Genesis 8:4

4. The ark rested Here is the reason of the statement made in the previous verse; at the end of five months, or one hundred and fifty days, it is known that the waters had begun to diminish, because the ark, which had hitherto floated freely, now caught ground, and finally rested . It is not likely that the year of the flood was reckoned from Abib, the beginning of the sacred year as established at the Exodus; but, as the Speaker’s Commentary observes, about the autumnal equinox . “If so, the seventeenth day of the second month (Genesis 7:11) would bring us to the middle of November, the beginning of the wintry or rainy season . … With regard to the forty days’ rain, it seems pretty certain that these were not additional to, but part of, the one hundred and fifty days of the prevalence of the flood . Supposing the above calculation to be correct, we have the very remarkable coincidences that on the seventeenth day of Abib (five months later than November) the ark rested on Ararat; on the seventeenth of Abib the Israelites passed the Red Sea, and on the seventeenth of Abib our Lord rose from the dead.”

Upon the mountains of Ararat Not the mount or double peak now called Ararat, which from its height, steepness, ruggedness, and cold (the summit is higher than Mont Blanc) would have been totally unsuited for the ark’s resting-place, but the highlands of the country or district of Ararat, probably the central province of Armenia. Von Raumer has shown that this was the most suitable spot in the world for the cradle of the human race. “A cool, airy, well-watered mountain-island in the midst of the old continent,” whence the waters descend toward the Black, Caspian, and Mediterranean Seas and the Persian Gulf. At the center of the longest land-line of the ancient world from Behring Straits to the Cape of Good Hope, it stood in the great highways of colonization, near the seats of the greatest nations of antiquity.