this, the tender loving-kindness of Jehovah appears in such expressions as these: "It repented Jehovah that

He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him" - literally, "it pained into His heart." The one term, of

course, explains the other. When we read that God repented, it is only our human way of speaking, for, as

Calvin says, "nothing happens by accident, or that has not been foreseen." It brings before our minds "the

sorrow of Divine love over the sins of man," in the words of Calvin, "that when the terrible sins of man

offend God, it is not otherwise than as if His heart had been wounded by extreme sorrow." The consequence

was, that God declared He wo uld destroy "from the face of the earth both man and beast," - the latter, owing

to the peculiar connection in which creation was placed with man, as being its lord, which involved it in the

ruin and punishment that befell man. But long before that sentence was actually executed, God had declared,

"My Spirit shall not always strive with man," - or rather, "dwell with man," "bear rule," or "preside," among

them, - "for that he also is flesh," or, as some have rendered it, "since in his erring," or aberration, he has

become wholly "carnal, sensual, devilish;" "yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years;" that is, a

further space of a hundred and twenty years would in mercy be granted them, before the final judgments

should burst. It was during these hundred and twenty years that "the long-suffering of God waited," "while

the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water."

For, to the universal corruption of that generation, there was one exception - Noah. It needs no more t han

simply to put together the notices of Noah, in the order in which Scripture places them: "But Noah found

grace in the eyes of Jehovah;" and again: "Noah was a just man, and perfect" - as the Hebrew word implies,

spiritually upright, genuine, inwardly entire and complete, one whose heart had a single aim - "in his

generations," or among his contemporaries; and lastly, "Noah walked with God," - this expression being the

same as in the case of Enoch. The mention of his finding grace in the eyes of Jehovah precedes that of his

"justice," which describes his moral bearing towards God; while this justice was again the outcome of

inward spiritual rectitude, or of what under the fuller light of the New Testament we would designate a heart

renewed by the Holy Spirit. The whole was summed up and completed in an Enoch-like walk with God. The

statement that Noah found grace is like the forth-bursting of the sun in a sky lowering for the storm. Three

times the sacred text repeats it, that the earth was corrupt, adding that it was full of violence, just as if the

watchful eye of the Lord, who "looked upon the earth," had been searching and trying the children of men,

and was lingering in pity over it, before judgment was allowed to descend.

Nor was this all. Even so, "the long-suffering of God waited" for one hundred and twenty years, "while the

ark was a preparing;" and during this time, especially, Noah must have acted as "a preacher of

righteousness." The building of the ark commenced when Noah was four hundred and eighty years old; that

is, before any of his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, had been born, - in fact, just twenty years before

the birth of Shem. Thus the great faith of Noah appeared not only in building an ark in the midst of a

scoffing and unbelieving generation, and that against all human probability of its ever being needed, and

one hundred and twenty years before it was actually required, but in providing room for "his sons" and his

"sons' wives," while as yet he himself was childless! Indeed, the more we try to realize the circumstances,

the more grand appears the unshaken confidence of the patriarch. The words in which God announced His

purpose were these: "The end of all flesh is come before Me," - that is, as some have explained it, the

extreme limit of human depravity; - "for the earth is filled with violence through them," - that is, violence

proceeding from them ("from before their faces"), - "and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth." Noah

and his family were alone to be preserved, and that by means of an "ark," - an expression which only occurs

once more in reference to the ark of bulrushes in which Moses was saved. (Exodus 2:3-5) Noah was to

construct his ark of "gopher," most likely cypress wood, and to "pitch it within and without with pitch." The

ark was to be three hundred cubits long, fifty broad, and thirty high; that is, reckoning the cubit at one foot

and a half, four hundred and fifty feet long, seventy-five broad, and forty-five high.16

As the wording of the Hebrew text imp lies, there was all around the top, one cubit below the roof, an

opening for light and for air (rendered in our version "window"), in which, it has been suggested, some

translucent substance like our glass may have been inserted. Here there seems also to have been a regular

"window," which is afterwards specially referred to (ch. 8:6). The door was to be in the side of the ark, which

was arranged in three stories of rooms (literally "cells"), or the accommodation of all the animals in the ark,