Journey through the Book of Genesis with me.  The plan is simple. Read ONE chapter a day. Blog or journal 5* things you learned that you previously didn't know and ask 5* questions about the chapter that you'll ponder all week. Let's go!

** You'll probably learn way more than 5 things and have more than 5 questions about each chapter. That's totally fine. The more the merrier! 

Genesis 8:1-22

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 

Question 1: Why did the raven not come back [but the dove did]? Ravens can eat carrion [decaying flesh of dead animals] and feed off dead animals in water, hence no need to return to the ark; lots to feed off on the surface of the flood. A dove, on the other hand, returns to its point of origin if no land is found.

Question 2: If, as Genesis 4:26 says, “…at that time, people began to call on the name of the Lord”; how is it that the world became so morally bankrupt (“…the intention of man’s hear is evil from his youth” – Genesis 8:21) that only Noah and his family were spared?

Question 3: Noah’s seemingly COSTLY sacrifice pleased God, “..the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma” (God digs a good barbecue!) because it was done with a grateful heart? He’s at no point instructed to offer a sacrifice, implying that he does it out of his own free will, grateful for his life and family’s being spared.

Question 4: When God says in verse 21, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done.” This must be implying that He won’t ever destroy the WHOLE earth through the means of a flood, right? Because the book of Revelation paints a detailed picture of the destruction of the earth.

Question 5: Again, how will Noah and his family deal with all the bodies? Perhaps the ark landed in a part of the world where humans had not yet populated so he wouldn’t have to deal with the sight and stench of corpses? The worldwide flood would clearly have taken the ark far from his point of origin; so Noah and his are starting from scratch in the same respect that Adam and Eve did right after they were banished from Eden.

WHAT I LEARNED

Insight 1: In verse 2, God “makes a wind blow over the earth” to push the waters back till the subside. Similar account plays out in Exodus 14:21 where it says, “Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land.”

Insight 2: Verse 2, “The fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained,” reads like someone turned off a faucet at will. The rains tapered off because God instructed it to, and the fountains of the deep also stopped gushing because they were told to.

Insight 3: “Mountains of Ararat” is a range of mountains somewhere in Modern Turkey; a considerably high point, which then makes coming down a daunting task. Perhaps it was intentionally positioned so that accessibility would be limited and it would be preserved for ages?

Insight 4: Noah didn’t just venture out of the Ark when it seemed the water had receded. God, (who “shut him in” in Genesis 7:17) is the One who determined when it was time for Noah and his family to “Go out from the ark…”

Insight 5: Every animal in existence today descends from the set of animals that walked out from the ark on that day (“…swarm the earth” “…be fruitful and multiply on the earth.”). Was it a risk for Noah to offer as sacrifice some of the “every clean animal and some of every clean bird”? Might there have been a hesitation on his part? After all, he might have been risking extinction of those particular animals considering they were the only ones of their kind left. So, this sacrifice COST Noah.

Insight 5b: Looking back, Lamech (Noah’s dad) must have been a godly man. At the very least, his prophecy over Noah at birth suggests that he understood the redemptive power of God.  Genesis 5:28-29, “When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son and called his name Noah, saying, “Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.”