Genesis 7:1 - Exposition

And the Lord , Jehovah , since Elohim now appears as the covenant God, though this change in the Divine name is commonly regarded by modern critics as betraying the hand of a Jehovist supplementer of the fundamental document of the Elohist (Bleek, Vaihinger, Davidson, Kalisch, Colense, Alford); but "that the variations in the name of God furnish no criterion by which to detect different documents is evident enough from the fact that in Genesis 7:5 Noah does as Jehovah commands him, while in Genesis 7:16 Elohim alternates with Jehovah" (Keil). Said unto Noah . At the end of the 120 years, when the building of the ark had been completed, and only seven days before the Flood—doubtless by an audible voice still speaking to him from between the cherubim, which we can suppose had not yet vanished from the earth. Come thou and all thy house into the ark . I .e. prepare for entering; the actual entry taking place seven days later. So God ever hides his people before the storm bursts (cf. Isaiah 26:20 ). For thee have I seen righteous ( vide Genesis 6:9 ) before me . Literally, before my face ; not merely notifying the Divine observance of Noah's piety, but announcing the fact of his justification in God's sight. "To be righteous before God," the usual Scriptural phrase for justification (cf. Psalms 143:2 ). In this generation . Vide Genesis 6:9 . Indicating not alone the sphere of Noah's godly life, but its exceptional character; "involving an opposing sentence of condemnation against his contemporaries" (Lange).