Genesis 8:2

"Now the springs of the deep and the flood gates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky."  Genesis 8:2

 

In Genesis 7:11 the great springs of the deep burst forth and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.  Now these are closed as the waters are receding.  God is stopping the chaos from continuing to pour out over the face of the earth.  He didn't immediately just remove all the flood waters that were keeping Noah and his family trapped in the ark, but he did stop more from coming.

 

Even now we have times of trouble where it seems the bad just keeps on coming, but those times will come to an end.  When those times are over he will stop the struggles from multiplying.  He may not completely remove are trials and struggles, but he will keep them from utterly over running us.  And he will even stop more from coming while the current issues run their course and pass on by.  We have to trust God to keep us from being completely flooded and drowning.

Genesis 8:1

"But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded."  Genesis 8:1

God did not forget about Noah and just leave him to rot in the ark.  He didn't say, "Alright, I saved you from the flood, now you're on your own."  He remembered Noah and the struggles he was going through.

According to the QBible the word for "remembered" doesn't have to just mean to mentally recall, but it can also mean to "mention" or "record."  This is particularly interesting to me as the scriptures have already made several notes of God speaking out his thoughts.  In the first chapter of Genesis he speaks creation into existence, including mankind as he says in 1:26 "Let us make man in our image."  In 2:18 he notes that it wasn't good for man to be alone and created woman and in 3:22 God talks of how man has become like God, knowing good and evil.  Again in 6:3, he states that he will not put up with man forever.  Now he is bringing to mind, whether verbally or just to his own mental thoughts, Noah and all the living things with him in the ark.

 

There seems to be a clear theme of the power of God's spoken word, and now Noah was not just a passing thought, but God deliberately brought him to mind and remembered Noah.  And then he sent a wind over the earth to decrease the flood waters.

The word for wind can also be translated as breath or spirit.  Maybe the wind is God's breath or maybe it was a spirit he sent or maybe it was all three.  I don't know, but what is clear is that God sent it and while the scripture doesn't outright say that the wind caused the waters to go down - that does seem to be the clear implication.  God sent a wind or a spirit or just breathed over the waters and then the waters receded.

How great it is to think that God will remember us in times of trials or struggles and he will send relief!

Genesis 7:24

“The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.”  Genesis 7:24

From verse 12, we know that it rained for 40 days and nights, but verse 11 also tells us that the springs of the deep burst forth.  Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible states that "the waters either grew higher and higher, or rather continued to prevail, and did not decrease."

I would assume that this verse is referring to those deep springs.  From those the water kept coming and flooding the earth for 150 days.  That's about 5 months.  Not even your best swimmers could last 5 months.

The Gregg Hunter from the Fort Howard Community Church compares Noah and his family's flood-enforced quarantine and isolation to today's pandemic.  He goes on to the next few verses to remind us that God did not forget about Noah in that time.  Let us also know that God will not forget about us.  This pandemic will pass and before we know it, it will only be a memory.