This post was originally produced in December 2016. index-passages
I've since abandoned this specific project, and am working on something a bit different. This page remains for anyone who might find it interesting.
Below is a translation I’ve made of Genesis 8, following the Masoretic Text, along with comments on the chapter by Dillmann, and notes addressing text-critical stuff mentioned by Kittel. To find the original PDF source of the Dillmann stuff, see here. I’ve taken a few liberties with Dillmann: I’ve expanded some of his many abbreviations into unabbreviated forms, and transliterated his Hebrew phrases, often leaving out vowels. I’ve added brief explanations of some things in brackets, and hyperlinks. I’ve got the sections that quote Dillmann indented to the right.
According to Eugene Ulrich’s The Biblical Qumran Scrolls: Transcriptions and Textual Variants, the Dead Sea Scrolls do not preserve any part of Genesis 8.
1 And God remembered Noah, and every wild animal, and all the domestic animals which were with him in the ark. God caused a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters decreased [škk, Dillmann sank down]. 2 And the fountains of the deep and the windows of the sky were stopped, and the rain from the sky was restrained. 3 Gradually the waters receded from the land, and after one hundred fifty days they had lessened [ḥsr].
Chapter 8, verse 1. Then, after 150 days, and after everything living on the land had expired, God remembered Noah. wyzkr, as in Genesis 19:29, 30:22, and Exodus 2:24.
Therefore He caused a wind to blow over the earth, so that the waters sank down, began to decrease (Numbers 17:20 (5)). One expects the statement of the second part of this verse only after verse 2; but it need not on that account be regarded as a gloss [4], for according to the idea of the author the rising of the wind and the checking of the overflow (verse 2) may be thought of as contemporaneous, or the second part of verse 1 may have been transposed by the redactor to this position from its place after the first part of verse 2, because he wished after verse 2a in verses 2b and 3a to introduce Jahwist material.
If Genesis 1:2 is interpreted as including a “wind from God sweeping across the water,” then the wording of Genesis 8:1 echoes the creation. The mention of šmym (‘sky’) and thwm (ocean/’the deep’) in verse 2 do as well.
After the reference to Numbers 17:20, I am not sure what Dillmann means with the number (5) in parentheses. In Numbers 17:20, the word translated as rid or put a stop to or similar is the word translated as decreased in Genesis 8:1, above, and which Dillmann renders with sank down.
Verse 2. The locking up of the fountains of the deep and of the windows of heaven is the correlative to Genesis 7:11, and therefore from the Priestly source. On the other hand, the second part of the verse, with its reference to 7:12, comes from the Jahwist. The conjecture that verse 6a stood before it in this writing [5] is doubtless correct (compare 7:4). Like verse 2b and verse 3a [6] — and the water returned from the earth, a going and a returning, i.e. gradually [1] — also belongs to the Jahwist, seeing that the same meaning is sufficiently expressed by the Priestly source in verses 3b and 5. On the other hand, verses 3b-5 are certainly by the Priestly source. Against the opinion that in verse 4 wtnḥ htbh ʿl hry ʾrrṭ belong to the Jahwist [2], see Budde, Urgeschichte, p. 269 f.
The words wtnḥ htbh ʿl hry ʾrrṭ are separated: wtnḥ htbh ‘and the ark rested’ is at the beginning of verses 4, while ʿl hry ʾrrṭ ‘on the Ararat mountains’ is at the end of the verse, with other words between. The reference to Grammatik can be found in English translation here, in subsection 113u.
Verse 3. mqṣh ḥmšym wmʾt ywm, ‘at the end of one hundred fifty days.’ According to Kittel, the Samaritan Pentateuch reads mqṣ instead of mqṣh. The two are equivalent, meaning ‘at the end’ in this context. Kittel recommends that one should read mqṣ hḥmšym instead of mqṣh ḥmšym, which would change the text from literally at the end of a hundred fifty days to at the end of the hundred fifty days.
4 The ark came to rest in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the Ararat mountains. 5 And the waters kept on lessening [ḥsr] until, in the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month, the mountain-tops were visible.
According to Kittel, the Septuagint reads “twenty-seventh” instead of “seventeenth.”
Ararat is how the Masoretes and the Septuagint translators read the Hebrew ʾrrṭ, which is equivalent to the Assyrian term Urartu. Notice that despite a tradition that Noah landed on one specific mountain or another, Genesis does not specify any specific mountain, but says “the mountains of Ararat.” The other occurrences of Ararat in the Hebrew Bible are 2 Kings 19:37 / Isaiah 37:38, and Jeremiah 51:27.
seventh month, seventeenth day. Taking this as the end of the 150-day period that began on the seventeenth day of the second month (7:11), we can do some simple math and find that the calendar used in the flood story apparently uses a thirty-day month.
6 After the end of forty days, Noah opened the window [ḥlwn] of the ark which he had made. 7 Then he released a raven, and it went out, going back and forth until the waters were dried up [ybš] off the earth. 8 And he released a dove from [inside the ark] with him, to see if the waters had diminished [qll] from the surface of the ground. 9 And the dove found no place to rest the sole of its foot, and it returned to him in the ark, because water covered all the surface of the earth. He stretched out his hand and took her, and brought her into the ark with him. 10 So he waited another seven days, and again released the dove from the ark. 11 And the dove came to him in the evening, and there was a fresh olive leaf in her mouth, and Noah knew that the waters had diminished [qll] from the earth. 12 He waited seven more days, and released the dove, and she did not return to him any more.
Verses 6-12. The beautiful episode of the birds, the wild raven and the tame domestic dove, sent out by Noah to discover the condition of the waters. It is from the Jahwist, who elsewhere also shows a partiality for sketching such special side pictures. Compare the Babylonian legend, p. 258 f.
For an online look at the parallels between the release of the birds in biblical and Babylonian lore, see here.
The narrative is a well-connected whole. There is no ground for regarding verse 7 as a remnant of an account by the Priestly source [1]. The Priestly source does not elsewhere allow himself to enter into such details [2]. Verse 7 might more readily be a late interpolation, for verse 8 gives the first statement of the purpose for which the birds were sent out. The hypothesis which regards the whole episode as a fragment of a third narrative of the Flood [3], or as first inserted by Babylonian Jews, is contradicted by the agreement with the Jahwist in respect both of language and contents [4].
. . .
Verse 6. The indication of time: After the lapse [6] of forty days, doubtless stood originally in the Jahwist before verse 2b [7]. By being changed to this place it came to mean: forty days after the point of time mentioned in verse 5 or perhaps in verse 4. After the rain ceased Noah opened the window. According to the present text it appears as if this opening took place immediately after the forty days. But perhaps the words [and he waited seven days], which have to be presupposed in verse 10, originally stood here, and were only crowded out by the insertion of verse 6a. That ḥlwn is the same as the ṣhr of 6:16 in the Priestly source cannot be proved, yet it may perhaps be concluded that the ark, according to C, had only a single closed or latticed window or hatch, which, moreover, may be thought of as of large size.
In verse seven, immediately after the word raven, according to Kittel one should follow the lead of the Septuagint by adding “to see if the waters had lessened.”
Where I have going back and forth, the Hebrew literally reads going out and returning. According to Kittel, the Syriac and Septuagint read and it did not return instead of and returning. But Kittel recommends sticking with the Masoretic reading.
Verse 7. Whereas according to the Priestly source (verse 5), Noah without more ado observed that the mountain tops were visible, according to the Jahwist he makes use of the birds to obtain information. He sends first of all the raven . . . But the raven, a wild bird, which is said to forget to return to its nest [2], went, i.e. flew away and then returned, i.e. to and fro, therefore sometimes away from the ark, sometimes back to its neighbourhood again or upon it, but not again into the ark itself. He found floating in the water dead bodies to feed upon. In this way the raven proved itself useless for the purpose intended. . . .
Dillmann thinks it is implicit in this account that the raven fed on dead bodies. It should be kept in mind that the Genesis account never says what, if anything, the raven ate during this time. In terms of the present state of the text, we’re 264 days into the flood, which makes floating dead bodies unlikely, but on the other hand the flood story is not big on being likely.
Kittel thinks that at the beginning of verse 8 one should add “And Noah waited seven days” (compare verse 10, he says).
Verse 8. So Noah sends out a dove. When? Seven days after, if one supposes that the [And he waited seven days] presupposed in verse 10 has fallen out here before verse 8 [4]; but perhaps without such an interval, if the words that have fallen out originally stood in verse 6. . . .
hʾdmh — in the Priestly source not merely cultivated low land (Knobel, Delitzsch) but ground in general. . . .
Verse 9. The dove when it found no resting-place for the sole (claws) of her foot, because it will not alight on a carcase, allowed itself to be received back again into the ark.
For the water was (still) upon the surface of the whole earth — although the dove does not love mountains exactly (Ezekiel 7:16), it would still have found a [resting place] on a mountain, if Genesis 8:5 were presupposed here.
Verse 10. Noah waited once more seven other days, therefore he has already waited seven days. See on verses 6 and 8. wayyaḥel would be Hiphil (Qal) of ḥwl; but since the meaning to wait is always elsewhere attached to yḥl in Piel and Hiphil, we should restore wayyiyyaḥel here, as in verse 12 (Olshausen). Why in verse 12 the Masoretes should have pointed Niphil instead of Piel is not clear.
But Kittel thinks that in verse ten and twelve the verb should be wayyoḥal.
Verse 11. Sent out again, it did not come back till late, toward evening (Genesis 3:7), therefore this time it had found a resting-place, and doubtless also food. It brought with it an olive leaf [2] in its bill, and that not a withered one, or one that had been floating in the water, but one freshly plucked, fresh [ṭrp]. Thus Noah knew that the water had already sunk to some extent, for the olive tree does not grow upon the highest summits. . . .
Verse 12. Sent out for the third time, after other seven days, it came back no more; therefore it had found the earth already habitable and affording a supply of food. . . .
In twelve Kittel thinks the first verb should be changed to wayyoḥal__.
13 And it happened on the six hundred and first year, in the first [month], on the first [day] of the month, that the waters were dried [ḥrb] off the land [hʾrṣ], and Noah removed the covering [mksh] of the ark, and he saw that the surface of the ground [hʾdmh] was dried [ḥrb].
Where the Masoretes have year, Kittel says one should follow the Septuagint and read year of the life of Noah.
Verse 13 and following continues the narrative of the Priestly Source from verse 5. On the first day of the first month the water was drained off from the earth, properly dried up [3]. In verse 7 ybš was used in a similar case. On the slight distinction between the two, see Isaiah 19:5; Job 14:11; Jeremiah 50:38 (Gesenius, Thesaurus).
But verse 13b must now be again assigned to the Jahwist (Scrader), partly on account of hʾdmh [4], and because ḥrb is here said of the land, not of the water; partly because the statement of verse 14 is directly anticipated by it. Besides in the Priestly source Noah can look out from the window without taking off the covering of the ark (verse 5). Thus verse 13b attaches itself to verse 12, and contains the statement of the Jahwist about the final end of the inundation.
mksh — certainly not a leather covering [5], as in the Priestly source, Exodus 24:14, Numbers 4:8-12, but a covering similar to a roof (stege, Septuagint).
14 And in the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the land was dry [ybš].
Verse 14. Only on the twenty-seventh day of the second month was the earth quite dried up. This is certainly a disproportionately long time since the absorption of the waters, but is due to the double system of reckoning carried through the narrative. See on p. 251 f.
15 And God said to Noah: 16 Go out from the ark: you, and your wife, and your sons, and your sons’ wives with you. 17 All [kl-] living things with you of all flesh — among birds, among animals [bhmh], and among all the crawling things that crawl upon the land — bring them out with you. May they swarm [wšrṣw] upon the land, and be fruitful and multiply on the land. 18 And Noah came out with his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives. 19 All living things [ḥyh], all crawling things, and all birds, everything that crawls on the land, came out according to their families from the ark.
Verses 15-19. Noah receives a command to leave the ark with his family and with the animals, and obeys it. Taken from the Priestly source, who, as befits the solemn occasion, describes the scene with his accustomed circumstantiality.
Verse 17. See 8:21. kl-. The Samaritan Pentateuch, Septuagint, Peshitta, wkl. So, too, at the commencement of verse 19.
That is, where the Masoretic text reads “All living things” in verse 17, the other witnesses cited by Dillman read “And all living things.”
bhmh — of the tame and wild animals. For this ḥyh is substituted in verse 19 (Knobel). Why the Massoretes have enjoined hayṣeʾ to be read [2] for the usual form hwṣʾ (hoṣeʾ) [3], which is the Kethib, is not clear [4].
wšrṣw — 1:20 ff. This is the word of blessing upon the new animal world conferring the power of propagation and increase, corresponding to the blessing after the creation. The similar word with reference to men is spoken specially (9:1, 7).
According to Kittel, the expression wšrṣw bʾrṣ ‘and let them swarm on the earth,’ is omitted by the Septuagint.
According to Kittel, where this verse begins with All living things, one should read with two Masoretic manuscripts, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and some other witnesses And all living things. As for all crawling things, and all birds, everything that crawls on the land, Kittel recommends that one read instead with the Septuagint, And all animals, and all birds, and all crawling things crawling on the land.
Verse 19; see verse 17. According to their families, i.e. according to the several kinds of species (Jeremiah 15:3), of which the classes of animals consisted (Knobel).
20 Then Noah built an altar to Yahweh, and he took some of all permitted animals and of all permitted birds, and he sent up olah-offerings on the altar. 21 Yahweh smelled the soothing scent, and Yahweh said to himself, Never again will I curse [qll] the ground on man’s account, because the thoughts [ky yṣr lbw] of man are bad from his youth, and never again will I strike every living thing that I have made. 22 As long as earth exists, seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night will not cease.
Verses 20-22. According to the Jahwist, Noah brought of the clean animals burnt-offerings to God. God graciously accepted them, and resolved henceforth in long-suffering to bear with sinful men, and not again destroy the earth by a flood. A fine perception has led the redactor to insert this account here, just before the concluding of the covenant in the Priestly Source. Thus the covenant-making is set down as the carrying out of the divine purpose. A sacrifice, as expressive of thanks and supplication, is here, if at any time, in place, just after the great judgment, and when the new era is being entered on. Xisuthros, Manu, and Deucalion also sacrifice after their deliverance.
Where the Hebrew text reads altar to Yahweh, the Septuagint has altar to God (Kittel).
Verse 20. An altar appears here for the first time [5]; but not for the reason that Paradise, the place of the presence of God on earth, has disappeared with the Flood, and that God has withdrawn himself to heaven [1], so that men must now direct their eyes heavenward. Paradise is already lost to men and the earth cursed in 4:2ff; and, on the other hand, it was only when God again had a dwelling for His presence on earth in the tabernacle that the altar was made completely indispensable. The altar appears because the author presupposes as early in Noah’s time a largely completed development of the forms and implications of divine worship, including, e.g., the distinction between clean and unclean. An altar, as an elevation above the common earth, points, it is true, heavenward — hence originally by preference erected on high places, where men felt themselves nearer heaven, e.g. Genesis 22 — but there was a God in heaven for man before and not only after the Flood.
20 permitted. The more usual term in English is ‘clean,’ but the Hebrew word refers to the kinds of animals permitted as food.
Of all clean cattle and of all clean birds. How many is not stated; neither is it said whether only those are meant which might be offered according to the law of Moses [2], or whether all beasts which might be eaten by men [3]. “In the case of deliverance from so great a danger the offering is not too great. For the purpose of the offering Noah had besides taken with him into the ark an increased number of all clean (7:2). The sacrifices were burnt-offerings, and therefore the oldest and most widely diffused kind of sacrifice. For particulars, see notes on Leviticus 1:3ff” [4] (Knobel).
olah-offerings. Commonly known as ‘burnt-offerings,’ these are described in Leviticus 1.
For both uses of Yahweh in this verse, the Septuagint reads the Lord God, as if its Vorlage read Yahweh Elohim.
said to himself: literally, said to his heart [lbw].
thoughts of man: literally, the formation of the heart of man.
Verse 21. God smelled the odour of pacification [5], i.e. the agreeable and pleasant exhalation, which rose from the sacrifices. In the technical language of sacrifice [6] it is a standing phrase for the gracious acceptance of the sacrificial gift, or rather of the sentiments and wishes to which it served to give expression.
He spoke to His heart, i.e. to Himself (6:6), reflected and mentally resolved (compare 24:45, 22:41). The writer wishes to interpret the thoughts of God (6:6). The phrase is not to be understood according to 24:3, and the suffix of lbw referred to Noah. “God’s reflection leads to the conclusion that He will not any more curse the earth on account of man (6:5f), nor destroy every living thing upon it. The agreeable odor is not the cause, but merely the occasion of this gracious resolve. God had not strictly cursed the earth in the case of the Flood, as in 3:17. The reference must therefore be to the declaration of the decree of extermination (6:7,13)” (Knobel). Compare the allusion to it in 5:29.
bʿbwr — 3:17. The Septuagint has the same various reading as there.
ky yṣr, etc. 5:5. The reason applies not to qll, but to lʾ-ʾsyp lq’. Now that a sinful direction has been given to the thought and will of men, “God will no longer allow Himself to be moved by their evil deeds to a judgment such as the Flood had been, but will exercise long-suffering and patience. Otherwise indeed He would have no alternative but very often to decree similar exterminations. The author does not mean to say that man’s mind is set merely on what is wicked, he does not say kl _yṣr__ [“every thought”] and _rq rʿ [“only evil”] as in 6:5. Nor does he mean that man is born wicked, for then he would have said from his mother’s womb instead of from his youth, and would have chosen another word than yṣr. He means rather that the evil in man begins with the knowledge of good and evil (3:22), and then gains great power” (Knobel). It is of course implied that if God now bears the sinful corruption of men with long-suffering, He does not thereby recognize it as justified, but still works against its development as before, only in another way. — kl-ḥy, 3:20; ʾt, see on 1:21.
22 As long as earth exists: literally, again (or yet or still) all the days of the earth. According to Kittel, the Masoretes are possibly wrong in pointing the first word as again, with a holam, and instead should have written a patach, giving the meaning until or for.
Verse 22. The natural order of the conditions which prevail on the earth, more particularly the regular change of the seasons and of day and night, is henceforth not to cease during all the days of the earth, so long as the earth continues [1]. There are four pairs of nouns, hence also, where possible, w- has pretonic qamec. The first three pairs do not together express six seasons of the year each of two months (Rashi), as the Indians reckon, but, according to the usual distinction among the Hebrews [2], only two seasons or divisions of the year [3], namely, the rainy winter season with its cold (Jeremiah 36:22), and its preparation of the fields and sowing of the seed [4], and the dry summer time with its heat [5] and harvest [6]. Nor is there any contrast with the time before the Flood, as though there had then been bright warmth only (Del. [4]); see on the contrary 1:14ff. Just as little may we strain the contrast to the period of the Flood, which in C [the Yahwist] is very short, so as to conclude that during it the succession of day and night was disturbed [7]; the Septuagint avoids this conclusion by the adverbial interpretation hemeran kai nukta. The meaning is: A disturbance of the order of nature, as the Flood was, shall not occur again. Compare for the expression of the idea of the order of nature, Jeremiah 31:25f, 33:20, 25f; Psalm 74:16f.