Genesis 7:1 Commentary and Bible Study

We will not look at the account of the flood to see merely the technicalities of the flood account, but to look at the doctrines of the flood, the purpose of the account: this literal historical event at this very early stage of the earth’s existence. This is some 120 years after the initial intimation from God to Noah that the flood would take place. During that time Noah has been, according to the New Testament, a preacher of righteousness, and has warned that generation of the extreme sinfulness and violence of society, and the anger of God and his judgment , his righteousness indignation, and the opportunity of mercy and forgiveness. They must cry out and repent because the great judgment is coming. And so now, after the long period of God’s patience, the time has at last come.‘And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house.’ Many modern translations say, ‘Go thou’, or, ‘Go’. ‘Come thou’ is turned into ‘go’. That is a plausible translation, but which is better? You may think it is inconsequential, but actually it is quite important, and it is not too rash to say, it depends on how well you know your Bible. If the Bible translator is an excellent translator, and an expert in Hebrew, then, yes, it is open to him to translate it ‘come’ or ‘go’. But if he knows his Bible, there is no doubt he will translate it ‘come into the ark’. You can't say go here, because the ark is a type of Christ and salvation, and the great cry is, come. ‘Come unto me,’ says Christ, ‘all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest’ (Matthew 11:28). Actually, this is the first imperative ‘come’ – if you render it that way – in the Bible, and it begins a whole chain of similar ‘comes’ that run like a cable right through the Bible. The American hymn writer, Philip Bliss, observed when he grew up that the vast majority of the hymns his father used to sing began with the word ‘come’, and if you look at an index of Isaac Watts’ original Hymns, Psalms and Spiritual Songs, you will find that the hymns that begin the word ‘come’ outnumber all other first words in hymns. ‘Come’ is a very great word in the Bible: ‘Come to the waters,’ cries Isaiah in chapter 55 verse 1; the Lord Jesus Christ invites us, ‘Come unto me.’ Genesis 6:18 has ‘But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into to the ark’, and everybody agrees that is ‘come’. Genesis 8:16: ‘Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons’ – well, you cannot go if you have not come. Their coming into the ark was not only a literal, historical event, but it served also as a picture of coming to salvation and to Christ. To go would not fit; it would be works. ‘For thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.’ Noah was a justified, a forgiven man. He was righteous, yes, but it was not his righteousness that got him into the ark, to escape from the flood. His righteousness was the result of his having a walk with God. He had been freely forgiven for all his sin and received by God. So his designation is that he is righteous, that is his status before God. But he was also a personally righteous man, and lived an upright life before God in his generation. He was not like the majority of those people.