Genesis 8:13

13. First month Noah waits another month before removing the covering of the ark, and nearly two months more before he went forth . The successive epochs are given with the minutest accuracy, removing the narrative entirely from the region of the poetical or mythical, as will

be seen by the following comparison of texts which form the Noachian calendar:

The whole time that Noah remained in the ark was, then, one year (probably a lunar year is meant) and ten days, making, as nearly as is possible to be expressed in days, a solar year of three hundred and sixty-five days. What kind of a year and month is here intended is a question yet discussed among chronologists; from comparing Genesis 7:11, and Genesis 8:3-4, we find that five months were reckoned as one hundred and fifty days, and this points to months of thirty days each, and a year of twelve such months, or three hundred and sixty, or by the addition of the five intercalary days, three hundred and sixty-five days, that is, the solar year . The Hebrew year at the time of the Exodus was evidently lunar; but the Egyptians, as appears from their monuments, were before this time acquainted with the year of three hundred and sixty-five days. The Jewish lunar year consisted of three hundred and fifty-four days, and if this be intended, Noah remained in the ark just a solar year.

Noah removed the covering of the ark מכסה . This word is elsewhere used only of the badger-skin and ram-skin coverings spread upon the holy vessels in the tabernacle, the ark of the testimony, etc . , and this usage would seem to imply that in the present case some such covering was spread on the top of the ark . We suppose that it was some kind of flexible, and probably semi-transparent, covering thrown over the windows which ran the whole length on both sides of the ridge, and which would shed the rain, while it could be easily removed in fair weather . See note on Genesis 6:16.