God told Noah to build an ark. He gave Noah the dimensions, the floor plans, and the openings. He also told Noah how to make it seaworthy to withstand the deluge that was coming. What exactly was God bringing on the earth?
Here might be another misconception about the Scriptures. I’m sure that you learned just as I did that there was no rain before the flood. Nowhere in the flood account does it say that the deluge was the first time (in more than 1600 to 2200 years) that it had rained. The idea of no rain comes from the creation account in Genesis 2, verses 5 and 6, saying that God had not brought rain on the earth and that a spring watered all the surface. But verse 5 explains that God hadn’t brought rain so that no plants grew in the fields because there was no human to work the ground. After the creation of Adam, there is no reason to believe that rain didn’t exist before the deluge. Everyone in Noah’s time probably knew what rain was. They may have even seen a flood before, just not to the depth of Noah’s warning.
You’ve probably seen plenty of depictions of Noah’s Ark. Have you ever noticed more than two kinds of any animal included? That’s a trick question. Kind of like the joke, “How many of each kind of animal did Moses take on the ark?” Moses didn’t build an ark, Noah did. Jocularity aside, the answer to the question is yes and no. Yes, because many depictions of Noah’s Ark have lions and tigers, but they are both SPECIES from the feline KIND. God told Noah to take male and female from every kind of livestock, creeping thing, wild beast, and bird. He didn’t say to bring a male and a female from every kind of species. That’s a huge difference in the number of animals that were on the ark.
The answer to the question is also no because there is hardly ever a depiction of Noah’s Ark with more than a pair of the different animals. That doesn’t fit the narrative in the text at all. Chapter seven clearly instructs Noah to bring two of every kind of unclean animal and SEVEN pairs of two of every kind of clean animal. Is this a contradiction from chapter six that says the animals are to come two by two? No, because the two by two refers to the animals being male and female, a pair. The clean animals also would come as male and female, two by two. There were just seven pairs of clean animals that were on the ark.
Next, we see that Noah and his family, along with all of the collected animals, entered the ark. And then they had to wait for seven days before the deluge began. That must have been an intense week. I imagine that many people witnessed the parade of animals loading on the ark. They had probably mocked Noah for many years for building the ark, but to watch animals going into the ark would have brought things to a whole new level. Did they mock Noah’s family more for following through with this supposed charade? And what about that last week? Seven days passed before anything happened.
Can you fathom the confidence the people had in thinking that Noah had lost his mind? Noah had locked himself and his family in a structure full of stinking animals. And nothing was happening on the outside? But Noah had faith in God, enough to do everything that God had said. Did Noah spend that week reassuring his family, or did they share in his faith?
Then the deluge began. Genesis 7:11 says, “all the springs of the deeps burst forth, and the waterfalls of the heavens were opened.” That does not describe a sprinkle that turned into rain and then became a storm. It was a cataclysmic event. Techtonic plates shifted, and the ground shook as waters burst from the ground. Pangea turned into seven continents. The water from the sky was like a faucet opened with full force. It was not raining but rightly called a deluge, which is also known as a torrent. When the weather station warns of flash flooding, that would be nothing like what the world experienced on that day. The whole surface of the earth would have become a rushing river. There would have been no refuge in sight.
But Noah and his family rose to safety. Faith had saved them through the grace of God.