Devotional on Genesis 7-8

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Genesis 7:1-8:22

As I am apt to do when writing something brief about a Bible reading, I write about features that are particularly interesting and perhaps more often overlooked.

An interesting feature of today’s reading appears in 8:13.

In the six hundred first year, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from the earth; and Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and saw that the face of the ground was dry.

What month was that? It was the first month, Nisan/Abib, and the first day. The writer is using the Jewish calendar to report the date of the beginning of the end of the flood. The Jewish calendar was established in Exodus 12:2 when the Passover was instituted. The date emphasizes the liturgical importance of the flood. The coincidence of the name of Noah’s boat (ark) and the name of the furniture in the tabernacle that represented God’s presence and covenant (ark) is really no coincidence. One is God’s salvation in the flood. The other is God’s salvation in the Exodus. Both are closely tied to covenant (Genesis 6:18; Exodus 25:16). The first day of the first month is also the date the first tabernacle was dedicated (Exodus 40:2).

In New Testament times, the flood and the Exodus were both treated as symbolic of Christian salvation. For example, Peter links God’s patience during Noah’s construction of the ark and his eventual salvation in the flood with Christian baptism. He says,

And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ…. (1 Peter 3:17)

Similarly, Paul links God’s salvation in the Exodus with Christian baptism in 1 Corinthians.

I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.

For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. (1 Corinthians 10:1-4; 12:13)

In the above reading, Paul emphasizes two important facts about baptism. Firstly, it is critical that God’s people commit themselves to a life of righteousness or else God’s saving act will not profit them. Secondly, baptism is supposed to link fellow believers together in productive fellowship. Let us commit ourselves today to righteousness and Christian fellowship.