In Chapter 6, God gave Noah a lot of work to do. He told Noah to build an ark, and to gather all the animals and food that he could. At the end of the chapter, it says Noah did all that God commanded him to do.
This brings us to Chapter 7. God tells Noah to get into the ark he has built. He is to take his entire household (his wife, his three sons, and their wives), and a host of animals: seven pairs of every "clean" animal, and one pair of the animals that are not clean.
- Which animals were considered clean? This is the first mention of such distinctions between animals.
Seven pairs of each type of bird were also to be brought onto the boat.
Then God says that in seven days, it's going to start raining, and it will rain for forty days and forty nights. So Noah has one week to get everything loaded into the ark.
It says that Noah was 600 years old when the flood came. Interestingly, Verse 11 gives a very specific date for the beginning of the flood: it was the 600th year of Noah's life, and the 17th day of the second month of the year.
- Why is such a specific date given?
On the very same day, all the humans and animals were in the ark, and it seems that God himself shut the door for them (Verse 16 says "the Lord shut him in").
Next we find out that as the waters rose, the ark floated up, and eventually the waters covered the mountains. Everything that was alive on the earth died.
- What about the fish that were in the seas? I assume they were OK.
The rain continued for 40 days and 40 nights, and when it stopped, the waters stayed high for another 150 days.
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