Bible Synapse
Did Noah enter the ark seven days before the flood, or on the day it began?
Hard question · Creation, the flood and the patriarchs · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
Noah and his family went into the ark “because of the waters of the flood”, the animals went in two by two, and “after seven days” the flood came.
And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood. Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth, There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah. And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.
On the seventeenth day of the second month the fountains of the deep broke up, and “In the selfsame day” Noah and his family entered the ark.
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark;
The objection
Genesis 7:7–10 seems to put Noah and his family in the ark and then say that the flood came “after seven days”. But 7:11–13 says that they entered the ark “In the selfsame day” that the fountains of the deep broke up. So did they go in a week before the flood, or on the day it started?
The answer
Genesis 7:7–10 does not say that Noah went in seven days before the flood. The seven days are counted from God’s command in 7:1–4: “For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth”. Verses 5–10 then tell in brief how Noah obeyed: he, his family and the animals went into the ark “because of the waters of the flood”, and when the seven days were over the flood came, as God had said. Verses 11–16 go back over the same events in fuller detail and give the exact date: the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, the second month, the seventeenth day. On that day the deep broke open; “In the selfsame day” the eight people and the animals were in the ark, and “the Lord shut him in” (7:16).
So the week was the time of boarding. Bringing in a family, provisions and the animals, which came to Noah “two and two” (7:9, 15), would take days, and the last of it was done on the day the flood began. Keil and Delitzsch read 7:13 as ‘had entered’: by that day the entering, which had taken the seven days, was complete. Hebrew narrative often gives a summary and then returns to tell the same events at length; here the second telling fixes the moment with a precise date.
Other answers Christians give
In on the last day
Some, such as Got Questions, simply date Noah’s entry to the day the rain began, the seventeenth day of the second month. On this reading the week was spent preparing and loading, and 7:7 tells in advance of the family’s final entry.
In at the start of the week
Others, such as Troy Lacey (Answers in Genesis), hold that Noah went in at the start of the seven days, and that 7:13 restates that by the day of the flood everyone was inside.
Two sources
Critical scholars commonly assign 7:7–10 and 7:11–16 to different sources. Keil and Delitzsch answered that the passage reads as one account: a summary, then a fuller and dated telling.
Still open
The text does not say whether Noah’s family slept in the ark through the week or went in only at its end. Christians who agree that there is no contradiction still read it both ways.
From the classic commentators
The idea is not that Noah, with his family and all the animals, entered the ark on the very day on which the rain began, but that on that day he had entered, had completed the entering, which occupied the seven days between the giving of the command (Gen 7:4) and the commencement of the flood (Gen 7:10).Keil & Delitzsch, Commentary on Genesis 7
Sources
- Keil & Delitzsch, Commentary on Genesis 7, at Bible Hub
- John Gill, Exposition of the Bible: Genesis 7 (1746–1763), at Bible Hub