Genesis 7

Ah, the Flood. The Deluge. Judgment by water. A new beginning for mankind. It is too bad we didn't learn from that lesson, but I suppose that is what we get for being sinful creatures.

So Noah was 600 when the Flood happened, meaning that it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 1656 years since Adam's creation. It is also worth noting that when God first instructed Noah to build the ark we see him being told that he is to take with him his wife, his sons, and their wives. Because we are told in Genesis 5 that Noah was 500 years old when he had his sons (were they triplets, or was that just an approximation?) it means that there was well less than 100 years to build the ark. His sons must have already been grown and married, so maybe 70 years at the most? A project like that certainly would have taken time for one family, and they would have needed to tend to other things at the same time in order to sustain themselves while building it.

I've also always been amused that God's judgment here extended to the animals and birds - but fish and things that live in the sea get off scott free. That wasn't supposed to rhyme, I apologize. Anyways, the Flood being worldwide and quite deep probably accounts for a lot of the land features that modern science claims could only have happened over millions of years. It is too bad that so many scientists and historians discount the Bible out of hand, or they might find much easier ways to explain many of this world's mysteries.

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Genesis 5

This chapter is all genealogy, but unlike some of the later name lists this has two very interesting and unique items:

1) Ages: The account here gives us the age each man was when he fathered the son through which the lineage is traced, and the total age he lived to. Obviously the long lifespans here are noteworthy, but more important to my mind is the number of years from father to son. This gives us the ability to count the years from Adam (whether his age is counted from his creation or from the fall, I don't know) to Noah's birth. That sums to 1056 years, though that might be a year or two off as a total due to months being rounded off each age. Noah himself, as we will find in the next chapters, was quite old when the Flood occurs - but this combined with his age as it will be given is a very cool insight (in my opinion).

2) Enoch: One of two men in the Bible who did not die, or at least that is how I read it. How amazing it must have been - to be so close to God that he would just take you away from all of this trouble! Obviously we don't know the exact circumstance or details of the situation, but I also find it odd that he was taken at such a "young" age (just 365); I wonder what his family thought of that?

This chapter in:
New America Standard, New King James, New International