Chapter 8

Verse 1 – “And God remembered Noah.” This is the faithfulness of the Lord. God always takes care of His own in any crisis in life.

Verse 2 – He stopped the fountains of the deep as well as the windows of heaven.

Verse 4 – the ark rested on Mount Ararat, a range on the edge of Armenia, the highest mountain being 16, 946 feet. This range is strategically located so that people leaving the ark could move in various compass directions and settle eventually on continents.

Noah used a procedure—two birds, the raven and the dove. The raven, verses 6,7. The raven did not come back. A raven is an unclean bird, it feeds upon carrion, the carcases of the dead. This was the first indication to Noah not to get out of the ark yet, the water was still everywhere, the bodies of the dead are still about in great numbers. If the raven had come back it would have meant there was no food on the outside and would have come back for food.

There is also a spiritual significance to the raven. The raven is a picture of the ruler of this world at the present time, feeding on the dead [spiritually dead], and that is Satan, the prince of the power of the air, going about seeking whom he may devour.

The second bird is the dove, verses 8-12. The dove has three flights. Verses 9 – “no place to rest.” The dove will not eat the carcases of the ground and will not even put its feet down upon the dead. Consequently, the dove came back to the ark after the first flight. Analogy: the dove is a picture of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. The Holy Spirit did not rest and abide in the Old Testament; He indwelt very few for a special job.

Verses 10-11, the second flight of the dove, “an olive leaf plucked.” This indicated that the water was removed from off the earth but the earth was not completely dry. This is a picture of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the Church Age. The dove came back with production. The purpose of the Holy Spirit in the Church Age is to produce in the believer what the believer cannot produce himself, works satisfying to God. The source of all is the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

Then in verse 12 the dove went out a third time and did not return, a sign that the waters had completely receded. Analogy: the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the Millennium when the third person of the Trinity will be poured out upon all flesh—Joel 2:28-32.

Verses 13-22, the removal of the signs of judgment, God’s command to repopulate the earth.

Verse 20 – “Noah builded an altar unto the Lord.” The altar speaks of the cross, and man cannot have fellowship with God apart from the cross. Noah took one of every clean animal and offered it to God.

Verse 21 – the offering was acceptable to God. Noah’s first thought and action after leaving the ark was to build an altar, not a house; not shelter for himself but fellowship with God. Here, then, Noah starts out with the right perspective, the right scale of values. This time his scale of values is good, the Lord is first.

Then we have the promise that the earth will never again be destroyed by flood.