Thursday, April 22, 2010

Genesis 7 - "Rain, rain on my face. Hasn't Stopped Raining For Days."

Genesis 7

The post title is taken from one of Jars of Clay's best songs, "Flood."



Flood – Jars of Clay Music Code

What it literally says:  God tells Noah three more things:  1.) to take seven pairs of clean and unclean animals; 2.) to take seven pairs of every kind of bird; and 3.) that Noah has seven days until the rain starts (2-4).

God said the rain will continue for forty days and forty nights (4), and it did so.  Everything on the earth perished (21-23) as the waters rose and rose far above the mountains (20).  But Noah and his family were safe (13).

The flood waters stayed covering the Earth for 150 days (24).



What it says to me:  We now get to experience the flood and hear of it's devastating consequences.  Two things stood out to me:

The first is Noah's age.  We've already discussed the lengthy mortality rates of our pre-Flood ancestors, but Noah was 600 years young when the Flood happened.  This again makes me wonder about how fit or unfit we were back then at older ages; at what age were people considered "elderly?"

The second is how yesterday's scientific conclusions, to me, were proven in regards to life surviving outside of the ark (and reading the article also addresses the clean/unclean/bird numbers in verses 2 and 3).  Consider these verses:
Every living thing that moved on the earth perished--birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind.  Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died.  Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; men and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds of the air were wiped from the earth. 21-23 (Emphasis mine)
The Bible (at least my NIV) says pretty clearly which creatures died: those on land!  It makes sense on many, many levels!  I love the mention of "nostrils."  That clearly means air breathing animals, not oxygen separating, gilled sea creatures (plus, it's used in a sentence that begins with "Everything on dry land.").  Also, God never told Noah to make an aquarium in the ark so why would he have to worry about sea life?  The whole planet was going to be an aquarium!  Of course, I'm sure a lot of sea life still died somehow.

Further proof in my eyes that the ark is highly plausible.  And paired with the dramatic fall in average age?  It's pretty hard to deny.

Many thanks go to Arnold C. Mendez!  You rock, man!

No comments:

Post a Comment