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Quick Summary:

God does not forget his promise to Noah, keeps him safe.  As the waters recede the ark comes to rest on the mountains of Ararat.  It takes months and months for the water to recede enough for dry land to show, and then for it to be dry enough to leave the ark.

Finally the Lord tells Noah to come out of the ark, a full year and 10 days after the rains began.  God says to bring out all the animals so they will spread and out multiply on the earth.  Noah builds an altar and makes a sacrifice of some of the clean animals, and the Lord then promises he will never strike down every living thing again.

Commentary:

I love thinking about how the waters would recede, considering that the entire Earth was covered.  What you can imagine is up to you, but the Bible talks about a wind passing over the earth, and the sources of water (above and below) being closed off.  So perhaps the atmosphere was completely emptied of moisture during the 40 days, and then evaporation started to rebuild the water in the atmosphere.  Also, we’re unaware how many new deep wells, ocean depths, etc. were opened up during the flood to which the waters could now flow and congregate.

In any case, it was a catastrophic event unlike anything before or since.  I’m sure the Earth changed on it’s face.  Likely the bodies of water grew significantly on the surface, and the movement of silt & soil could have created new mountains, lands or islands.  Even the tectonic plates could have moved greatly, breaking up and floating more rapidly and smashing into each other could have caused great mountains to begin growing rapidly.

Evolution science completely ignores the fact of great differences of nature in the past, allowing for “millions of years” to pass where things progress exactly the same from year to year to build up layers of silt.  Just from what we see with the power of natural forces to quickly and dramatically change the environment around us… does it not seem more plausible for catastrophic events to rapidly create grand canyons and carve out rock?  Let your mind try to wrap around this story as fact, and then fill in the possibilities of how it could happen and you’ll find it is indeed feasible.

One other important point that I like to mention is that at the point the Ark lands on the mountains of Ararat… we have no clue where that really is in relation to where Noah came from.  The mountains could’ve just looked like something they used to call Ararat… or perhaps it was called Ararat only after they’d landed there.  But floating on the waters of a completely covered Earth would mean that they could have drifted anywhere.  Trying to pinpoint any pre-flood locations (like the garden of Eden) would be impossible since we are not even sure Noah landed in a place he knew or recognized.  It is only after the flood that geography can begin to make sense.

The waters gradually recede during this chapter.  5 months to the day, the ark comes to rest on some high mountain range.  2 1/2 months after that are the mountain tops finally described as “visible”.  40 Days later Noah begins sending out animals, first the crow, then the dove with increasing good results.  When the dove comes back with an olive branch, I wondered how an olive tree grew so quickly.  But then I thought, would it not be possible that trees could have survived the flood?  Sure.  They might have needed some “dry time”, but I’m sure some trees resurfaced after the waters receded and that’s what the dove found.

If you look closely at the chronology… you’ll see that the earth was considered “dry” about 10 1/2 months after the flood began.  However, It wasn’t for another 57 days that the earth was dry enough for the Lord to command them to leave.  And once again, I like that the Lord in his wisdom knows what all the life on the ark truly needs to survive, and holds them until conditions are sustainable yet again.  I could only imagine the intense desire to leave the ark after over a YEAR bunched up in there… and we might have been inclined to run outside as soon as it even looked “dry”.  But the Lord had his timing, and Noah was obedient yet again.

The first thing Noah does when he leaves the ark?  Builds an altar and has a sacrifice of some of the clean animals (see, there was a reason to have extra animals for sacrifice).  The text is a little tricky in that it says, “Noah took some of every kind of clean animal”.  It could be misconstrued as Noah making this huge sacrifice of at least one of every single kind of clean animal.  But the key word is “some”, meaning that he could also have only picked out a few animals from every animal available.  This makes a lot more sense, as I’m sure the sacrificed animals were used for food (much like many sacrifices were used in the Jewish culture to feed the trip of Levi – the priests).

21 When the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma….

I always find it weird to have a sacrifice being described as a pleasing aroma.  Does God really find joy in the death and cooking of meat?  Perhaps that is a human interjection?  After all, there have been many times when having a BBQ or something that I find the smell of cooking food quite pleasant.  So to us it’s a pleasing smell, and the Lord is simply accepting our sacrifice when done properly and with the right intentions.  In that setting, we might think the Lord smells the pleasing aroma too and accepts the sacrifice — but the Lord is merely accepting our obedience to the sacrificial system he setup for us.  And remember, the sacrificial system was a reminder that sin was punishable by death and SOMETHING had to pay that price (foreshadowing Jesus ultimate sacrifice for us on Calvary).

22  “As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter, and day and night
will not cease.”

This is a powerful, powerful promise.  Many people know the rainbow promise, that the Lord will never destroy the entire earth with a flood ever again.  But this promise in verse 22 is much more broad.  He is saying that as long as the earth continues (ie. before He ultimately destroys and rebuilds it) we will forever have some sense of normal.  We will have the seasons, cold & hot, day & night, etc.  We can be assured that this Earth will continue to be a place where we can live with the ability to plant & grow food and survive.

Some might argue that Joshua stopped the day & night later on in the Bible… but we do not know the exact mechanisms of this event.  It could have been a time-warping bubble around Joshua which kept them in “normal time” while the rest of the world was paused.  Or the sun could’ve been made to appear as if it stopped in their local vicinity while the rest of the world moved on.  I don’t know, but the fact that the patterns of nature are so exacting that we can have laws of physics and time, and mathematically find the exact pull of gravity, etc. speaks to this promise being fulfilled since the days of Noah.  It’s pretty remarkable.