The Book of Genesis, Chapter 8

Genesis 8:1-22

Summary

God remembers the folks in the ark, and sets about using a cosmic blow dryer to make the earth habitable again (at least for the humans, I think the fish were disappointed). Noah offers a great many burnt offerings to the Lord, the Lord is pleased and decides never to bother with this kind of thing again.

Commentary

This author, I believe, continues from the last chapter, with a great focus put on the dates involved. "In the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest in the mountains of Ararat" (Gen 8:4), and so on.

This establishes a fascinating timeline. From the start of the rain to the first mountaintops appearing (Ararat), we have about ten months. Incidentally I did a little looking, and a goat eats anywhere between one and four pounds of grain a day. Open up my handy dandy google calculator, using an average of 2, and we have 60-64 pounds of grain a month, times 10 and we have 600-640 pounds of grain consumed over this period.

For one goat. Doubled (or possibly multiplied by thirteen, is a goat a clean animal?), and then apply similar figures to every other similarly sized animal...

I hope this further serves to underscore the unlikelihood that a single ark carried all of the species on the planet and saved them all. Any biblically-literal ark would need to have been constructed by a time-lord (Read: "Bigger on the inside").

From here, there is a nice explanation of how Noah discovers that the water has left the earth. He sends out a dove, which finds nowhere to rest and returns. So he waits seven days—common children's bible misconception: It doesn't say he sends the dove out every day for seven days—, and sends the dove out again, this time it returns with an olive branch, showing Noah that somewhere there was land which had olive trees on it.

I don't know how hardy olive trees are, so I can't suggest whether or not they'd still be around after a world-encompassing flood, but I'm guessing it's unlikely. Not to mention how much would it have sucked if the dove found a floating olive tree and brought back a branch.

Evidently it wouldn't really have mattered much, as God tells Noah when the world is dry that he should come out of the ark, bringing everybody (including the animals) with him. Then Noah builds an altar to God, and sacrifices some of all the clean animals, and God finds the scent pleasing.

Then the Lord thinks to himself, "You know what? I'm never going to bother with this whole flooding the earth bollocks ever again. 'Cause humans just turn to evil in their youth anyway."

I'm not even kidding. There's no grand covenant here. The actual passage reads:

"And when the Lord smelt the pleasing odour, the Lord said in his heart, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done." (Gen 8:21, emphasis mine)

I kind of hope I'm not the only one who's disappointed by this. It's possible the grand covenant with the rainbow happens in the next chapter, but this feels like an added extra punch in the stomach. After all that overreactive flooding, God decides never to do it again because humans are all evil anyway?

The chapter ends with God saying that:

"As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter, day and night,
shall not cease." (Gen 8:22)

Which is nice, really, but just a description of the natural functions of the seasons and the planet. It's reassuring to know that God won't bother to clean house in quite this same way again, though slightly unnerving that God's reaction to the attempt wasn't a little more positive.