It would have taken Noah and his family years to build the ark. Some have suggested that it took 120 years based on the warning given in Gen 6:3. Noah and his family also had to stock it with food (Gen 6:21). The construction and supplying of the ark was undoubtedly a major component of Noah’s preaching effort. Yet 2Pet 3:5 implies that the antediluvians chose to ignore Noah’s message. It is not that they did not know about it. It seems instead that they decided they did not want to think about it. They preferred to focus their attention on the short-term cares of their lives. They had roofs to fix, fences to mend, meals to make, and hobbies to pursue. It must have been hard for Noah and his family to keep working on the ark under those conditions. But they remained undeterred by the indifference of those around them. The end of Gen 6 succinctly states that Noah did everything that God commanded him (Gen 6:22).
Then God told Noah to move into the ark (Gen 7:1). He warned him that the Flood would commence in seven days (Gen 7:4). And He repeated His command that Noah bring the animals into the ark (Gen 7:2-3). It seems that the animals might have come to Noah at that point and that he and his family spent the week loading them onboard.
2Pet 3, which makes reference to the Flood, states that “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years” (2Pet 3:8), and it is possible that those seven final days before the Flood represent the 7,000 years during which mankind will have an opportunity to embrace God’s offer of salvation. Certainly those seven days would have been the crescendo of Noah’s preaching effort. The appearance of all of those animals would have astounded Noah’s neighbors. (Had people throughout the world seen them making their way to the ark over the previous months?) It would have been a powerful reminder of God’s existence and power. (In that way, it would have been very much like the modern-day miracles surrounding the nation of Israel. They act as evidence that God does what He has said and that the return of Christ is near.) It is evident that Noah and his family came and went from the ark during that seven-day period (Gen 7:13), and it is not hard imaging them pleading with their more thoughtful friends and family members to join them in the ark. Perhaps they even showed a few people around. “See, here is a space for you. And your children can be here. There is lots of room.” Well, that same offer is being made to us now. We are being shown the ark, as it were. And it is imperative that we take the space that has been offered to us because the time is coming when we will no longer have that opportunity. If our response is “maybe later,” we take the huge risk that we may perish before we have the chance to change our mind.
“And the Lord shut him in”
At the end of the seven days, Noah and his family went back into the ark. And God shut the door (Gen 7:16). By doing that, He essentially took Noah and his family out of the world. Their contact with the life they had known before was completely broken.
The same thing is going to happen to us soon when Christ returns. We will be called away to the Judgment. Then our situation will be very similar to the one in which Noah found himself as he waited in the ark. At that point, everything he had done in the world outside of the ark really did not matter anymore. The only things that would have seemed important were the work that he had done in obedience to God. The same thing will soon be true of us. As we await the opportunity to stand before the Lord Jesus, all of our thoughts about school, work, money, success, and how we look will seem incredibly irrelevant. The only thing we will care about then is whether we served our God in the time that we have now.
The Flood began the same day that God shut the door of the ark (Gen 7:11-13). Sometimes people give graphic portrayals of this time. They talk about people banging on the door of the ark and begging for Noah to let them in. If things like that happened, the Bible does not record them. And it is possible that the water came so rapidly that people were washed away before they could have the opportunity to flee to the ark. Videos of the tsunamis in Indonesia and Japan show that the flooding happens incredibly quickly. One minute everyone was going about their business. The next minute they were gone.
The Bible twice states that Noah did everything that God commanded him in building the ark (Gen 6:22; 7:5). Perhaps not having to hear people drown all around him was part of the reward for his faithfulness.
Points of emphasis
But we do not know. The Bible simply states that everyone outside of the ark perished. It does not elaborate. The focus of the text is on other matters. The first part of the account places remarkable emphasis on the animals that were saved in the ark (Gen 6:19, 20; 7:2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 14, 15, 16, 23). God’s power was certainly demonstrated in the miraculous gathering of the animals. And there is probably an important symbolic teaching associated with it as well. There were clean animals brought into the ark, such as doves. (The dove plays a prominent role in a subsequent part of the story in Gen 9.) The dove, of course, is used repeatedly as a symbol of the Jewish people (Hosea 7:11; 11:11). There were also unclean animals brought into the ark. They represent the Gentiles. In fact, God’s command to Peter that he should preach to the Gentiles came in the form of a vision instructing him to eat unclean animals (Acts 11:5–9). By bringing the animals into the ark, God was expressing His intention to preserve a remnant in Israel and to offer the hope of salvation to the Gentiles.
Another interesting feature in the record of the animals being saved is the fact that it repeatedly notes that each animal had exactly one mate: “And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life. And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in” (Gen 6:15-16:see also Gen 6:19, 20; 7:2, 3, 9). It was as if God were showing to the polygamous antediluvians, who were “marrying and giving in marriage,” that His intention was for one man to have exactly one woman and for one woman to have exactly one man. This point is really emphasized in this section of Scripture because it is also repeatedly notes that Noah and each of his sons had exactly one spouse: “In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark” (Gen 7:13). (See also Gen 6:18; 7:7.) Although polygamy per se is normally not a problem in our time, having multiple partners is becoming increasingly common because of marriage, divorce, and remarriage and also premarital sex. These are all departures from the ideal that God portrays in this section of Scripture.
The second point of emphasis in the account is how the water completely covered the land. Verses 18-20 and 24 of Gen 7 all describe the waters as “prevailing” over the earth. That meant that all of the houses and buildings the antediluvians had constructed would have been completely submerged and ruined. All of their wealth and markers of success would have vanished. Everything they had worked to achieve would have been lost, along with their lives.
Noah would have had to have dramatically scaled back his investment in the things of this life to build and supply the ark. That work would have commanded his energy and material resources. He would have been hard pressed to find time to add rooms to his house or increase his livestock holdings. His leisure time would have been minimal. He probably “fell behind” his neighbors in terms of worldly achievements and status because his focus would have been elsewhere. But when he emerged from the ark and all of those people and all of their works were gone, he would have seen just how right his choice to serve God was.
Forty days and forty nights of rain, earthquakes, and waves covering the highest mountains would have dramatically transformed the world that Noah had known. Thinking about what he would have seen when he stepped out of the ark can be a powerful motivator for us because it is a foreshadowing of what we will see on the other side of Christ’s return. It should encourage us to spend our efforts on the things of God that will endure to that time and not to waste our lives focusing on things that will not last. We will consider other points of emphasis in the Bible’s record of Noah’s departure from the ark — and the lessons that can be learned from them — in the next article in this series.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One