John Gill Commentary Genesis 8

And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all
the cattle that [was] with him in the ark
Not that God had forgotten Noah, for he does not, and cannot forget his creatures, properly speaking; but this is said after the manner of men, and as it might have seemed to Noah, who having heard nothing of him for five months, and having been perhaps longer in the ark than he expected, might begin to think that he was forgotten of God; but God remembered him, and his covenant with him, and the promise that he had made to him, that he and his family, and all the living creatures in the ark, should be preserved alive during the flood, (Genesis 6:17–19).

And God may be said particularly to remember him, and them, when he began to take measures for removing the waters from the earth, as he did by sending a wind, next mentioned: and thus God's helping his people when in difficulties and in distress, and delivering out of them, is called his remembrance of them; and he not only remembered Noah and his family, who are included in him, but every living creature also, which is expressed; for as the creatures suffered in the flood for the sins of men, so those in the ark were remembered and preserved for the sake of Noah and his family, and the world of men that should spring from them:

and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters
assuaged ;
not a stormy blustering one, that would have endangered the ark, but a gentle, hot, drying one; which stopped the increase of the waters, and made them less, and both drove away the rain, as the north wind does, as this perhaps was ^F18 , and caused the waters to move towards their proper channels and receptacles.

This was the work of God, who has the command of the winds and waters, brings the former out of his storehouses, and restrains the latter at his pleasure; and this wind had this effect to assuage the waters, not from its own nature, but was attended with the mighty power of God to make it effectual, in an extraordinary manner: and it was, as the Targums of Jonathan and Jerusalem call it, "a wind of mercies", or a merciful wind; or a wind of comforts, as Jarchi; for so it was to Noah and his family, and to all the creatures, since it served to dry up the waters of the flood, and caused them to subside.

FOOTNOTES:

• F18: ------------for clouds were fled, Driv'n by a keen north wind, that, blowing dry, Wrinkled the face of Deluge, as decay'd. Milton, B. 11. l. 841

The fountains also of the deep, and the windows of heaven, were stopped. The passages which let out the subterraneous waters in great quantity upon the earth, and the clouds of heaven, which poured down water upon it like spouts, were stopped from sending forth any more, as they had from the first of the flood unto one hundred and fifty days from thence: Jarchi observes, that it is not said that "all" the fountains of the deep, as when they were broken up, (Genesis 7:11) because some of them were left open for the use and benefit of the world; besides, some must be left for the return of the waters.

and the rain from heaven was restrained: which seems to confirm what has been before observed, that after the rain of forty days and nights it ceased not to rain, more or less, though not so vehemently, until the end of an hundred and fifty days, and then it entirely ceased.

And the waters returned from off the earth continually ,
&c.] Or "going and returning" ^F19 ; they went off from the earth, and returned to their proper places appointed for them; some were dried up by the wind, and exhaled by the sun into the air: and others returned to their channels and cavities in the earth, or soaked into it:

and after the end of the hundred and fifty days, the waters were
abated ;
or began to abate, as Jarchi and the Vulgate Latin version; which days are to be reckoned from the beginning of the flood, including the forty days' rain; though Jarchi reckons them from the time of the ceasing of it; so that there were from the beginning of the flood one hundred and ninety days; six months, and ten days of the year of the flood now past; and in this he is followed by Dr. Lightfoot ^F20 : but the former reckoning seems best, and agrees better with what follows.

FOOTNOTES:

• F19: (bwvw Kwlh) , "eundo et redeundo", Pagninus, Montanus.
• F20: Works, vol. 1. p. 6.

And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth
day of the month

That is, five months after the flood began, and when the waters began to decrease; for this is not the seventh month of the flood, but of the year, which, being reckoned from Tisri, or the autumnal equinox, must be the month Nisan, which answers to part of our March, and part of April; and so the Targum of Jonathan explains it, "this is the month Nisan;" but Jarchi makes it to be the month Sivan, which answers to part of May, and part of June, taking it to be the seventh month from Cisleu, when the forty days' rain ceased. He is followed in this by Dr. Lightfoot ^F21; and according to Bishop Usher ^F23 the seventeenth day of the seventh month, on which the ark rested, was Wednesday the sixth of May.

And then it rested upon the mountains of Ararat; that is, on one of them, for Ararat is said to be a long ridge of mountains like the Alps, or the Pyrenean mountains; which, as Sir Walter Raleigh ^F24 thinks, are the same which run through Armenia, Mesopotamia, Assyria and are by Pliny ^F25 called Taurus. But what is now called Ararat, and by the Armenians Messis or Macis, and by the Turks Augri-daugh or Agrida, is a single mountain, and is so high that it overtops all the mountains thereabout; and what makes it seem so very high is that it stands by itself in the form of a sugar loaf, in the middle of one of the greatest plains one can see; it has two tops, one greater, and the smaller is most sharp pointed of the two ^F26.

The Vulgate Latin version renders it the mountains of Armenia; and so Ararat in the Septuagint of (Isaiah 37:38) is rendered Armenia, and in our version also; and it is the more commonly received opinion, that Ararat was a mountain there; and this agrees with the testimonies of various Heathen writers, which are produced by Josephus and Eusebius. Berosus the Chaldean ^F1 says, "it is reported that in Armenia, on a mountain of the Cordyaeans, there is part of a ship, the pitch of which some take off, and carry about with them, and use it as an amulet to avert evils." And Nicholas of Damascus ^F2 relates, that in Minyas in Armenia is an huge mountain called Baris, to which, as the report is, many fled at the flood, and were saved; and that a certain person, carried in an ark or chest, struck upon the top of it, and that the remains of the timber were preserved a long time after; and, adds he, perhaps he may be the same that Moses, the lawgiver of the Jews, writes of. Now this mountain seems plainly to have its name from the ark of Noah, for a boat, or ship, is, with the Egyptians, called Baris. Herodotus ^F3 gives a large account of ships they call by this name; and the boat in which Charon is said to carry the dead bodies over the lake Acherusia, near Memphis, is said by Diodorus Siculus ^F4 to have the same name. Abydenus the Assyrian ^F5 tells us, that "Saturn having foretold to Sisithrus, that there would be a vast quantity of rain on the fifteenth of the month Daesius, he immediately sailed to the Armenians; and that the ship being driven to Armenia, the inhabitants made amulets of the wood of it, which they carried about their necks, as antidotes against diseases." And hence Melo ^F6, who wrote against the Jews, suggests, as if the deluge did not reach Armenia; for he says, "at the deluge a man that had escaped with his sons went from Armenia, being driven out of his possession by those of the country, and passing over the intermediate region, came into the mountainous part of Syria, which was desolate."

And with what Berosus says of a mountain of the Cordyaeans, in Armenia, agree the Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan, and the Syriac and Arabic versions, who all render the words here the mountains of Cardu or Carda.

From the resting of the ark on this day on the mountains of Ararat, Jarchi concludes, and Dr. Lightfoot ^F7 after him, that the ark drew eleven cubits water, which, according to them, thus appears; on the first day of the month Ab, the mountain tops were first seen, and then the waters had fallen fifteen cubits, which they had been sixty days in doing, namely, from the first day of Sivan, and so they had abated the proportion of one cubit in four days: by this account we find, that on the sixteenth day of Sivan they had abated but four cubits, and yet on the next day, the seventeenth, the ark rests on a hill, where the waters yet lay eleven cubits above it.

FOOTNOTES:

• F21: Works. vol. 1. p. 8.
• F23: Annales Vet. Test. p. 4.
• F24: History of the World, B. 1. ch. 7. sect. 13.
• F25: Nat. Hist. l. 5. c. 27.
• F26: Cartwright's Preacher's Travels, p. 32. Tournefort's Voyage to the Levant, vol. 3. p. 177, 183, 186.
• F1: Apud Joseph. Antiqu. l. 1. c. 3. sect. 6.
• F2: Apud ib.
• F3: Euterpe sive, l. 2. c. 96.
• F4: Bibliothec. l. 1. p. 87.
• F5: Apud Euseb. Evangel. Praepar. l. 9. c. 12. p. 414, 415.
• F6: Apud ib. c. 19. p. 420.
• F7: Ut supra, (Works. vol. 1.) p. 8.

And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month ,
&c.] That is, from the seventeenth of the seventh month, to the first of the tenth month, a space of two months and thirteen days, and being summer time, through the heat of the sun, they decreased apace:

in the tenth [month], on the first [day] of the month, were the
tops of the mountains seen ;
not the tenth month of the flood, but of the year; the month Tammuz, as the Targum of Jonathan, and answers to part of June, and part of July; and the first day of this month, according to Bishop Usher ^F8 , was Sunday the nineteenth of July: but according to Jarchi, whom Dr. Lightfoot ^F9 follows, this was the month Ab, which answers to July and August, the tenth from Marchesvan, when the rain began.

FOOTNOTES:

• F8: Ut supra. (Annales Vet. Test. p. 4.)
• F9: Ut supra. (Works, vol 1. p. 6.)