on schedule.
Second, why the inclusion of animals in this statement? Is it simply a matter of symmetry with the rest of the account? No—it’s the same covenant recall. Remember who Adam was head over? Not just his own home, but “over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen. 1:28). So for God to “remember” man and beast together is to recall His whole creational purpose.
Third, as to this detail that ‘God made a wind blow over the earth’ (v. 1)— This seems to be the agency through which God caused the water to recede, whether through more accelerated evaporation or by redirecting currents into lower planes. So when God recalls His promises to us, He always acts. We may not know what He is doing behind the scenes. The point is not that it will be as dramatic and evident as in the case of this wind.
Now, if it is true that all Noah and his family had to hope in to escape the collapsing world was the promise in God’s word—then this was more than hope enough. This is that word that made the whole world to begin with.
Practical Use of the Doctrine
Use 1. Instruction. That closed door (7:16), now indistinguishable from the rest of the walls of the ark, were an impenetrable wall of division. Noah did not seek this division for division’s sake. He sought the salvation of the mocking crowds, year after year. Noah’s hope was not in salvaging the collapsing city, nor was he giddy about its destruction. He did not try to unite with those who made their violence against him and his family plain, nor did he shut the door on day one in self-congratulations.
Use 2. Exhortation. All believers sail through this temporal world in the spiritual ark of Christ’s church. Whether God sustains us to emerge to another temporal shore, or whether His sustaining of us does not include a future here in this land as it is now—that we do not know. However, we do know His promise to sustain us. That is, to keep us.
“I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one” (Jn. 17:15).
“to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Pet. 1:4-5).
The practical question for our lives now is how we spend our time on board. We do not travel as disembodied souls. We are building something. We will emerge on some shore. And whatever we build that lasts is going to come out of this ark.
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1. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1-17, 282.
2. cf. Boice, Genesis, I:354-359
3. Calvin, Commentaries, I:256.
4. Summarized from Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary, 126-27.
5. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1-17, 291.
6. Calvin, Commentaries, I:272.
7. Hughes, Genesis, 136.
8. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary, 140 — Cited verses where the Hebrew term carries this signification are Gen. 9:14-15; 19:29; 30:22; Ex. 2:24; 6:5; 32:13; 1 Sam. 1:19; Judg. 16:28; Job 14:13; Ps. 8:4; 9:12; 74:1-3; 98:3; 105:8; 106:45; 111:5; Jer. 15:15.
