Genesis 8:2

The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained;

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

8:1-3 The whole race of mankind, except Noah and his family, were now dead, so that God's remembering Noah, was the return of his mercy to mankind, of whom he would not make a full end. The demands of Divine justice had been answered by the ruin of sinners. God sent his wind to dry the earth, and seal up his waters. The same hand that brings the desolation, must bring the deliverance; to that hand, therefore, we must ever look. When afflictions have done the work for which they are sent, whether killing work or curing work, they will be taken away. As the earth was not drowned in a day, so it was not dried in a day. God usually works deliverance for his people gradually, that the day of small things may not be despised, nor the day of great things despaired of.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

- The Land Was Dried

1. שׁכך shākak "stoop, assuage."

3. חסר chāsar "want, fail, be abated."

4. אררט 'ărārāṭ, "Ararat," a land forming part of Armenia. It is mentioned in 2 Kings 19:37, and Isaiah 37:38, as the retreat of Adrammelek and Sharezer after the murder of their father; and in Jeremiah 51:27 as a kingdom.

8. קלל qālal, "be light, lightened, lightly esteemed, swift."

10. חוּל chûl, "twist, turn, dance, writhe, tremble, be strong, wait." יהל yāchal "remain, wait, hope."

13. חרב chāreb, "be drained, desolated, amazed."

Genesis 8:1-3

The waters commence their retreat. "And God remembered Noah." He is said to remember him when he takes any step to deliver him from the waters. The several steps to this end are enumerated.

A wind. - This would promote evaporation, and otherwise aid the retreat of the waters. "The fountains of the deep and the windows of the skies were shut." The incessant and violent showers had continued for six weeks. It is probable the weather remained turbid and moist for some time longer. In the sixth month, however, the rain probably ceased altogether. Some time before this, the depressing of the ground had reached its lowest point, and the upheaving had set in. This is the main cause of the reflux of the waters. All this is described, as we perceive, according to appearance. It is probable that the former configuration of the surface was not exactly restored. At all events it is not necessary, as the ark may have drifted a considerable space in a hundred and fifty days. Some of the old ground on which primeval man had trodden may have become a permanent water bed, and a like amount of new land may have risen to the light in another place. Hence, it is vain to seek for a spot retaining the precise conditions of the primitive Eden. The Euphrates and Tigris may substantially remain, but the Pishon and Gihon may have considerably changed. The Black Sea, the Caspian, the lakes Van and Urumiah may cover portions of the Adamic land. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the prevalence of the waters begins to turn into a positive retreat.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

CHAPTER 8

Ge 8:1-14. Assuaging of the Waters.

1. And God remembered Noah—The divine purpose in this awful dispensation had been accomplished, and the world had undergone those changes necessary to fit it for becoming the residence of man under a new economy of Providence.

and every living thing … in the ark—a beautiful illustration of Mt 10:29.

and God made a wind to pass over the earth—Though the divine will could have dried up the liquid mass in an instant, the agency of a wind was employed (Ps 104:4)—probably a hot wind, which, by rapid evaporation, would again absorb one portion of the waters into the atmosphere; and by which, the other would be gradually drained off by outlets beneath.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

No text from Poole on this verse.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

The fountains also of the deep, and the windows of heaven, were stopped,.... The passages which let out the subterraneous waters in great quantity upon the earth, and the clouds of heaven, which poured down water upon it like spouts, were stopped from sending forth any more, as they had from the first of the flood unto one hundred and fifty days from thence: Jarchi observes, that it is not said that "all" the fountains of the deep, as when they were broken up, Genesis 7:11 because some of them were left open for the use and benefit of the world; besides, some must be left for the return of the waters:

and the rain from heaven was restrained: which seems to confirm what has been before observed, that after the rain of forty days and nights it ceased not to rain, more or less, though not so vehemently, until the end of an hundred and fifty days, and then it entirely ceased.

Geneva Study Bible

The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained;

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 2. - The fountains also of the deep, and the windows of heaven were stopped. וַיִּסָּכְרוּ, from סָכַר = סָגַר, to surround, to enclose; literally, were shut up; ἐπεκαλύφθησαν (LXX.). Their opening was described in Genesis 7:11. And the rain from heaven was restrained. וַיִּכָּלֵא, literally, was shut up, from כָּלָא, to close. Cf. κλείω, κωλύω, κολούω, celo, occulo (Gesenius, Furst), συνεσχέθη (LXX). At the end of the forty days (Genesis 7:12; Augustine, Willet); at the end of the 150 days (Aben Ezra, Murphy). Genesis 8:2

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

With the words, "then God remembered Noah and all the animals...in the ark," the narrative turns to the description of the gradual decrease of the water until the ground was perfectly dry. The fall of the water is described in the same pictorial style as its rapid rise. God's "remembering" was a manifestation of Himself, an effective restraint of the force of the raging element. He caused a wind to blow over the earth, so that the waters sank, and shut up the fountains of the deep, and the sluices of heaven, so that the rain from heaven was restrained. "Then the waters turned (ישׁבוּ i.e., flowed off) from the earth, flowing continuously (the inf. absol. ושׁוב הלוך expresses continuation), and decreased at the end of 150 days." The decrease first became perceptible when the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat on the 17th day of the seventh month; i.e.,, reckoning 30 days to a month, exactly 150 days after the flood commenced. From that time forth it continued without intermission, so that on the first day of the tenth month, probably 73 days after the resting of the ark, the tops of the mountains were seen, viz., the tops of the Armenian highlands, by which the ark was surrounded. Ararat was the name of a province (2 Kings 19:37), which is mentioned along with Minni (Armenia) as a kingdom in Jeremiah 51:27, probably the central province of the country of Armenia, which Moses v. Chorene calls Arairad, Araratia. The mountains of Ararat are, no doubt, the group of mountains which rise from the plain of the Araxes in two lofty peaks, the greater and lesser Ararat, the former 16,254 feet above the level of the sea, the latter about 12,000. This landing-place of the ark is extremely interesting in connection with the development of the human race as renewed after the flood. Armenia, the source of the rivers of paradise, has been called "a cool, airy, well-watered mountain-island in the midst of the old continent;" but Mount Ararat especially is situated almost in the middle, not only of the great desert route of Africa and Asia, but also of the range of inland waters from Gibraltar to the Baikal Sea-in the centre, too, of the longest line that can be drawn through the settlements of the Caucasian race and the Indo-Germanic tribes; and, as the central point of the longest land-line of the ancient world, from the Cape of Good Hope to the Behring Straits, it was the most suitable spot in the world, for the tribes and nations that sprang from the sons of Noah to descend from its heights and spread into every land (vid., K. v. Raumer, Palst. pp. 456ff.).