The Discovery of Genesis (63 page)

The ark had been completed and supplied with provisions. Now the dramatic moment arrived when “The Lord said to Noah, ‘Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before Me in this generation. Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate; and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate; and seven pairs of the birds of the air also, male and female, to keep their kind alive upon the face of all the earth. For in seven days I will send rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.’ And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him” (Genesis 7:1–5).

Rain
had never been experienced before by the antediluvians, “For the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, … But a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground” (Genesis 2:5, 6). Those unrepentant and wicked men who had refused the oft-given invitation to enter the ark were now terrified to see great drops of water falling from the sky, and as the storm raged, “all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened” (Genesis 7:11). Note again the radicals for
water
and
. Do these not resemble fountains of water rising to a height and falling back in all directions? It is interesting that the ancient forms also portray
water
most often vertical, instead of horizontal, as expected.