Genesis 8:1-4 Did G-d Forget? and What's is Wind?

And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that [was] with him in the ark:

Some people will try anything in an attempt to discredit G-d and his Word. This verse is a great example of how desperate some people are. They actually try to skew this verse to say, "If G-d knows everything, how can he forget about Noah?"

Once again, if we go to the Hebrew, we find that the word, translated as "remembered" is the Hebrew word, "zakar", means "to remember". However, just as in the English language, there is a "remember" that means "to recall something you have forgotten". There is also a "remember" that is used to ensure the reader that the person doing the action is now going to return to something that was temporarily put aside.

A good example of this is putting away the dining room centerpiece during dinner or cleaning the table in order to protect it. Then returning it after you are done. You didn't forget about it. You just put it aside for a little bit.

G-d did exactly that. He put Noach, his family and all the animals safely away, and got down to business. Now that his judgement has passed, he will now turn back to them.

"and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged;"

Here, we have something happening for the first time in the history of the earth and all mankind. Wind is blowing across the surface of the earth. As mentioned in an earlier blog entry, the earths surface and atmospheric temperatures originally was even across the board. So even, that there weren't any atmospheric pressure change that causes wind to occur.

Now, with the protective firmament gone, the earth will now get the full brunt of the suns rays and thus begins the atmospheric changes we know today. This is also the beginning of the hydrological cycle. Instead of water leaching up through the ground to water everything, there will be rain. This the reason behind the rainbow sign that God set in the sky as a reminder of his promise, but I'm getting ahead of myself. We'll get to more of that in chapter nine.

"The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained; And the waters returned from off the earth continually:."

This verse also reaffirms our interpretation from a couple blogs ago. If you remember, G-d caused the earth surface above the firmament underground to rupture, allowing the water to spew upward into the firmament above the earth and so it began to rain from over saturation. Here those fountains slowed to a stop and it stopped raining. Also, as in all floods, the water finds it way to lower elevations.

"and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated. And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat."

After an additional 150 days, the water had drained away from the higher elevations it caused, enough to allow the ark to come to rest on what is now the mountains of Ararat. This leads us to a good question. Could the mountains of Ararat have rose up at the same time the waters drained away? The earth after the flood was dramatically different from the earth before the flood. It'll be one of those questions we ask the Lord at a later date.

Shabbat Shalom