What Does Genesis 8:4 Mean?

(4) **The seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month.**—As the months had each thirty days (see Note on Genesis 8:14), this makes exactly 150 days (see Genesis 7:11). The seventh civil month would be Abib; and the *Speaker’s Commentary *notices the following remarkable coincidences:—“On the 17th day of Abib the ark rested on Mount Ararat; on the 17th day of Abib the Israelites passed over the Red Sea; on the 17th day of Abib, Christ, our Lord, rose again from the dead.” **Ararat.**—If in Genesis 11:2 the Authorised Version is right in saying that the descendants of Noah travelled “from the east” to Shinar, this could not be the Ararat of Armenia. Moreover, we are told that the word in, Assyrian means “highland,” and thus may signify any hilly country. In the *Chaldean Genesis *the ark rests upon Nizir, a region to the east of Assyria, the highest peak of which, now named Elwend, is called in the cuneiform texts “the mountain of the world” ( *Chaldean Genesis, *p. 307). The rendering, however, “from the east,” is by no means certain, and many translate “eastward,” and even the Authorised Version renders the word *east, *that is, eastward, in Genesis 13:11. In 2Kings 19:37 *“*Ararat” is translated Armenia; but it is more correctly described in Jeremiah 51:27 as a country near Minni, that is, near Armenia. There are in this region two mountains of great altitude, the Aghri-Dagh and the Kara-Dagh, the highest of which is 17,260 feet above the sea-level; and naturally legend chooses this as the place where the ark settled. But the inspired narrative says that it rested “upon the mountains of Ararat,” upon some chain of hills there, and seventy-three days afterwards Noah found himself surrounded by an amphitheatre of mountains, the word used in Genesis 8:5 being emphatic, and signifying “the tops of the mountains became distinctly visible,” and not that they had just begun to emerge. For, doubtless, after so vast a flood, mists and vapours would for a long time prevail, and shut out the surrounding world from Noah’s view. The Targum of Onkelos and the Syriac translate “on the mountains of Carduchia.” This range, which separates Armenia from Kurdistan, is regarded by many authorities as the hills really meant, because, as they are nearer the place whence the ark started, the difficulty regarding the course taken by it is not so insuperable.