Genesis 8

Notes

1. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 31, 2

   רוּחַ is "wind" here, the weather (31). It passes over the land as the רוּחַ of Elohim fluttered over the face of the waters in 1:2, and the waters are gathered again, as on the third day. "Elohim remembered" is the first time Elohim remembers in the Bible: the covenant of 6:18 is acted on, as at 9:15–16, 19:29 and Exod 2:24. Genesis Rabbah 33:3 reads the name here as the measure of judgment turned to mercy.

2. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "abated" (KJV) / "subsided" (RSV)

   Rulings 2, 39

   חָסֵר is "lack, be short of": "I shall not lack" (Ps 23:1); "perhaps the fifty just will lack five" (18:28). The waters, which "were many" and "were mighty" (7:17–24), now "lack." "Subsided" is kept for שָׁכַךְ (v. 1).

3. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "after the end of" (KJV) / "at the end of" (RSV)

   Ruling 2

   מִקְצֵה is from קָצֶה "edge, extremity," a different word from קֵץ "end" (6:13; 8:6, kept "end"). "At the edge of fifty and a hundred days" holds the distinction; the sense is the same.

4. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 17, 24, 18

   וַתָּנַח "and it rested" is נוּחַ, the sound of Noah's name. The sound chain of the flood runs through it: Noah (נֹחַ), named for comfort (נחם, 5:29); Adonai "was sorry" (נחם, 6:6–7); Noah finds favor (חֵן, 6:8, the letters reversed); the box "rested" (נוּחַ, 8:4); the dove finds no "resting place" (מָנוֹחַ, 8:9); Adonai smells the "restful" scent (נִיחֹחַ, 8:21). English cannot make "Noah" sound like "rest" (17), and no added word can carry it without displacing a home gloss (23), so the text keeps the home glosses "rest," "resting place" and "restful," which at least sound like one another (24), and the chain is given here.

5. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 18

   אֲרָרָט is Urartu, the kingdom north of Assyria around Lake Van, named in Assyrian records; "the land of Ararat" is where Sennacherib's sons fled (2 Kgs 19:37; Isa 37:38), and Jer 51:27 names it with Minni and Ashkenaz. The text says "the mountains of Ararat," a range, not one peak. Targum Onkelos and the Peshitta have Qardu (Kurdistan); Berossus and Josephus (Ant. 1.93) place the remains of the vessel in the Gordyaean mountains.

6. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 2, 91

   בְּאֶחָד לַחֹדֶשׁ "on one of the month" keeps the cardinal of the home gloss "one"; the first day of the month is meant. So in v. 13, "on one of the month."

7. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "he sent forth" (KJV) / "sent forth" (RSV)

   Ruling 20

   וַיְשַׁלַּח is the piel of שָׁלַח, whose split (20) gives "send away" to the piel: dismissal (Deut 24:1), the Exodus demand "send my people away" (Exod 5:1). Noah lets the birds go; the qal "sent" returns in v. 9, where he sends his own hand. The raven goes "going out and returning" (two infinitives, kept as -ing forms, 10) and is not said to come back to the box. b. Sanhedrin 108b gives the raven a complaint: of all the birds Noah sent the one of which he had only a pair.

8. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "were abated" (KJV) / "had subsided" (RSV)

   Rulings 2, 37

   קַלּוּ is the qal of קָלַל "be light": the waters "had become light" (vv. 8, 11). The same verb in the piel is "make light of," the verb of 8:21: "I will not add to make light of the ground." The chain within the unit decides (37): the waters' lightening and the ground's lightening are one word in the Hebrew, and the English keeps it.

9. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 17, 39

   מָנוֹחַ "resting place" is from נוּחַ, the box's "rested" of v. 4 (see the note there). "And the dove did not find a resting place" returns word for word in Lam 1:3, "she dwells among the nations, she did not find a resting place," and Deut 28:65 threatens "no resting place for the palm of your foot." "The palm of her foot" keeps כַּף concrete (39).

10. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "And he stayed yet other seven days" (KJV) / "He waited another seven days" (RSV)

    Rulings 25, 19

    וַיָּחֶל is vowelled as from חִיל / חוּל, a verb of writhing and of waiting in anguish (Ps 37:7 הִתְחוֹלֵל "wait longingly"; Job 35:14), where v. 12 has וַיִּיָּחֶל from יָחַל "wait." Many read v. 10 as יָחַל too. The Masoretic vowels are printed: "tarried" is kept apart from "waited" in v. 12, so that the reader sees two verbs where the Hebrew has two.

11. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "an olive leaf pluckt off" (KJV) / "a freshly plucked olive leaf" (RSV)

    Rulings 39, 2

    טָרָף is from טָרַף "tear," the verb of the beast that tears (37:33, "Joseph is torn, torn"; 49:27, Benjamin "a wolf that tears"). The raven was sent and did not return; the dove returns with a leaf torn from a living tree. "Torn" keeps the root (39). b. Eruvin 18b gives the dove a saying: better my food bitter as an olive from the hand of the Holy One than sweet as honey from the hand of flesh and blood. Genesis Rabbah 33:6 asks where she found it, and answers: from the Mount of Olives, or from the garden of Eden. "At the time of evening" keeps עֵת "time" (97).

12. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 91

    "In one and six hundred years, in the first, on one of the month": the Hebrew numbers the year by Noah's life (7:11) and leaves "month" unsaid after "the first." The order and the cardinals are kept (91); the WPRB has "the 601st year, the first day of the first month."

13. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 6, 95

    Two verbs of drying: on the first of the first month the waters "were parched" (חָרֵב) and the face of the ground "was parched"; on the twenty-seventh of the second, the land "was dry" (יָבֵשׁ, v. 14). Rashi distinguishes them: the first is ground caked into a crust, the second ground restored to land. The English keeps two words (6).

14. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 19

    The qere הַיְצֵא is translated (19). The ketiv הוצא is another spelling of the same hiphil imperative, "bring out," so the sense does not differ and no ketiv reading is printed. The verse repeats the blessing of the fifth and sixth days: "swarm," "bear fruit," "be many" (1:20–22, 28).

15. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "after their kinds" (KJV) / "by families" (RSV)

    Ruling 2

    מִשְׁפָּחָה is the clan, the kin group between the tribe and the father's house (10:5, 18, 31–32; 12:3, "all the clans of the ground"; Josh 7:14–18). The word is used of animals only here. "Kind" is kept for מִין (6:20; 7:14). The animals leave the box as households, the way the clans of Gen 10 spread over the land.

16. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "burnt offerings" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 2, 39

    עֹלָה is "that which goes up," the noun of עָלָה "go up," and the clause is a cognate pair: "he brought up ascents" (וַיַּעַל עֹלֹת). The offering is named for its going up whole in smoke, not for its burning; "offering" is kept for קָרְבָּן (Lev 1:2; see the note at 4:3). The LXX has ὁλοκαρπώσεις, the Vulgate holocausta, "whole-burnt." This is the first altar in the Bible, and the first use of the pure animals of 7:2.

17. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 17, 23, 24, 46

    רֵיחַ הַנִּיחֹחַ, "the restful scent," is a fixed phrase of the priestly law (Lev 1:9, 13, 17, and some forty times). נִיחֹחַ is from נוּחַ "rest" (v. 4), and here, after Noah's name, the box's resting and the dove's lack of a resting place, the sound chain closes (see the note at v. 4). Adonai, who was sorry (נחם) at the beginning, is given rest by Noah (נֹחַ) at the end. "Restful" keeps the root where the KJV has "a sweet savour" and the RSV "the pleasing odor." Gilgamesh XI has the gods smell the sweet savour of Utnapishtim's sacrifice and gather like flies; the Hebrew has one smelling and one speaking, to his heart. Targum Onkelos turns the smelling into acceptance: "Adonai accepted the offering with favor."

18. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "curse" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 20, 37

    לְקַלֵּל is the piel of קָלַל, "make light of," the verb of vv. 8 and 11, where the waters "became light" (see the note at v. 8). It is a different word from אָרַר, "cursed is the ground for your sake" (3:17), and the reader is meant to hear both. The piel is the common word for cursing a person (12:3; Exod 21:17; Lev 24:11), and the English keeps its root sense: to treat as light, of no weight, against כָּבֵד "be heavy, honored." "For the sake of the human" repeats 3:17 (בַּעֲבוּרֶךָ) with the same preposition.

19. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 46

    כִּי is printed "for" (causal), as the KJV and RSV have it. The clause gives the reason for the promise: the human heart has not changed since 6:5, and Adonai will no longer answer it with a flood. Many modern readers (NJPS "since") and some medieval ones (Ibn Ezra) take it as concessive, "although": though the heart is bad, Adonai will not curse again. "For" can bear both readings, so neither is settled here.

20. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 5, 2

    שָׁבַת is "sabbath" as a verb (5; its standing note): the seasons "shall not sabbath," shall not stop, the first use of the verb after 2:2–3. Seed and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night: four pairs, the order of 1:14–18 restored for "all the days of the land." The verse is rhythmic but is not lined (81).