Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

“In the six hundred first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from the earth. Noah removed the covering of the ship, and looked. He saw that the surface of the ground was dry. In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry. God spoke to Noah, saying, “Go out of the ship, you, your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives with you. Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh, including birds, livestock, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply on the earth.””
(Genesis 8:13-17)

God is very specific. It started on “the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month” (Genesis 7:11) and ended “In the six hundred first year, in the first month, the first day of the month” (Genesis 8:13). That’s just under a year. In the SECOND month of that year, on the twenty-seventh day, God told them to leave. Noah was in the ark for a year and ten days. That is the total time of the Flood. No matter how you slice up the time periods that God gave throughout the Flood, if you come up with a number greater than 375, you’ve done it wrong (I know I have struggled with it at times).

Noah saw that the ground was dry, but he didn’t leave the ark. He didn’t enter the ark until God told him to. He didn’t leave the ark until God told him to. Noah was obedient to God. Why did God pick Noah in the first place? Because Noah was obedient. We see it here like we saw it in Genesis 6-7. When God told Noah to do something, Noah did it. All of it. No matter how it looked, seemed, or felt. He was an OBEDIENT man. We should all strive to be the same.

None of the animals would be left behind. They would all be driven out of the ark. It wasn’t a permanent shelter. It was not their new nest or den. It was temporary assistance and now was superfluous. They weren’t to hang onto it or hide within it. It was time to leave and repopulate the places of the Earth with all manner of life after their own kinds.

God gave them the same command that He gave when He brought them forth (Genesis 1:22, 25). The Earth was always meant to be full of life, full of variety, and full of productivity.

The sage Chizkuni writes: ‘ויהי באחת ושש מאות שנה בראשון באחד לחודש. It was inthe 601st year (of Noach’s life) on the first day of the first month; even a single day of a new year is referred to as the year just commencing.” (Compare Talmud Rosh Hashanah 10) A different explanation of the significance of this statement: in the 600th year of Noach’s life in the month of Iyar on the 17th of the month the deluge had commenced, and the rain lasted for 40 days and 40 nights, so that the rains ceased by the 28th day of Sivan. According to this interpretation the first month of the year is the month of Nissan. All the other months follow the same patterns according to the solar calendar. Each month is considered as having thirty days.’

The sage Steinsaltz writes: ‘Every living being that is with you from all flesh, of the birds, and of the animals, and of every crawling creature that crawls on the earth, bring out with you. Remove them forcibly, as the animals had become accustomed to life in the ark. Although they were confined there, they had easy access to food. Moreover, some of them may have been in a state of hibernation due to the conditions. It was therefore necessary to compel them to leave. And they will teem [veshartzu ] on the earth, by increasing greatly in number so that they will be found everywhere, like creeping animals [sheratzim], and be fruitful and multiply upon the earth. In this manner the world will be populated afresh.’