Ge. 8: Quoth the raven, "I don't know where I am."

When we last left Noah, he was saved from the flood, but shut up in the ark. Chapter eight begins with another amazing act of God. So the earth is completely drenched, and the Bible says God sent a wind over the earth and the waters receded. What kind of wind dries 5.5 miles of water? Maybe all the water didn't recede? Maybe now there are oceans as a result of this great wind? It would have been very amazing to witness that.

So...

Deluge - 40 days
Flood - 150 days

7 months, 17 days - ark rests in mountains of Ararat.

10 months - tops of the mountains are visible

11 months, 10 days - the raven is sent out, the dove is sent out and returns

11 months, 17 days - the dove is sent out again, and returns with an olive leaf

11 months, 24 days - the dove is sent out a third time and does not return

1 year, 10 days - Our weary travelers leave the ark...335 days after it stops raining.

I always hear "Mount Ararat." The word says "mountains of Ararat." I keep hearing about how the ark has been found, but its in a disputed zone or something, so we can't go check it out. Whether the ark remains there in those mountains in Turkey probably has no bearing to me on whether or not this story is true. If it's found...fascinating. If not, oh well, it was a billion years ago.

Verse 7 is a little weird. It says Noah sent out the raven, and it went back and forth "until the water dried up from the earth." It doesn't say the raven returned. My guess is it left and didn't come back, and just flew about until it found a place to land? Apparently the mountaintops were visible, but who knows how far they were away. I wonder why it didn't come back, if it didn't?

When Noah sent out the dove for the second time, and it returned with an olive leaf, it strikes me how creation just obeys God, and is used by God for us. To teach us and to instruct us. I will look for that in further readings. God designed for this dove to bring Noah a sign, and the dove did exactly what it was supposed to do.

God has Noah finally walk out of the ark, and all the animals file out, and get moving. I wonder how walruses traveled from the Mediterranean to the arctic circle. Did they trek all those thousands of miles like a pudgy thousand-pound inchworm? Maybe they swam. Swimming makes more sense. I would guess travel was not job one...being fruitful and multiplying and increasing in number was.

So Noah builds an altar, and sacrifices some of the clean animals and birds (as mentioned in chapter seven). The burning flesh was a pleasing aroma to the LORD, and he thought, "I'm never going to curse the ground again or destroy all life." All I know of the smell of burning flesh is the physical. The flesh burns away, leaving....? Quite frankly, it's nasty. Probably not like a barbecue. But the point is probably not the smell of the burning flesh. I'm guessing its a little more obtuse, like how Texans say that the electric chair facilitates the smell of justice. Its the aroma of thankfulness, or of sin being washed away.

God says something that endures today:

"As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease."

These are all things God has created, and something He will never destroy.

Why then should I fear supposed global climate change? God has made His promise.