The Pulpit Commentary — Genesis — Section 209

to remove the incongruity by translating 1:;, to represent Noah, of a Div'J1e command- 118 althourth (Bush, Inglis), but "there are ment which he had received to construct a few (if ony) places wero 1:;, can ho rendered ship after a. specified pattern, in which to alehouuh" ('r. Lowis). Others connect it save himself aml "the need of all life," with "for mnn'a sake," as explanatory not because the city Surippak wherein he dwelt of the promise, but of the past judgment (Murphy), or as stating that any future was to be destroyed. After first atterr.pting cursing of the ground would not be for to excuse himaelf, as he explaius to Izdnbar, man's sake (Jacobus). 'rhe truo solution of on the ground that "young and old will the difficulty oppears to lie in the clause deride him," Hasisadra builds the ship, and "from his youth," as if God meant to say causes to go up into it "all my male servanta that whereas formerly he had visited man and my female servants, the beast of the with judicial extermination on account of his absolute moral corruption, he would now fieltl, the animal of the field, the sons of the have regard to the circumstance that man people, all of them," while the gocl Shamas inherited his depravity through his birth, makes a flood, causing it to rain heavily. and, instead of smiting man with punitive The flood destroys all life from the face of destruction, would visit him with compas- the ea1th. Six days and nights the storm siono.te forbearance (Keil, 'Speaker's Com- mentary'). Tayler Lewis regards the expres- rages; on the seventh it grows calm. Twelve sion as strongly anthropopathic, like eh. vi. measures above the sea rises the land. The 6, and indicative of the Divine regret at so ship is stopped by a. mountain in the country calamitous an act as the Deluge, although of Nizir. After seven days Hasirndra sends that act was o.bsolutely just and necessary. forth a dove, "which went and turned, an,l Neither will I again smite any more every Eving thing, as I have done. There should a resting-place it did not find, mcl it re- be no more deluge, but- turnecl ; " then a swallow, and finally a Ver. 22. - While the earth remaineth. raven. On the decrease of the waters he Literally, as yet, all the days of the earth, sends forth the animals, and builds an altar i. e. henceforth, so long as the earth con- on the peak of the mountain, aml pours out tinues, iii expressing tho ideas of repetition and continuance (vide ver. 12). Seed-time a libation (' Chaldean Genesis,' eh. xvi. ; and harvest,-from roots signifying to scatter, 'Records of the Past,' vol. vii. 133-141). e. g. seed, and to cut off, specio.lly grain; (2) From Berosus. The god Kronos appeared ,11ripµ,a 1eai 9,p,uµ,iic (LXX. )-and cold and to Xisuthrus, the tenth king of Babylon, in heat,-,J,uxo, a:ai KaiJµ,a (LXX.)-andsummer 11 vision, and warned him of an approaching and winter. Properly the cutting off of fruits, from a root meaning to cut off, hence deluge upon the fifteenth day of the month summer ; and the time when fruits are Dcsius, by which mankintl wouhl be cle- plucked, hence autumn (including winter) ; stroyed. Among other things the god in- the import of the 1·oot being to gather, to structed him to build a vessel for tho pluck off; fllpo, 11:ai fop (LXX. ). The first preservation of himself antl friends, and term of ench pair denotes the first half of the year, and the second term of each pair specimens of the different animals. Obey- the second half. And day and night (cf. ing the Divina admonition, ho built a vessel eh. i. 5) shall not cease. Hebrew, lo yish- five stodia in length and two in breatlth, bothu, shall not snbbatise, or keep a day of and conveyed into it his wife, children, and rest ; i. e. they shnll continue ever in opera- frientls. After the flood had been upon the tion nnd succession. This Di vino promise to conserve the orderly constitution and earth he three times sent out binls from the course of nature is elsewhere styled "God's vessel, which returned to him the secon,l covenant of the do.y and of the night" (cf. time with mud upon their feet, and the Jer. xxxiii. 20, 26). third time returned to him no more. Find- ing that the vessel had grountled on o. TRADITIONS OF THE DELUGE. mountniu, Xisuthrns disembarked with his 1. The Babylonian. (1) From the Chal- wife o.nd children, antl, having constructccl deo.n monuments. As deciphered from the au l\ltur, offered sacrifices to the gods, in eleventh tablet of the Izdubnr series, the rew11rtl for which ho was raised immediately story of the Flood is briefly this :-Izdubar, to heaven (' Chaltle,1n Genesis,' eh. iii. ; whom George Smith identifies with Nimrod, Kalisch, p. 202 ; 'Encycloped:a llri tannica,' the founder of Babylonia, is informed by nrt. Deluge, ninih edition). Hasisadra, whom tho same authority believes 2. The Et]yptian. Though commonly 184 THE BOOK OF GENESIS. [CH, VIII, 15-22.