Lonang Commentary on Genesis 8

Gen. 8:1-5 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. The fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained, and the waters receded from the earth continually. At the end of 150 days the waters had abated, and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. And the waters continued to abate until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen.

Lessons From the Flood

I think perhaps the most significant phrase in these verses are the words, “But God remembered.” Remembered what? Well, He remembered Noah and his family of course, and all of the animals, to preserve them through the flood and enable them to have everything they needed to start fresh. But this isn’t a personal salvation story, for Noah was righteous at least 120 years before the flood, and coming out on the other end of the flood with his life intact did not save him spiritually. Further, we have no indication in scripture that any other members of Noah’s family were found righteous before God. Although we have Noah’s statement in Gen. 9:26 that, “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem,” Shem is nowhere declared to have believed God, or to have had faith, or that God reckoned Shem as righteous.

I suggest the significance of God having remembered is that He remembered He wasn’t done with the human race yet. Or, to rephrase, God remembered his plan for mankind had not yet been completed, and there was much more to do. Back in Gen. 6:6-7, God said He regretted that he had made mankind, and He would blot out man whom He created from the face of the earth. But surely God knew all of this well in advance, even from the very beginning of the creation week. None of this came as a surprise to Him, for He knows all things, past, present and future. So if God knew man would become exceedingly wicked and He would come to regret making man, why did He do it?

I suspect the flood was, in essence, one gigantic object lesson to show all people throughout history who we really are. That we were, and are, completely corrupt from our very inception. That there is no evil in the world that we are incapable of committing. That no one whatsoever is inherently righteous, yet we can draw nearer to God and fellowship with Him if we choose to in conformity with His standards. But the more we reproduce and congregate with our fellow human beings, the more the evil we commit is increased, well beyond our ability to restrain it.

God fitted us perfectly with intellect, a moral awareness of right and wrong, and the ability to reason, so that we could exercise godly self-government to restrain our evil tendencies. However, if left merely to our own devices, without any form of external restraints (that is, earthly law enforcement), we will always fail to restrain our evil natures. And without God’s timely interventions in human affairs, we would inevitably be destroyed, for God would take no pleasure in us whatsoever. There is also a strong implication, as a precursor to the Tower of Babel not much later, that the more humanity as a whole is united, the more it tends only to evil.

So naturally, the inevitable tendency of mankind since the flood, and especially since Babel, has been to overcome language, race, nationality, religion, and all the other things that divide people, in order to reunify humanity in an attempt to overthrow God. Not because – and I can’t emphasize this enough – not because the world rejects the spiritual salvation God offers to us, but because it rejects the restraints God places on us to constrain our evil tendencies. In other words, the world rejects God’s laws – the laws of nature and nature’s God – and that is why the world rebels. The world wants to engage in evil behaviors to their hearts’ content, unconstrained by God.

Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying, “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.” [That is, God’s laws.] He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision. . . . Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him. Ps. 2:1-4;10-12.

Gen. 8:6-14 At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent forth a raven. It went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. Then he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground. But the dove found no place to set her foot, and she returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took her and brought her into the ark with him. He waited another seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark. And the dove came back to him in the evening, and behold, in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. Then he waited another seven days and sent forth the dove, and she did not return to him anymore. In the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried from off the earth. And Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry. In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth had dried out.

The Physical Laws of Nature

So the ark has finally come to rest on the mountains of Ararat (v. 4), and Noah engages in a testing procedure with a raven and a dove to see whether the waters had subsided enough for him to leave the ark. The living quarters in the ark were probably pretty confining, and I’m sure everyone was anxious to leave, including the animals. Apparently, the little window in the ark did not really afford Noah a good line of sight outside the ark for him to observe the water level for himself. But when he became convinced it was safe, he removed the covering of the ark (a little roof, presumably), and at that point he was finally able to look at the water level for himself. I assume all the time measurements are in reference to Noah’s life, so by that reckoning, by the time we get to v. 14, it has been one year and ten days that the flood has lasted.

I do not pretend to know how, meteorologically speaking, God made a wind blow over the earth. I do not know how, scientifically, the fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven were closed, how the rain was restrained, or how the waters subsided. We have already discussed the unlimited power of God to make, destroy, and remake the earth, which is miraculous and supernatural. But that doesn’t mean I think God broke’ or bypassed any natural laws in the way the flood was brought about, the changes it made to the earth, or how the waters were restrained. As far as I’m concerned, the laws of physics and chemistry are the same now as they were in Noah’s time.

For when we speak of the laws of nature, in particular, it includes both physical laws and behavioral laws. Turning again to William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Vol. 1, Intro, §2 (1765):

Law, in its most general and comprehensive sense, signifies a rule of action; and is applied indiscriminately to all kinds of action, whether animate or inanimate, rational or irrational. Thus we say, the laws of motion, of gravitation, of optics, or mechanics, as well as the laws of nature and of nations. . . . Thus when the supreme being formed the universe, and created matter out of nothing, he impressed certain principles upon that matter, from which it can never depart, and without which it would cease to be. . . .

If we farther advance, from mere inactive matter to vegetable and animal life, we shall find them still governed by laws; more numerous indeed, but equally fixed and invariable. The whole progress of plants, from the seed to the root, and from thence to the seed again – the method of animal nutrition, digestion, secretion, and all other branches of vital economy – are not left to chance, or the will of the creature itself, but are performed in a wondrous involuntary manner, and guided by unerring rules laid down by the great creator.

. . . But laws, in their more confined sense . . . denote the rules, not of action in general, but of human action or conduct: that is, the precepts by which man, the noblest of all sublunary beings, a creature endowed with both reason and freewill, is commanded to make use of those faculties in the general regulation of his behavior.

Thus, Blackstone regarded both physical laws and behavioral laws, including the moral laws governing human behavior, as springing from the same source, originating in the same way, and having the same legal characteristics. In other words, all rules of the laws of nature, whether physical or behavioral, were created by God, revealed by God, and mandatorily imposed by God on both the environment and all creatures. Further, all such laws are fixed, uniform and universal, meaning they do not, have not, and cannot be changed since they were first imposed, applying to all people, in all places, and at all times. They are immutable and eternal.

It is not my job as a lawyer to describe how the creation was formed, how the flood came and went, and how the earth changed over time. I know that there are numerous creation scientists working constantly on those problems, and I am thankful for their work. A number of scientists have proposed that during the creation itself, and possibly during and immediately after the flood, God may have sped up certain physical processes in the formation or reformation of the earth. I cannot speak to those matters except in a legal sense, namely, that the nature of God’s character is such that He would not have created an immutable rule, only to later break it. Therefore, if the Lord sped up certain processes, I am confident that the processes themselves followed all of the laws of nature God had laid down in the beginning.

For the Lord is equally the creator of the physical universe and mankind, and equally the great Governor of the physical universe and mankind, and His nature as such will be preserved in all that He does. For the Lord is indeed a God of both Law and Government over all the earth.

Gen. 8:15-19 Then God said to Noah, “Go out from the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons’ wives with you. Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth that they may swarm on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.” So Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him. Every beast, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth, went out by families from the ark.

Leaving The Ark

So at last God instructs Noah and his family to leave the ark, and to bring out all the animals from it as well. Meaning, essentially, that the usefulness of the ark was completed, and no longer needed for anything. God did not want Noah and his kin, or the animals, to hang around and make a permanent home in the ark. The ark was simply a means to an end, to get everyone safely from here to there, so they could all continue to live out there purposes in a new home.

The fact both the people and the animals went out from the ark by family groups presages the method of dispersion from Babel, and shows us something about the purposes of God. For God never designed any of His creatures to live in isolation from all other members of their kind. The Dominion Mandate – sort of a Prime Directive for humanity – was intended from the beginning to be carried out by families. Children were to be born, raised, and educated in their families. Property, occupations and commerce were intended to flow through the family unit. God has dealt with humanity consistently in reinforcing and preserving the family unit. This is God’s design – that the world should be dominated and ruled over by people in their familial capacities.

Not, ultimately, by nations and governments, and no, not by the Church, which didn’t come along until some 4,000 years after creation and was given no dominion authority or powers. But I will defer further comment on this subject.

Gen. 8:20-22 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma, the LORD said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”

God Controls the Environment

If you have ever seen a post-apocalyptic’ movie, imagining what the world would look like after a global catastrophe, it is always a dismal picture. Typically, the landscape is barren, with water, food and other necessary resources being scarce. Technological advancements are thrown back a hundred or a thousand years, and humanity is reduced to a primitive tribal warfare state. Or, in some versions, all of civilized humanity is reduced to a single city under a huge dome, or within a huge wall, and the rest of the earth is untamed, dangerous, and uncivilized.

However, when God destroyed the earth and everyone living on it during the Genesis flood, that was not the experience which greeted Noah and his family upon leaving the ark. In some ways, the earth would have seemed foreign to them. Mountains existed where none were before, and storms were now a regular part of life (remember, there were no storms, or even rain, before the flood). And the animal kingdom had suddenly become more hostile.

Yet the earth itself, and all living things, must have recovered very quickly. Noah and his family did not lack for food, clothing, or shelter. God commanded them to begin eating meat, so the animals must have started reproducing rather quickly, and they did not all simply scatter and leave the people hungry. Ostensibly, the flood would have wiped out or covered over all the plants with sediment, yet undoubtedly the plants started to grow and spread again very quickly after the flood.

With the formation of the mountains also came the formation of desert areas which had not been there before. Still, on the whole, the surface of the earth did not dry up and die, but started to flourish again with the spread of plants, animals and people. Nor did people regress to a barbaric or primitive state, though they most likely started out living in caves until other homes could be built. Once the earth was cleansed, nothing remained to prevent it from becoming revitalized.

All of which illustrates that God is in control of the earth and its environment – not just locally, but globally. “The earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein.” Ps. 24:1. So not only does God own and control the earth, He takes care of it.

God will never let the earth die before He decides to upgrade it to the new earth 2.0. He will never let it be destroyed by any outside force, such as an asteroid collision, a collision with Planet X or Nibiru, a death ray of extra-planetary origin, or be invaded (much less conquered) by an alien race. Nor will He ever let the earth be destroyed by humanity, whether it be by nuclear explosions, land, water or air being polluted beyond recovery, drilling too deep into the earth, or other actions of men requiring people to relocate to another home world.

The Dominion Mandate requires us to exercise stewardship over the earth, but it never gave mankind the job of “saving the planet.” The earth, strictly speaking, does not belong to humanity – it belongs to God who created it. It is therefore God’s responsibility, not man’s, to heal the earth, restore it, protect it, and save it. And that is God’s promise in verse 22: “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” This is, at root, a promise to protect the earth and guarantee, if you will, that the present natural processes affecting the earth will be preserved and never changed.

This promise in Gen. 8:22 calls to mind similar promises in Jeremiah. “Thus says the LORD, who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar the LORD of hosts is his name: If this fixed order departs from before me, declares the LORD, then shall the offspring of Israel cease from being a nation before me forever.'” Jer. 31:35-36. “Thus says the LORD: If you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night, so that day and night will not come at their appointed time, then also my covenant with David my servant may be broken, so that he shall not have a son to reign on his throne, and my covenant with the Levitical priests my ministers.” Jer. 33:20-21.

All of these promises amount to the same thing. By tying them to the very existence of the earth and the natural order, all these promises are expressly made eternal. That is, until God Himself decides to burn up the current creation and replace it with a new heaven and earth. Nothing mankind does can or will disrupt this. People are not in control of the earth – so get used to it.

Stop making contingency plans to deflect a killer asteroid, repel an alien invasion, or relocate to another planet to preserve the species. There is no Federation of Planets waiting to welcome us as members once we have achieved warp drive or FTL (faster than light) technology. All such efforts are foolishness in the extreme, and betray a profound ignorance of the true nature of the universe.