Gênesis 7

ARC · Chapter 7/50

¹Depois disse o Senhor a Noé: Entra tu e toda a tua casa na arca: porque te hei visto justo diante de mim n'esta geração.

²De todo o animal limpo tomarás para ti sete e sete, macho e sua femea; mas dos animaes que não são limpos, dois, o macho e sua femea.

³Tambem das aves dos céus sete e sete, macho e femea, para conservar em vida a semente sobre a face de toda a terra.

⁴Porque, passados ainda sete dias, farei chover sobre a terra quarenta dias e quarenta noites; e desfarei de sobre a face da terra toda a substancia que fiz.

⁵E fez Noé conforme a tudo o que o Senhor lhe ordenára.

⁶E era Noé da edade de seiscentos annos, quando o diluvio das aguas veiu sobre a terra.

⁷E entrou Noé, e seus filhos, e sua mulher, e as mulheres de seus filhos com elle na arca, por causa das aguas do diluvio.

⁸Dos animaes limpos, e dos animaes que não são limpos, e das aves, e de todo o reptil sobre a terra,

⁹Entraram de dois em dois a Noé na arca, macho e femea, como Deus ordenára a Noé.

¹⁰E aconteceu que, passados sete dias, vieram sobre a terra as aguas do diluvio.

¹¹No anno seiscentos da vida de Noé, no mez segundo, aos dezesete dias do mez, n'aquelle mesmo dia se romperam todas as fontes do grande abysmo, e as janellas dos céus se abriram,

¹²E houve chuva sobre a terra quarenta dias e quarenta noites.

¹³E no mesmo dia entrou Noé, e Sem, e Cão, e Japhet, os filhos de Noé, como tambem a mulher de Noé, e as tres mulheres de seus filhos com elle na arca.

¹⁴Elles, e todo o animal conforme a sua especie, e todo o gado conforme a sua especie, e todo o reptil que se roja sobre a terra conforme a sua especie, e toda a ave conforme a sua especie, todo o passaro de toda a qualidade.

¹⁵E de toda a carne, em que havia espirito de vida, entraram de dois em dois a Noé na arca.

¹⁶E os que entraram, macho e femea de toda a carne entraram, como Deus lhe tinha ordenado: e o Senhor o fechou por fóra.

¹⁷E esteve o diluvio quarenta dias sobre a terra, e cresceram as aguas, e levantaram a arca, e ella se elevou sobre a terra.

¹⁸E prevaleceram as aguas, e cresceram grandemente sobre a terra; e a arca andava sobre as aguas.

¹⁹E as aguas prevaleceram excessivamente sobre a terra; e todos os altos montes, que havia debaixo de todo o céu, foram cobertos.

²⁰Quinze covados acima prevaleceram as aguas; e os montes foram cobertos.

²¹E expirou toda a carne que se movia sobre a terra, tanto de ave como de gado e de feras, e de todo o reptil que se roja sobre a terra, e todo o homem.

²²Tudo o que tinha folego de espirito de vida em seus narizes, tudo o que havia no secco, morreu.

²³Assim foi desfeita toda a substancia que havia sobre a face da terra, desde o homem até ao animal, até ao reptil, e até á ave dos céus; e foram extinctos da terra: e ficou somente Noé, e os que com elle estavam na arca.

²⁴E prevaleceram as aguas sobre a terra cento e cincoenta dias.

📖 Chapter study

Summary

Noah enters the ark with his family and the animals, as God had commanded, and the flood covers the whole earth, destroying every living thing outside the ark.

Explanation

The chapter narrates the exact fulfillment of what God had planned: Noah obeys 'according unto all that the LORD commanded him,' a repeated phrase that highlights his faithfulness. The animals entering two by two (and the clean ones, seven by seven), and the door being shut 'by the LORD,' show that final protection comes directly from God, not merely from human effort. The waters prevailed for 150 days, covering even the highest mountains, in a description that emphasizes the totality of the judgment on the earth's wickedness. Despite the tragedy, the text highlights that 'Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark' — the ark is the place of safety amid chaos. Throughout Christian history, this account has been read as a picture of how faith and obedience preserve life in the midst of judgment.

Fun facts

The flood is dated with precision on Noah's calendar (the second month, the seventeenth day, in the six hundredth year of his life), a detailed chronological style that appears throughout the account, giving it the tone of a historical chronicle rather than mere legend.
Accounts of a great flood appear in various ancient Near Eastern cultures, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh (Mesopotamian), which scholars see as a shared memory of an ancestral catastrophe, although the biblical account is distinguished by its theological focus on the justice and grace of a single God.

Verse-by-verse explanation

Gênesis 7:1God calls Noah to enter the ark, giving the reason: he is the only one ‘righteous’ in this generation. It’s the final invitation before the rain begins, fulfilling the plan announced in the previous chapter.
Gênesis 7:2Long before the laws Moses would later write, the text already separates the ‘clean’ animals — the ones that could be eaten and used in sacrifice — from the rest. The King James Version says Noah is to take them ‘by sevens,’ meaning seven pairs of each clean animal, not seven loose creatures: that extra margin is what lets Noah sacrifice some of them after leaving the ark, in 8:20, without risking wiping out the species. Of the animals that were not clean, one pair was enough, just to make sure they wouldn’t disappear.
Gênesis 7:3The same rule for clean animals — seven pairs — also applies to the birds, ensuring there would be enough birds for sacrifices and to repopulate the sky after the flood.
Gênesis 7:4The number forty shows up several times in the Bible tied to periods of testing or waiting — the forty days of the flood, the forty years in the wilderness, and later Jesus’s forty days of fasting. For the ancient Hebrews, this number carried almost the weight of a fixed expression, a way of saying a full, complete stretch of time, not necessarily an exact count that has to line up with the modern calendar.
Gênesis 7:5This repeats, almost word for word, what had already been said at the end of chapter 6: Noah did exactly everything God commanded, without straying from the instruction.
Gênesis 7:6This marks Noah’s age when the flood begins: 600 years old. From here on, the rest of the flood story will be dated by his age.
Gênesis 7:7Noah enters the ark with his whole family: his wife, his three sons, and their wives — eight people in all, the only group of humans who will survive the flood.
Gênesis 7:8Before telling how the animals came in, the text lists the categories that will board: clean, unclean, birds, and creeping things — covering every form of life on land and in the air.
Gênesis 7:9The animals enter the ark in pairs, just as God had commanded — the fulfillment of the detailed instructions given to Noah in chapter 6.
Gênesis 7:10After the seven days of waiting announced in the previous chapter, the flood waters finally begin to fall on the earth.
Gênesis 7:11The text dates the start of the flood by Noah’s age — the six hundredth year of his life — and by months counted within the calendar of that time, which doesn’t match ours exactly. This dating serves to anchor the story to a precise point within the book’s chronology, even though today there’s no way to convert those months into January, February, and so on.
Gênesis 7:12This confirms the length of the rain God announced: forty days and forty nights straight — a period that, in the Bible, tends to mark times of testing or waiting.
Gênesis 7:13This repeats, in more detail, who entered the ark: Noah, his three sons by name — Shem, Ham, and Japheth — and the four women of the family, on the very day the rain began.
Gênesis 7:14Along with Noah’s family, the animals of every kind enter too: cattle, creeping things, birds of every sort — the text keeps repeating the phrase ‘after his kind,’ used since chapter 1.
Gênesis 7:15This sums up what the previous verses described in detail: every living thing that breathes entered the ark in pairs, following the order God gave.
Gênesis 7:16After everyone enters, it is the LORD Himself who shuts the door of the ark — not Noah — a detail that reinforces that the family’s protection came directly from God, not from some latch.
Gênesis 7:17As the water rises, the ark begins to float, lifting above the earth — the moment the vessel Noah built starts to serve its purpose.
Gênesis 7:18The waters keep rising with force, and the ark floats freely on them, with no human control at all over where it goes.
Gênesis 7:19The rising water reaches the point of covering even the highest mountains that existed — a way of describing the total extent of the destruction, leaving no high ground untouched.
Gênesis 7:20‘Fifteen cubits’ comes to about 22 feet — that’s the depth the text says the water rose above the highest mountains. It’s the same unit of measure used for the ark’s dimensions, the cubit, based on the length of a human arm.
Gênesis 7:21This describes the flood’s consequence: every form of life on earth — birds, cattle, beasts, creeping things, and human beings — perishes, drowned in the waters.
Gênesis 7:22This repeats the same idea from the previous verse with different words: everything that breathed on dry land died, driving home how complete the destruction was.
Gênesis 7:23This sums up the flood’s outcome: all life on earth was wiped out, and only Noah and those with him in the ark survived — exactly the group that had entered in the previous verses.
Gênesis 7:24The waters stayed high for 150 days before beginning to recede, counted from the start of the flood — the longest period mentioned in this part of the story.