After reading chapter 7:
*We see the number of animals going into the ark changes. Now we have seven (magic number) of every clean animal, male and female, and two of everything else. Is that seven males and seven females or just a total of seven, leaving one without a mate. Should that one be male or female?
* How did Noah know which ones were clean and not clean? We don't, yet.
*Noah had seven ( there's that number) days to get all the animals on the ark ( verse4). Noah did it by golly. He got at least seven each of over 10,000 species of birds; at least two each of over 8,000 species of reptiles; over 3,000 species of amphibians; and over 5,000 species of mammals. We don't know if insects count as creatures that move along the ground. If they do, we need. to add in about 800,000 species of those. One wonders how Noah distinguished between the males and females of some of those creatures. There is no mention of God helping with this task. (Oops, we forgot about the thousands upon thousands of currently extinct land dwelling animals, including all the varieties of dinosaurs. Noah certainly had his hands full)
*Noah was 600 years old (a nice round number) when the flood occurred. That would make it about 2,350 B.C.E., according to Ussher's chronology, about the time of the 6th dynasty in Egypt.
*In verse 12, we are introduced to another special number: forty. The rains fell for 40 days and 40 nights. We will see this number and phrase again.
*On the very day of the flood, God shut 8 people into the ark with all those animals. They were in for a wild ride. One wonders how easy it was to know that every living person and animal was dying outside the ark, including relatives, infants, and children. We're they really all deserving of such a horrible death? Did those 8 people feel any remorse or survivor's guilt? We will never know.
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