Genesis
Chapter 8
Then God remembered Noah and all the animals and cattle that were with him in the ark. God caused a wind to blow over the earth, and the waters receded.
Then the fountains of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens were closed, and the downpour from the sky was stopped.
The waters receded from the earth, and after one hundred and fifty days, the waters had lessened.
In the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of that month, the ark came to rest on Mount Ararat.
The waters continued to recede until the tenth month. On the first day of the tenth month, the mountaintops became visible.
At the end of the forty days, Noah opened the window of the ark that he had built
and let the raven out. It flew off and continued to move back and forth until the waters had dried up from the earth.
Then Noah let the dove out to see if the waters were receding from the earth.
But the dove could not find a place to rest and flew back to him in the ark, for the waters still covered the entire surface of the earth. So Noah stretched out his hand, took hold of it, and brought it back to himself in the ark.
He waited a few more days and sent the dove out from the ark again.
This time, the dove returned to him in the evening with a fresh olive branch in its beak. Then Noah knew the waters had receded from the earth.
He waited seven more days and let the dove loose, but it did not return to him anymore.
In the year six hundred one, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the waters dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark, looked out, and saw that the surface of the earth was dry.
On the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the earth was dry.
Then God said to Noah:
“Come out of the ark, you and your wife, your sons, and their wives with you.
Bring out with you all flesh, that is, all the animals that are with you, all things that are of flesh; birds, cattle, and all that crawls on the earth. Let them abound on the earth, be fruitful and increase in number.”
So Noah went out, along with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives.
All the animals, all the birds, and all that crept on the earth came out of the ark, one kind after another.
Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and all the clean birds, offered burnt offerings on it.
The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said to himself:
“Never again will I curse the earth because of man, even though his heart is set on evil from childhood; never again will I strike down every living creature as I have done.
As long as the earth lasts, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease to be.”
Commentaries
The Flood: God, Noah, and his Family.
The punishment targets the descendants of Seth, the brother of Abel, who is supposedly the “good” branch of the human family. This narrative is based on an ancient Mesopotamian myth. The biblical account appears very ancient; scholars trace the current text to the editorial efforts of three of the four primary sources of the Pentateuch: the Yahwist (J), the Elohist (E), and the Priestly (P). The latter provided it with its definitive form and is, therefore, the one whose influence is most strongly felt.
In the dynamics of the first eleven chapters of Genesis, the narration of the flood serves as a self-criticism of Israel, which has failed, “shipwrecked”, in its vocation to the service of justice and life. Israel, too, as a chosen people, allowed itself to be dominated by the hoarding and selfish tendencies of human beings and ultimately ended up sinking into failure. From this perspective, questioning the historical veracity of the flood or the actual existence of Noah and his ark is of no benefit to faith. What matters is the message that the sacred author conveys: the abandonment of justice and commitment to life leads to real catastrophes. Faith must grow at the same pace as our commitment to life and justice.