8:1–5 “But God remembered Noah” highlights this verse as the turning point in the flood narrative. Up to this point God has been bringing destruction upon the earth; from here onward he begins to restore what he has destroyed. Yet grammatically speaking the vav-consecutive imperfect form is more commonly conjunctive than disjunctive, so we might as easily translate “And God remembered Noah” (KJV; NJPS). Furthermore, speaking of God’s remembering Noah does mean he forgot Noah for the duration of the rains and then suddenly recalled him to mind and so began to dry up the flood. Rather, throughout this whole period of destruction and restoration God has remembered Noah and watched over him and his ark, keeping its occupants safe from all harm. “Remembering” in Hebrew is always more than a mental activity; it includes the appropriate actions that flow from such knowledge. Hence the term is used often to describe the behavior that follows from a prior commitment, such as a covenant. To “remember a covenant” is to keep its conditions and fulfill its obligations, while to “forget” it is to disobey it (Ex. 2:24; 6:5).

God’s re-creative work begins just as his creative work did,143 with his sending a Spirit/wind (Hb. ruakh) upon the face of the chaotic waters (Gen. 8:1; cf. 1:2). Just as the work of destruction was no mere natural process but God’s work, so too the restoration process rests on God’s decision and follows his exact timeline. The twin sources of the water for the flood, the fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven, are closed up (8:2; cf. 7:11)—the rain ceases and the earth begins to dry out. The 150 days the water takes to dry up (8:3) equal the 150 days the rain “prevailed on the earth” (7:24), so that the ark comes to rest five months after the rain began (five thirty-day months equal 150 days), on the seventeenth day of the seventh month (8:4; cf. 7:11). The seventh month of the Jewish calendar would later include the Feast of Booths, when the Israelites would camp out for a week to remember the wilderness wanderings and look forward to their heavenly inheritance (Lev. 23:24–43), making this date a fitting one for the ark’s wilderness wanderings to end and for it to find rest (vattanakh; Gen. 8:4). This is probably not the “rest” for which Noah’s father, Lamech, named him (nuakh; 5:29 ESV mg.), but it is a fitting play on his name.

Ararat, upon whose mountains the ark finishes its journey, is usually identified with Urartu, a region in northern Mesopotamia now part of Turkey. The modern-day Mount Ararat came to be associated with Noah only in the eleventh or twelfth century AD, however. There is no biblical record of any subsequent interest in this region; it did not form a place of pilgrimage for God’s people, perhaps in part because of the significant distance involved and the uncertainty of its exact location. However, even Mount Sinai was not generally considered a place of religious interest in biblical times after Israel departed from its sojourn there.144 There was only one place worthy of pilgrimage for God’s people, and that was the place where God chose to place his name: Jerusalem.

8:6–13 Even though the ark finds its rest, the occupants must wait a considerable time before it is safe to leave the ark. It is another two and a half months before the tops of the mountains become visible (8:5); the lengthy process of renovation is striking in contrast to the rapid process of creation in Genesis 1. Indeed, waiting is a key theme of this section (vv. 10, 12). Forty days pass before Noah sends out a raven; it fails to return, presumably satisfied with the endless supplies of carrion for it to eat. Then he sends out a dove three times, at weekly intervals, with different results each time. The first time the dove comes back with nothing, having found no place to alight (v. 9); the second time it comes back with a fresh olive twig in its mouth, a sign of hope that the trees are growing above the remaining waters (v. 11); the third time it does not return, presumably because it now finds the earth to be habitable (v. 12).

The significance of the raven and the dove lies in the fact that they are opposites: the raven is an unclean bird, while the dove is not only a clean bird but one suitable for sacrifice. The raven’s self-sufficient attitude is suggestive; it does not return to the ark but forges its own path in the new world independently, while the dove meekly returns repeatedly to Noah until it has conveyed to him the message that all is safe. The combined impact of the raven and the dove is ominous, however, suggesting that, though the world Noah is inheriting is new, the old sinful tendencies have not been entirely wiped out by the flood (cf. v. 21).

Finally, on the first day of Noah’s 601st year in this world, it is time to open the roof of the ark and survey the scene (v. 13). The first day of a year was considered an auspicious day for a major religious undertaking such as consecrating or reconsecrating a sacred building (e.g., Ex. 40:2; 2 Chron. 29:17), so it seems a fitting day to start afresh in the new world God has given Noah and his family. The face of the ground, from which the Lord had determined to blot out every living creature (Gen. 7:4, 23), is finally dry (8:13).

8:14–19 Even then, with the face of the ground “dry,” it is still not time to leave the ark. That awaits the twenty-seventh day of the second month, when “the earth had dried out” (v. 14). The difference between the two dates suggests the time needed for the surface water to disappear and the ground to dry out sufficiently enough to allow Noah and his family to walk on it. More importantly, however, it seems that Noah is waiting for divine sanction to leave the ark. Just as God had told Noah when it was time for him and his menagerie to enter the ark (7:1–4), so Noah must wait until God tells him it is time to leave (8:15–17). The parallels are striking: just as Noah was told to enter the ark with his wife, his sons, and their wives, now he must leave with the same people. The birds, animals, and creeping things that he took in with him must now be brought out by him, so that they may once again be fruitful and multiply on the earth (v. 17; cf. 1:22). And it is so. Noah obeys this commandment too, as detailed in 8:18–19—verses that seem to underline the fact that not one creature is missing out of all those Noah had brought with him onto the ark. The God who shut Noah into the ark has remembered him and his cargo and brought them safely through the watery trial to a new beginning on the other side.

8:20–22 The first action Noah takes upon emerging from the ark is to build an altar and offer sacrifices (v. 20). Open-air altars could be simple affairs, not requiring a priest to tend them, as a sanctuary would. For that reason these are commonly where the patriarchs offer their sacrifices (e.g., Gen. 12:7, 8; 13:18). This offering is not a minkhah, a tribute offering, such as Cain and Abel offered (4:3, 4), but rather a whole burnt offering (Hb. ʿolah; lit., “ascending offering”), the first explicit atoning sacrifice to be recorded.145 The whole burnt offering stands in place of the person offering it, who identifies it as representing him by laying hands on the animal (i.e., by leaning on it).146 It is a ransom payment given to God, frequently with a strong undertone of atonement and substitution (e.g., Lev. 1:4).147 Here the clean animals and birds suffer the judgment of death that Noah and his family have escaped by grace. The deaths of those animals and birds substitute for redeemed humanity, as it stands represented in Noah and his family.

Particularly striking is the impact this sacrifice is said to have on God: he smells the pleasing smoke of the “ascending offering” and is pacified by it (Gen. 8:21). There is another play on Noah’s name here: the Hebrew for “pleasing” (nikhoakh) sounds similar to Noah’s name (noakh)—it is a “rest-giving” aroma. We even hear God’s inmost thoughts: because of Noah’s sacrifice, never again will the Lord bring a flood of similar magnitude upon the earth—even though148 the nature of mankind has not changed. Nor will God add to the curse that already exists on the ground (though neither is the curse on the ground lifted, as human experience makes all too clear). The power to bring delight to God’s wounded heart resides not in the sacrifices themselves but in that to which they point: the atoning work of Christ, which provides lasting hope even for deeply broken and sinful people like us (Heb. 10:4–10).

Noah’s sacrifice is a faithful response to the deliverance he has received, thanking God and seeking atonement for his own sins and those of his family. God receives that offering, just as he received Abel’s offering earlier (cf. Gen. 4:4), and he commits himself to preserving the fundamental distinctions that keep the world in balance, “seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night” (8:22)—distinctions that had been dissolved in the flood. God also blesses Noah and his renewed covenant with him (cf. 9:9); in this way Noah and God continue to walk together (cf. 6:9).