Genesis 7

KJV · Chapter 7/50

¹And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.

²Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.

³Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.

⁴For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.

⁵And Noah did according unto all that the Lord commanded him.

⁶And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth.

⁷And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood.

⁸Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth,

⁹There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.

¹⁰And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.

¹¹In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

¹²And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

¹³In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark;

¹⁴They, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort.

¹⁵And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life.

¹⁶And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the Lord shut him in.

¹⁷And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth.

¹⁸And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters.

¹⁹And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.

²⁰Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.

²¹And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man:

²²All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.

²³And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.

²⁴And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.

📖 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

Genesis 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.
Genesis 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.
Genesis 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.
Genesis 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.
Genesis 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.
Genesis 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.
Genesis 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.
Genesis 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.
Genesis 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.
Genesis 7:10After the seven days of waiting announced in the previous chapter, the flood waters finally begin to fall on the earth.
Genesis 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.
Genesis 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.
Genesis 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.
Genesis 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.
Genesis 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.
Genesis 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.
Genesis 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.
Genesis 7:18The waters keep rising with force, and the ark floats freely on them, with no human control at all over where it goes.
Genesis 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.
Genesis 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.
Genesis 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.
Genesis 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.
Genesis 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.
Genesis 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.