Preview and Intro “I don’t know if we’re supposed to be like God, because we haven’t read a verse that’s told us that. What we do know is that God repays violence with incredible violence. I don’t know if you think that causing a worldwide flood is violence, but I think it would fall under that category.

Welcome back to Joel Reads Bible. I’m Joel. I read Bible. I’m reading it from the beginning to the very bitter end, and we’re on chapter 7 of Genesis. We’re learning about Noah. It’s exciting so far because God’s grieved with everyone and he’s ready to kill them, and so he’s like, ‘Noah, build this ark, please. Get your family and two of all the animals and let’s go. I gotta kill everything else.’”

Verse 1 “Genesis 7: The Lord then said to Noah, ‘Go into the ark, you and your family, because I have found you righteous in this generation.’”

Verse 2 “’Take with you seven of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate,’”

Verse 3 “’and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the Earth.’

We know that God loves the number seven; that’s not a problem. But just a few verses earlier in chapter 6—you’ll remember from the last episode—’You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. Two of every kind of bird and every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground.’ Now all of a sudden: ‘Take with you seven of every kind of clean animal, male and female.’ Only two of every kind of unclean animal, and then seven of every kind of bird, male and female—which to me sounds like 14.

Which one is it? Like, which one would have literally been on the ark? Would there have been 14 cows, 14 peacocks, or would there be two? I think this is what people run up against when they’re talking about a literal, infallible word of God. This is a blatant contradiction, and for some reason, no one’s ever mentioned it to me before that Noah’s ark may have had seven males and seven females of every kind of animal except for the unclean ones. I’m just going to choose to believe that it is true that there were 14 and two. I mean, there were two at least until there were 14, so I mean, maybe both can be true if you really massage the numbers.

‘Every kind of clean animal.’ There are dirty animals. Keep in mind, I don’t know where this story is going. Dirty animals? Have you heard of such a thing? Maybe later in the Bible they’ll tell us which animals are dirty. Why bring the unclean ones? What was the value of that? Like, we’re not eating pigs, right? They’re unclean. Why do we need pigs? To find the truffles? Why are we bothering with this? Just to take up more room on the ark? Just to have something dirty to clean up after? If you think about it, it’s a bit of a weird one.”

Verse 4 “’Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for 40 days and 40 nights, and I will wipe from the face of the Earth every living creature I have made.’

He’s so mad! He’s just like, so angry. He’s just like, ‘I—listen, seven days from now, I’m killing everyone. I am—I’m going to do it.’”

Verse 5 “And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him.”

Verse 6 “Noah was 600 years old—that’s a lot of work for a guy that age—when the floodwaters came on the earth.”

Verse 7 “And Noah and his sons and his wife and the sons’ wives…

You know, this is like the equivalent of nowadays when people go, ‘Let’s call the lawyer and we’ll talk to him or her.’ It could be her! ‘Noah was there and his sons and his wife and his son’s wives.’ Women are an afterthought. I mean, they kind of are; they were made out of a rib. ‘Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood.’”

Verse 8 “Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and all creatures that move along the ground, male and female,”

Verse 9 “came to Noah—they just showed up!—and entered the ark as God had commanded Noah.

So they’re listening to God’s commands to Noah? They’re like, ‘What? God commanded Noah for us to go there? Let’s go!’ That’s a miracle. That’s a miracle that that would have happened. That’s not a normal—none of this is normal—but that’s outrageous. Also, keep in mind we’ve repeated the ‘two of every kind’ thing. This is like the third time we’re hearing this. It’s repetition. It’s important. We must be aware that that’s how we’ve maintained all these animals, I suppose. And I just want you to remember: important things are repeated in the Bible, okay? So we should be able to find things more than once that are really important.

So like, for instance, let’s say the Bible were to say ‘don’t molest children’ or something like that, and I’m sure it’s in there somewhere. It’s got to be in there like 20 times, right? Because it would be something that would be, I would think, really, really important to note as far as like what you don’t want mankind to do. Because if we’re mentioning these animals like three times at this point, I would say that the important sort of stuff has got to be in there a lot of times, too.”

Verse 10 “And after seven days the floodwaters came on the earth.”

Verse 11 “In the 600th year of Noah’s life—we already know—on the seventeenth day of the second month, on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.”

Verse 12 “And the rain fell on the earth 40 days and 40 nights.

Just bedlam. I mean, it was wet.”

Verse 13 “On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons—this is so important, we keep on having to mention it—entered the ark.”

Verse 14 “They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings.”

Verse 15 “Fourth time: Pairs of all creatures that have breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark.”

Verse 16 “The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. Then the Lord shut him in.

So the Lord shut the door? That’s nice. ‘Can you get that door, God? It’s huge.’”

Verse 17 “For 40 days the flood kept coming on the earth—kept coming and coming and coming, it doesn’t say that—for 40 days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth.”

Verse 18 “The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water.

That’s how boats work. They float.”

Verse 19 “They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered—even Mount Ararat.”

Verse 20 “The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than 20 feet.

It’s a lot of water.”

Verse 21 “Every living thing that moved on the earth perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind.

Dead. They were violent. What do we repay violence with? Well, you… I don’t know if we’re supposed to be like God, because we haven’t read a verse that’s told us that, but what we do know is that God repays violence with incredible violence. I don’t know if you think that causing a worldwide flood is violence, but I think it would fall under that category.”

Verse 22 “Everything on dry land that has breath of life in its nostrils died.”

Verse 23 “Every living thing on the face of the Earth was wiped out—men and animals and the creatures that move along the ground—centipedes, for instance, and earwigs.

I wish they never came back! Why did—why did Noah put those in the boat? All these gross… but I think they probably are part of like nature in some sort of positive way or whatever. And the birds of the air were wiped off the Earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him on the ark.”

Verse 24 “The waters flooded the Earth for 150 days.

For 150 days? I never really think about that. I always go 40 days and 40 nights; that’s what you learn, and you think that after those 40 days and 40 nights, the flood’s done. No. 150 days.”

Closing Thoughts “They’re just hanging out in a boat. Tons of food, tons of animals, maybe an extra animal to eat. But all the people, and their babies, and the unborn babies, and the animals that didn’t do anything… all the trees—I mean, you’ve seen swamp trees—all the trees are ruined. The whole world is completely annihilated, and that’s God repaying evil with good, maybe? Or it’s God just being like, ‘You think you’re violent? You think you can be violent? Check this out.’

Anyway, God bless the reading of His word, and we’ll be back next time with chapter 8. How does Noah get out of this fix? Please subscribe and comment any snarky or positive remarks. Or maybe, look, maybe I’ve said some stupid things. Maybe you’re a Christian or you know this Bible better than I do, because I’m just reading it as if it’s for the first time. And by the way, I’m only on chapter 7. Who knows, maybe by 1st Samuel 25 we’ll have figured out that God was actually really, really kind in this flood situation. Okay, maybe not kind—but does God have to be kind? No, he has to be good. And sometimes being good isn’t kind. I don’t even know if he is good, by the way. It has not said here, ‘God sees things and thinks they’re good.’ It has not said that God is good, okay? There’s no indication for me right now to think that God is good. And we do not know that God is loving. It has not been said. We’ll see if that even happens, guys. Thanks for watching again, please subscribe, and we will see you next time.”