Noah Leaves the Ark
Gen. 8:15-22:
15 "Then God spoke to Noah, saying,
16“Go out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons’ wives with you. 17“Bring out with you every living thing of all flesh that is with you, birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, that they may breed abundantly on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.”
18So Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him.
19Every beast, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth, went out by their families from the ark
20Then Noah built an altar to the LORD, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.
21 The LORD smelled the soothing aroma; and the LORD said to Himself, “I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done.
22"While the earth remains, Seedtime and harvest, And cold and heat, And summer and winter, And day and night Shall not cease.””
God now instructs Noah and his family plus all the animals. They all sis as they were told. Now it was time for Noah to give praise to God for saving their lives. So he built an altar and took some of the "clean" animals and made sacrifices to God. God then smelled the wonderful aroma of the altar and incense. He was not smelling as we would think from the words as we interpret. The aroma was that of the heard and respected prayers of Noah. This is the first point in the Bible that a mention of an altar is made. At this point, God makes a covenant (one sided) with Noah never to "kill" the earth. The words in 8:21 ["for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth" (NASB); " for the imagination of man’s hear is evil from his youth" (KJV)] appears to emphasize the fact that man is now inherently evil from birth. Faith in God is the only way out. The last verse says the earth will remain; a regular order of nature would proceed as from seed time and harvest, hot and cold, summer and winter, and day and night would not cease. God would not destroy the earth in this way ever again.

What did Noah see?
  • The oceans were much more extensive. They contained all the waters above the firmament and below the firmament.
  • The land areas were much less extensive.
  • The thermal blanket spoken of earlier was not gone.
  • There were MUCH more extensive heights and ruggedness to the mountains (caused by powerful moving waters)
  • Wind, snow, rain, etc were now possible.
  • There was a very hostile environment environment
  • There were tremendous glaciers, rivers, and lakes
  • The crust of the earth became much more unstable because of the collapses of the underground tunnels that originally held water.
  • There was no vegetation because of the water washing everything away. Need seeds and seedlings had to be given time to grow
  • If the year back then was REALLY 360 days, there is the possibility the spin of the earth increased about 1.5% to give us the year we presently have.
There were land bridges all over the world due to moved earth. These bridges allowed the migration to various parts of the earth. When the animals got to where they were going, there was little competition (actually none). So they could "be fruitful and multiply" with ease.

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