Genesis 7

What happens: YHWH commands Noah to enter the ark with his family and the animals — clean animals by sevens, others by twos. After seven days, the flood begins: fountains of the deep burst open and the windows of the sky open. Waters rise for 40 days, covering all high mountains. Every land-breathing creature outside the ark dies. Waters prevail for 150 days.

Key themes: Clean/unclean distinction predating Sinai; the flood as cosmological reversal — the waters above and below the expanse (Day 2) reunite; the flood (a Hebrew word used only for this event); specific calendar dates throughout; YHWH closes the door (7:16 — Noah does not seal himself in); total destruction of land life.

Watch for: "Seven seven" for clean animals (7:2) after "two from all" (6:19–20) — the TT preserves both without harmonization; the flood dates create a precise chronology spanning one solar year; "YHWH closed behind him" (7:16) — the divine name appears at the moment of sealing; the phrase "all the high mountains under all the skies" (7:19) — the text's own scope claim.

Connection: The flood mechanism (7:11) precisely reverses Genesis 1:6–7 (the expanse separating the waters). Chapter 8 will reverse the flood, re-establishing Day 2's separation.

¹And YHWH said to Noach (Noah), "Come, you and all your household, into the tebah, for you I have seen as righteous before me in this generation. ²From all the clean livestock you shall take for yourself seven seven, a man and his woman, and from the livestock which is not clean, two, a man and his woman. ³Also from the bird of the sky, seven seven, male and female, to keep alive seed on the face of all the land. ⁴For in yet seven days I am sending rain upon the land, forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe every standing thing which I made from upon the face of the ground." ⁵And Noah did according to all that YHWH commanded him.

⁶And Noah was six hundred years old, and the flood of waters was upon the land. ⁷And Noah went, and his sons and his woman and the women of his sons with him, into the tebah, from the face of the waters of the flood. ⁸From the clean livestock and from the livestock which is not clean, and from the bird, and from everything that creeps upon the ground, ⁹two two they came to Noah into the tebah, male and female, as God commanded Noah. ¹⁰And it was at seven of the days, and the waters of the flood were upon the land.

¹¹In the six hundredth year of the life of Noah, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on this day all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the windows of the sky were opened. ¹²And the rain was upon the land forty days and forty nights. ¹³On this very day Noah entered, and Shem and Cham (Ham) and Yafet (Japheth), the sons of Noah, and the woman of Noah and the three women of his sons with them, into the tebah — ¹⁴they, and every living thing to its kind, and every livestock to its kind, and every creeping thing that creeps upon the land to its kind, and every bird to its kind, every winged thing. ¹⁵And they came to Noah into the tebah, two two from all the flesh in which is breath of life. ¹⁶And those coming, male and female from all flesh they came, as God commanded him; and YHWH shut it behind him.

¹⁷And the flood was forty days upon the land, and the waters increased and lifted the tebah, and it rose from upon the land. ¹⁸And the waters prevailed and increased greatly upon the land, and the tebah went upon the face of the waters. ¹⁹And the waters prevailed very very upon the land, and all the high mountains which were under all the sky were covered. ²⁰Fifteen cubits upward the waters prevailed, and the mountains were covered. ²¹And all flesh that moves upon the land perished — the bird and the livestock and the living thing and every swarming thing that swarms upon the land, and every human. ²²Everything which had breath of the wind/spirit of life in its nostrils, from all which was on the dry ground, died. ²³And he wiped every standing thing which was on the face of the ground, from human to livestock to creeping thing to bird of the sky, and they were wiped from the land; and only Noah remained, and those with him in the tebah. ²⁴And the waters prevailed upon the land one hundred and fifty days.