Seven + Forty (Gen 7:4)

The Flood

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⁴ For in seven more days כִּי֩ לְיָמִ֨ים ע֜וֹד שִׁבְעָ֗ה

God’s long speech in 6:13–21 telling Noah to build a box to ride out the Flood in, fill it with food, and get a mating pair of every species of animal on earth into it (along with his own family) is followed by the simplest of conclusions:

^{Gen 6:22} Noah did it. Everything God had commanded him — that is what he did.

When YHWH speaks at the beginning of chapter 7, it seems that what “Noah did” in that verse at the end of chapter 6 was to make all the preparations except to round up the living creatures. Now the clock has started ticking and the animals have to get a move on. Seven days from now, everyone had better be on board. (Enki told Atrahasis the same thing.)

Why seven? The stupid answer is that “seven days” is the biblical equivalent of “five business days” in the contemporary world — a reasonable chunk of time that gives me some leeway in getting to work on the problem and doesn’t present you with an interminable wait. Surprisingly to those of us who remember the seven days in Version 1 of creation, this is the first time in the Bible that the words “seven days” appear.

Genesis 1 presents us with six individual days, and Genesis 2 offers us a seventh day without, somehow, grouping them all into a week. Now Noah’s got a week to round up the creatures and get them into the box: the first meaningful “week” since the creation of the world. I think it would be going overboard (no pun intended) to say that our author wanted to start Earth 1.0 with seven days and end it with seven days — but perhaps you disagree with me.

One thing I can guarantee: Noah will not be resting on any of these seven days. Getting all the passengers onto this floating animal fair will not merely be like herding cats, it will actually involve herding cats. Good luck, pal.

Nahum Sarna writes: