Cheshvan 24, 5785; from sunset November 24, 2024, to sunset November 25, 2024

(The twenty-fourth day of the eighth month)

Noah’s been in the ark for about two weeks now…one of those weeks it’s been raining.  He’s still got over a month to go before it stops.  Let’s check in with him and see what the text says happened after God shut the door.

Now the flood was on the earth forty days.  The waters increased and lifted up the ark, and it rose high above the earth.  The waters prevailed and greatly increased on the earth and the ark moved about on the surface of the waters. – Genesis 7:17-18 (NKJ)

The waters prevailed greatly and increased on the earth.  If you think about it, verse 18 is rather an amazing analogy of the great sinfulness of mankind.  Let’s compare Genesis 7:18 to Genesis 6:5:

Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. – Genesis 6:5 (NKJ)

A few weeks ago, we studied this verse when comparing Noah’s walk with God against the rest of the world.  We saw how the text called out that Noah intentionally caused himself to walk intensively with God and the rest of the world intentionally caused themselves to always, only, continually think evil thoughts.  Today we can make another comparison.

the wickedness of man was great in the earth

the waters prevailed and greatly increased on the earth

The waters of the sea can be seen as a picture of chaos or sin.  The deep, the unknown, the waves of the sea crashing and churning can be a scary place.  In the story of Noah, the waters increasing and greatly prevailing upon the earth are a visual representation of the sinfulness of mankind that greatly increased and prevailed upon the earth.  Sin had totally taken over – making the world a scary place – now the waters have totally taken over.  The evil ones perished in the waters.  Using our analogy, we can see that their own great sinfulness had overtaken them and they perished – drowning in their own sin.

But Noah was righteous in his generation.  He was in the ark floating above the waters of chaos.  The ark was protected by the “kofer” – the pitch – which functioned in a way similar to a “kippur” – an atonement – for sin.[1]

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¹ Refer to our studies on the Hebrew root “kafar” and “Noah’s Yom Kippur?”