Genesis 8:1-5

When Moses wrote that God remembered someone (Genesis 8:1), he meant God extended mercy to him or her by delivering that person from death (here; cf. Genesis 19:29) or from barrenness (Genesis 30:22). [Note: Hamilton, p. 299.] God’s rescue of Noah foreshadows His deliverance of Israel in the Exodus (cf. Genesis 8:13-14 and Exodus 2:24; Exodus 14:21). [Note: Sailhamer, The Pentateuch . . ., p. 127; idem, "Genesis," p. 89.]

"’Ararat,’ known as ancient Urartu in Assyrian records, was an extensive territory and bordered the northern Mesopotamian region. It reached its political zenith in the ninth to sixth centuries B.C. Urartu surrounded Lake Van with boundaries taking in southeast Turkey, southern Russia, and northwest Iran. Among the mountains of modern Armenia is the impressive peak known today as Mount Ararat, some seventeen thousand feet in elevation, which the Turks call Byk Ari Da. ’Mount Ararat’ as a geographical designation comes from later tradition. During the eleventh to twelfth centuries A.D., it became the traditional site known as the place of Noah’s landing. Genesis 8:4, however, does not specify a peak and refers generally to its location as the ’mountains of Ararat.’ . . . The search for the ark’s artifacts has been both a medieval and a modern occupation; but to the skeptic such evidence is not convincing, and to the believer, while not irrelevant, it is not necessary to faith." [Note: Mathews, pp. 385-86.]

Modern Mt. Ararat lies on the border between Turkey and Armenia near the center of the ancient world. From this general region Noah’s descendants spread out over the earth. [Note: For a history of the evidence that Noah’s ark is still on Mt. Ararat, see Boice, 1:263-65. See also Tim LaHaye and John Morris, The Ark on Mt. Ararat, or Violet Cummings, Has Anybody Really Seen Noah’s Ark?]