A Daily Genesis

Genesis 8:1-5

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[B][COLOR=#ff0000]†.[/COLOR] Gen 8:1a . . God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the ark,[/B]

Does that mean God forgot all about the ark's passengers until He realized why there was a string tied around His finger? (chuckle) No; it reaffirms that they were always on God's mind. He isn't forgetful. But what about Noah's sisters and brothers, and/or his aunts and uncles? Did God think of them too? No. Noah's kin, except those aboard the ark; were all wiped out in the Flood. He and Mrs[B].[/B] Noah may have had other children too; and grand children. If so, then those also perished: and their family pets too right along with them.

Out ahead, at the final judgment, many of us are going to have to watch as our own kin are condemned to eternal suffering; and thrown alive, wild eyed, shrieking, yelping, bellowing, and bawling like little children into the impoundment of flaming sulfur depicted at Rev 20:11-15 and Rev 21:8. We might even be called up as witnesses to testify in the prosecution's case against them. That will be an awful ordeal.

[B][COLOR=#ff0000]†.[/COLOR] Gen 8:1b-3a . . and God caused a wind to blow across the earth, and the waters subsided. The fountains of the deep and the floodgates of the sky were stopped up, and the rain from the sky was held back; the waters then receded steadily from the earth.[/B]

The Old Testament Hebrew word that the editors of the NIV translated "receded" is [I]shuwb[/I] (shoob) an ambiguous word that can mean draw back, return to the beginning, or simply diminish. The very same word is used in the NIV's translation of Gen 3:19 thusly:

"By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return."

In that example; shuwb indicates that Adam went right back where he came from; viz[B]:[/B] the dust.

According to Gen 7:11 the waters of the Flood came from the springs of the great deep and from heaven. So then, I take shuwb to mean that the waters went right back to heaven and the great deep as the Flood dried up so that the waters didn't drain off, they were pulled off; which is a good thing because had the waters drained off, they would have caused quite a bit of erosion; but actually, there was nowhere for them to drain; they had to be removed.

Gen 8:1-3 strongly suggests that the Flood's waters were removed by the process of evaporation. But there's just no way that much water got absorbed by the earth's atmosphere or it would still be here. No, I'm convinced those waters were pulled back out into space from whence they came in the first place.

How were they pulled back out in space? Well; if I could explain how God got the Flood's waters off the planet with wind power; then I would be able to explain how Christ levitated off the ground in Acts 1:9. People think walking on water is amazing? Try walking on air.

[B][COLOR=#ff0000]†.[/COLOR] Gen 8:3b . . At the end of one hundred and fifty days the waters diminished, so that in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.[/B]

The precise topographic location, where the ark went aground, was not really up on a specific mountain by the name of Ararat nor up on any other mountain for that matter. The Hebrew word for "mountains" in Gen 8:4 is [I]haareey[/I] which is the plural of [I]har[/I] (har). It doesn't always mean a prominent land mass like Everest or McKinley; especially when it's plural. Har can also mean a range of hills or highlands; like the region of Israel where Miriam's cousin Elizabeth lived.

"At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah's home and greeted Elizabeth." (Luke 1:39-40)

In California, where I lived as a kid, the local elevation 35 miles east of San Diego, in the town of Alpine, was about 2,000 feet above sea level. There were plenty of meadows with pasture and good soil. In fact much of it was very good ranchland and quite a few people in that area raised horses and cows.

We ourselves kept about five hundred chickens, and a few goats and calves. We lived in the mountains of San Diego; but we didn't live up on top of one of its mountains like Viejas, Lyon's , or Cuyamaca.

Another inhabited region in the continental U.S. that's elevated is the area of Denver Colorado; which is located on the western edge of the Great Plains near the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. Denver is a whole mile above sea level-- 5,280 feet. However, Denver, even though so high above sea level, isn't located on the tippy top of a mountain, nor even on the side of one; it's just located up on high ground.

The ark contained the only surviving souls of man and animal on the entire planet. Does it really make good sense to strand them up on a mountain peak where they might risk death and injury descending it?

When my wife and I visited the San Diego zoo together back in the early 1980's, we noticed that the Giraffes' area had no fence around it. The tour guide told us the Giraffes' enclosure doesn't need a fence because their area is up on a plateau 3 feet high. The Giraffes don't try to escape because they're afraid of heights.

There's just no way Giraffes could've climbed down off of Turkey's Mount Ararat. It's way too steep and rugged. Those poor timid creatures would've been stranded up there and died; and so would hippos, elephants, and flightless birds like penguins.

The Hebrew word for "Ararat" is from [I]'Ararat [/I](ar-aw-rat') which appears three more times in the Bible: one at 2Kgs 19:36-37, one at Isa 37:36-38, and one at Jer 51:27. Ararat is always the country of Armenia: never a specific mountain by the same name.

[B][COLOR=#ff0000]†.[/COLOR] Gen 8:5 . .The waters went on diminishing until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first of the month, the tops of the mountains became visible.[/B]

Gravity assists rain to fall. But to get the Flood's waters off the planet required overcoming gravity enough to get it up off the planet.

The mechanical nature of that wind would be an interesting study. Was it a global hurricane, or was it more like a global tornado, or a combination of both[B]:[/B] one for evaporation, and one for sucking it all out into the void? Well, whatever; it must have howled and roared like the sound of a thousand World Trade Centers collapsing at once.

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