Testimonia — Early Christian Bible Commentary
Genesis 8 · World English Bible
1God remembered Noah, all the animals, and all the livestock that were with him in the ship; and God made a wind to pass over the earth. The waters subsided.
2The deep’s fountains and the sky’s windows were also stopped, and the rain from the sky was restrained.
3The waters continually receded from the earth. After the end of one hundred fifty days the waters receded.
4The ship rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on Ararat’s mountains.
5The waters receded continually until the tenth month. In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were visible.
6At the end of forty days, Noah opened the window of the ship which he had made,
7and he sent out a raven. It went back and forth, until the waters were dried up from the earth.
8He himself sent out a dove to see if the waters were abated from the surface of the ground,
9but the dove found no place to rest her foot, and she returned into the ship to him, for the waters were on the surface of the whole earth. He put out his hand, and took her, and brought her to him into the ship.
10He waited yet another seven days; and again he sent the dove out of the ship.
11The dove came back to him at evening and, behold, in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters were abated from the earth.
12He waited yet another seven days, and sent out the dove; and she didn’t return to him any more.
13In the six hundred first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from the earth. Noah removed the covering of the ship, and looked. He saw that the surface of the ground was dry.
14In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry.
15God spoke to Noah, saying,
16“Go out of the ship, you, your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives with you.
17Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh, including birds, livestock, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, that they may breed abundantly on the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply on the earth.”
18Noah went out, with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives with him.
19Every animal, every creeping thing, and every bird, whatever moves on the earth, after their families, went out of the ship.
20Noah built an altar to the LORD, and took of every clean animal, and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.
21The LORD smelled the pleasant aroma. The LORD said in his heart, “I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake because the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth. I will never again strike every living thing, as I have done.
22While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night will not cease.”
World English Bible · World English Bible; source eBible.org.
Notes on Genesis 8
1871 (English edition) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)
Gen. viii. 4, 5.
Editorial footnote · The City of God, THE CITY OF GOD. / BOOK FIFTEENTH. / ARGUMENT., editorial note Footnote_174_174 · Original source
1885 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)
[They did not Sabbatize; but Justin does not deny what is implied in many Scriptures, that they marked the week, and noted the seventh day. Gen. ii. 3, Gen. viii. 10, 12.]
Editorial footnote · Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter XIX.—Circumcision unknown before Abraham. The law was given by Moses on account of the hardness of their hearts., editorial note cite_note-45 · Original source
1888 (historical English edition; physical printing year uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)
Gen. viii. 7.
Editorial footnote · Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew, Homily 5, editorial note cite_note-17 · Original source
1888 (historical English edition; physical printing year uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)
Gen. viii. 6, 9.
Editorial footnote · Tractates on the Gospel of John, Tractate 6, editorial note cite_note-3 · Original source
1888 (historical English edition; physical printing year uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)
Gen. viii. 8–11.
Editorial footnote · Tractates on the Gospel of John, Tractate 7, editorial note cite_note-5 · Original source
1894 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)
Gen. viii. 21.
Editorial footnote · Conferences of John Cassian, Part III, Chapter I.; original source section: Chapter 1; original book/conference: XXIII. The Third Conference of Abbot Theonas., editorial note cite_note-2 · Original source
Date uncertain | Ambrose of Milan
68. For there are spiritual nostrils, as we read, which the spouse of the Word has, to whom it is said: “And the smell of thy nostrils;” and in another place: “The Lord smelled a smell of sweetness.” There are, then, as it were, inward members of a man, whose hands are considered to be in action, his ears in hearing, his feet in a kind of progress in a good work. And so from what is done we gather as it were figures of the members, for it is not suitable for us to imagine anything in the inner man after a fleshly manner.
Source passage · edition’s verse reference · On the Holy Spirit, Chapter VII., source paragraph 10 · Original source
Date uncertain | Augustine of Hippo
these same afflictions, they exult with loud voices, whereby it is made manifest that they are ravens, not doves. It was with good reason that a raven was sent forth from the ark, and returned not again; a dove was sent forth, and it returned. These two birds Noah sent forth. He had there the raven, and also the dove. That ark contained both kinds; and if the ark was a figure of the Church, you see indeed that in the present deluge of the world, the Church must of necessity contain both kinds, as well the raven as the dove. Who are the ravens? They who seek their own. Who are the doves? They who seek the things that are Christ’s.
Source passage · edition’s verse reference · Tractates on the Gospel of John, Tractate 6, source paragraph 5 · Original source