Genesis Chapter 7

In this post:  I cover the genocide of every human on the planet except for seven people, I try to figure out how to stuff millions of animals on a boat smaller than any NFL stadium, we see a few examples of God’s senility, and we look at God’s confusion about how many animals to put on the Ark

Genesis Chapter 7

Remember at the end of chapter 6 when God told Noah that he would establish a covenant with him and that he should build an Ark then take his family and two of every animal and bird and put them into the Ark?

Well, chapter 7 starts off the same way by God telling Noah, again, to put his family in the Ark, only this time in a much more poetic way.(Gen 7:1)  Maybe God forgot that he had already told Noah this. God has been around for infinity, so he could be showing signs of senility.

Most  Biblical scholars say that the reason it seems to repeat itself a lot is that Genesis had more than one author, and early manuscripts combined all of the different accounts into the book we would come to know as Genesis.  I know what you’re saying:  It’s much easier to just believe that God forgot and is repeating himself.  I agree, because the only sensible reason for the confusion that follows would be divine senility.

Chapter 7 continues with God telling Noah that not only should he put his family on the big boat but the following as well:

2 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.

3 Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.

Now some people might say that this completely contradicts the previous chapter when God told Noah to take two of “every” animal, whereas here God says to take seven of some and two of others.  These people clearly know nothing about Divine Senility, or they would understand that this is divinely inspired confusion and not a contradiction.  What other explanation could there be?

So, God goes on to tell Noah that he has seven days to get the boat loaded, because after that God plans to make it rain for 40 days and 40 nights and thereby destroying “every living substance…from off the face of the Earth.” (Gen 7:4) Unless, of course, he forgets.

And Noah says ok, again.(Gen 7:5)  It would seem that Noah is familiar with God’s senility  because he doesn’t ask for clarification on the whole numbers thing.

We get a date for the flood from Gen 7:6 when it says that Noah is 600 years old when the flood started.  If you’re keeping track that puts the flood at  1656 AC or 2348 BC.

Where did I get the BC?  Well, a long time ago an Irish Bishop named Ussher meticulously went through the Bible and available historical records, and came up with the evening of Sunday, October 23, 4004 BC as the date creation was finished.  While challenged in many different arenas this date is the most widely accepted of the creation dates proposed, largely due to it’s inclusion in King James Bibles and Scoffield Reference Bibles.  Naturally, since it is the most relied on date it’s the one I use.

To put the date for The Flood in a historical context here are a few events to consider:

• 5400 BC:  Almost 1400 years before the Earth is created, Eridu, the World’s first city, is built in Mesopotamia, near present day Abu Shahrein, Iraq.  No signs of the Flood some 2,100 years later have been found on that site, but of course that doesn’t discount its having happened.
• 3800 BC Sumerian city of Ur founded.  Strangely enough this city survived the Flood with no apparent damage or interruption of daily life.  However, is was conquered by Sargon the Great  8 years after the flood, completely intact, people and all.  It would seem that Sargon and his empire survived the flood.
• 2490 BC the last of the three pyramids at Giza is completed.  The is no sign of any flood at this location either.
• 2500 BC Great Sphinx of Giza built.  Again no sign of flood damage.
• 2375-2345 Unas is ruler of Egypt.  Oddly enough, Like Sargon to the east, he and his entire kingdom survived the flood unscathed, and there is no mention from this time period of the flood which covered the rest of the planet to a depth of 29,000 or so feet for a year.

Anyway on with our story.

The obedient Noah puts his family into the boat (Gen 7:7), and then puts two of each animal on the boat “as God had commanded Noah.”(Gen 7:8-9)  It seems that Noah made a command decision and went with the earlier amount for how many animals to load.  God didn’t correct him, so he must have forgotten all about the whole seven-of-some and two-of-others thing.

So at this point in the story we have 7 adult human beings, at least 2 million insects (2 of each known species), around 20 million other land animals (2 of each),  and 20,000 birds (2 of each), on Noah’s boat, which has three decks each of which is 33,750 square feet.

So we have a boat with a total floor space of 101,250 square feet housing at least 20 million animals, 2 million insects, 20,000 birds, (Remember, God said two (or seven) of “every” animal, and we know that every animal alive now or in the past was created in one day back in 4004 BC 1400 years after the Mesopotamian city of Eridu was built.) and 7 humans, plus enough food to last all the inhabitants for just over a year.  And this doesn’t even count the 250,000 or so species of extinct animals that we have fossils of which includes 1,047 dinosaurs some of which were as large as 120 feet long and weighed more than 100 tons.  Creationists will tell you that these animals were on the Ark too.

Fun fact:  The San Diego Zoo houses around 3,700 animals and employs 6,000 people.  The 3,700 animals at the San Diego Zoo produce about 2.5-3 tons of manure every day.  If we put this in terms of the number of animals on the Ark we get at least 6,757 tons or 13.5 million pounds of manure every day that Noah and his family had to scoop up and throw out an 18” square hole on the roof of the boat.  The amount of ammonia and methane in the air would have probably killed everything on the boat since the only ventilation was the little hole in the roof.

Another fun fact:  If each animal on the Ark took up only a 3”x 3” space (just a little bigger than a dollar bill folded in half) they would have taken up 625,000 square feet or just over six Arks. But we all know that there was only one Ark, so each animal only had about a 1½ inch square space (about the size of a silver dollar). And this isn’t counting insects, birds, dinosaurs, mammoths, food, or humans.  Animals were obviously quite teeny back in Noah’s day.  How they have gotten so big since then, and why fossils and skeletons of these animals are so much larger are things which aren’t explained in the Bible.

Of course, to get really picky, it is estimated that of all the species that ever lived only about 10% are alive today or are known about from fossils, and since God said two of “every” animal, and creationists say that the only mass extinction event ever was the flood then all 90,000,000 of those animals were on the boat also, so each animal and human would have had a square with sides as long as the thickness of 4 sheets of notebook paper, but I think things are getting a bit silly now.

Now some doubting Thomases will try to deny God’s great feat of shrinking all the animals to fit on the boat by saying that Noah took baby animals, and only took two of every “kind”, or family, of animal, and that these animals bred afterwards to give up the diversity we see today.  Aside from this idea being stupid and not grounded in any way by science or the Bible, there is the issue of what the Bible actually says.  These heathen unbelievers obviously haven’t read Genesis 7:2 where it says: “Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens (pay no attention to this number, Noah doesn’t), the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female”; or Genesis 7:15 where it says:  “And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life”.

If people are going to try to say a story is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, they shouldn’t try to rewrite that story,  ignore parts of it, and make up ‘facts’ to fit their beliefs.  They should just believe the story or not.  Just my opinion.

On a personal note, I had a toy Noah’s ark when I was a kid and I could never get all of the two dozen or so animals to fit into it, but then again I wasn’t a 600 year old Bronze Age shipwright either.  When I told my father as a child that the animals wouldn’t fit, I got disciplined.  When I told him again as an adult, he ignored me.  My how times change.

Enough fun, back to Genocide.

So, after seven days the flood starts. (Gen 7:10) God didn’t forget about this, after all, killing every man, woman, child, and newborn infant on the planet, except for Noah and his crew, was important to him.

We are told again (in case we forgot while reading) that Noah was 600 when the flood started, and that it was the 17^th of February (Gen 7:11) and, we are told that it rained continuously for the next 40 days. (Gen 7:12)

Genesis 7:13-17 tells us that Noah and his family as well as the animals went into the Ark and that it rained for the next 40 days.  Obviously the author forgot that he just told us that.  Senility is starting to run rampant.

In 7:18-20 things get a little confusing concerning how deep the water got.  First, in 7:19 it says that “…all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.”  Since we now know about Mt. Everest, we know that this means the water had to be at least 29,036 feet deep.  But then in 7:20 it says that the water was 15 cubits deep which comes to 22.5 feet.  But, maybe it meant 15 cubits a day, although it doesn’t say that, and it would still only be 900 feet.  Of course it could have meant an hour, though it doesn’t say this, which would get us to  21,600 which is closer.  Either way, contradiction aside, 22.5 feet or 29,036 ft of water over the whole planet is a lot of water.

In 7:21 we are told that everything died.  Babies and puppies included.

In 7:22 we are told that everything died.

In 7:23 we are told, you guessed it, that everything died.  But, this time we are reminded about the boat and its passengers, and it tells us that they lived.

Why we are told three times in three different ways that everything died is unclear.  What is certain is that it couldn’t have been due to the combining of three different stories from three different authors, and, that everything died.

Chapter seven ends with the author telling us (once) that the water stuck around for 150 days. (Gen 7:24)

So, there you have it;  God’s first Genocide, if you don’t count the de-creation after chapter one.

As we continue through the rest of the Bible you will come to understand that genocide is something that God is a big fan of.

See you next time, when we learn about how the flood ended, and that Noah is something of a drunk.  Then we learn about Noah’s bloodline to Abraham, and about the Tower of Babel.

Note:  I had intended to combine this chapter with chapter 8 into one post, but it was starting to get rather long and chapter 8 has a few things to point out, so I didn’t.  I will combine two or more chapters as it is prudent, so don’t worry, not every single chapter of every book will get its own post, and we will start gliding though the Bible at a quicker pace very soon. Thanks for Reading,  Ron