Page:A Jewish Interpretation of the Book of Genesis (Morgenstern, 1919, jewishinterpreta00morg).pdf/94

 The Book of Genesis

76

Lesson IV

THE FLOOD (Genesis VI-IX)

Noah was in his generations a man Noah walked with God. (Genesis VI, Have

righteous and wholehearted; 9.)

any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the and not rather that he should return from his ways, and (Ezekiel XVIII, 23.) I

Lord God live?



Read Isaiah LV, It

6-9.

has been said by eminent scholars that the thought of

and become the one of the most com-

a great flood which once swept over the entire earth,

from which only one human pair escaped,

new hinnan

progenitors of a

mon and

race,

is

universal motives of mythology.

shown

A

to

great

German

well-known book,^ that almost all primitive peoples had a flood-myth in some form or other. Our ancestors were no exceptions to this rule. The story of the flood is for many reasons one of the most interesting scholar has

in the entire

A

a

Bible.

number

narrative.

in

of

One

apparent

difficulties

verse (VI, 19;

cf.,

exist

also VII,

two of every kind of animal were brought

in

the

Biblical

15), tells that into

the

ark,

while a verse somewhat later (VII, 3), puts the number at seven pairs of every clean, and one pair of every unclean animal.

Now

the flood

is

represented as lasting forty days

and forty nights (VII, 12, 17; VIII, 6), and again as continuing for exactly one year. Other, though not quite so 1

Hermann Uscner, VAc

Sinfflutsagc.