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3 The water began to drain off at the end of those 150 days,
וַיַּחְסְר֣וּ הַמַּ֔יִם מִקְצֵ֕ה חֲמִשִּׁ֥ים וּמְאַ֖ת יֽוֹם׃
These, we presume, are the same 150 days we read about in 7:24. That (apparently) is the moment when the waters reached their maximum height above the surface. In “always darkest before the dawn” fashion, that is also (we now read) the moment when the waters began to recede. The text does not specify that these 150 days are “those” 150 days; I’ve translated it that way to make the point.
We’ll talk more about those 150 days when we get to v. 4, later in this post. For now, a new Biblical Hebrew vocabulary word, חסר ḥ‑s‑r ‘lack’. Many of you already know this word — and most of the rest of you know an English phrase that translates it — from the Psalms:
Ps 23:1 The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want [אֶחְסָֽר].
That was the KJV. To quote NJPS for some more modern English:
Ps 23:1 A psalm of David.
The LORD is my shepherd;
I lack nothing.
Note, by the way, that “a psalm of David” is a heading in the King James translation; it’s part of v. 1 in Jewish Bibles. That sort of thing is the reason that many psalms have different numbering in Jewish and Christian Bibles.
I can’t say that Noah was “wanting” or “lacking” water at this stage of the game. It was most certainly “water, water, everywhere, / nor any drop to drink” (except, I suppose, what was falling from the sky). What’s interesting is that it’s the water itself that is the subject of “lacking” in this verse and in v. 5, where we’ll see that the water “lacking” is an ongoing process.
Though they seem very different if we’re thinking about the English translations, both eḥsar in Psalm 23 and va-yaḥs’ru in our verse are Qal verbs. ⇥ See Lesson 15 of my Hebrew course. ⇤ The KJV of Psalm 23 shows us a little better what the verb is really doing. It is not that there’s stuff I need that I don’t have, it is that I myself am not “found wanting.” The green pastures and still waters are providing me with everything I need, but if they weren’t I would somehow be less than I need to be.
Now, after the highwater mark at the end of Genesis 7, the waters begin to get less as well. Don’t ask me where they are going; the Bible doesn’t seem to care about that. The openings above and below have closed in v. 2 to prevent more water from flooding the planet, so it’s not as if something below has opened up to let the water flow down. That aspect of the experiment is not of interest. Somehow or other, the waters have begun to drain.
4 and the box came to rest וַתָּ֤נַח הַתֵּבָה֙
Back in Anno Mundi 1056, when Lemekh #2 was 182 years old, he had a son and named him Noah, because “he will change our attitude [יְנַחֲמֵ֤נוּ] about the grievous way we were made: from the ground.” As we pointed out then, this verb fits the name Menahem [מנחם] much better than it does the name Noah [נֹ֖חַ]. Dad didn’t get the explanation right, but it turns out he picked the perfect name for the child who, in our verse, sees the box that is preserving life on earth once again come to rest [וַתָּ֤נַח] on solid ground. I wish I knew an English verb that would match the name Noah as perfectly as this Hebrew one does. If you come up with one, leave it in the comments.
4 in the 7th month, on the 17th day of the month
בַּחֹ֣דֶשׁ הַשְּׁבִיעִ֔י בְּשִׁבְעָה־עָשָׂ֥ר י֖וֹם לַחֹ֑דֶשׁ
This is the second precise date we’ve seen in the Bible. The first was:
Gen 7:11 the 2nd month, on the 17th day of the month, [when]
All the fountains of Great Deep split apart
and the hatches in the Sky opened up.
The Flood, therefore — as opposed to the flooding, which will continue for some while — lasted for exactlly five months. That’s five months of precisely 30 days each: 5 x 30 = 150. Says Claus Westermann:
The text gives the impression that the ark came to rest on Mt Ararat immediately as the flood waters began to recede. This conforms with the detail in 7:20 that the waters rose fifteen cubits above the highest peak. If the ark, thirty cubits high, drew fifteen cubits of water and was immediately above the highest peak at this moment, then this was possible. It becomes very clear here how contrived are the numbers.
Well, yes. However, “contrived” numbers are only a problem here if we assume this is journalism. Once we understand that this event is not being reported but rather recounted to us, as a story, we realize that the box’s coming to ground is a historical, uh, landmark. (Forgive the pun.) We are meant to understand that, despite the apparent chaos, this was a controlled process, a deliberately planned Flood meant to clear the Earth for the installation of Creation 2.0.
Jubilees 5:27 makes clear that the five months are the 150 days:
27And all of the water stayed upon the surface of the earth five months, one hundred and fifty days.* 28And the ark went and rested on the top of Lubar, one of the mountains of Ararat.
Here’s what James Kugel has tucked into that little asterisk for us:
Jubilees’ author endorsed a calendar in which every month has exactly 30 days; these months are quite independent of the phases of the moon. He had a powerful argument in favor of this calendar: the Flood story, where it says that the rains began to fall “in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month” (Gen. 7:11); then the waters continued to swell on the earth until “the end of one hundred and fifty days . . . in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month” (Gen. 8:3–4). In other words, from the 17th of the second month to the 17th of the seventh month is 150 days. That works fine for Jubilees’ calendar: five 30-day months equal 150 days. But it will not work for any lunar calendar, since five consecutive lunar months can never come out to 150 days; at best they can equal 148. That is why Jubilees gleefully stresses what Genesis does not: “And all of the water stayed upon the surface of the earth five months, one hundred and fifty days.”
We’ll talk more about the dates in the Flood story when we get to the next date, in v. 5. Next time (for those of you are interested in looking for remains) we’ll talk about where Noah’s box came to rest.