8. Righteous Noah.

8. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord (God).

"And Noah found grace..." A phrase quite analogous to what was said earlier about Enoch, "and Enoch please God" (Slavonic, LXX) and having corresponding parallels elsewhere in the Bible (Luke I:30 [404]; Acts VII:46 [405] and others).

9. Here is the life of Noah: Noah was a righteous and blameless man in his generation; Noah walked with God.

"This is the life of Noah..." This is the beginning of a new biblical section, the story of the righteous Noah and the global Flood (VI:9–IX:29).

"Noah was a righteous man and blameless in his generation...", i.e., he was morally pure and whole (tamim in Hebrew), standing out from among his vicious contemporaries, whose unsightly moral characterization is given to us by Jesus Christ himself and the apostles (Matthew XXIV:37-38 [406] and parallels, cf. 1 Peter III:20 [392]). The very review of Noah is repeated almost verbatim in a friend. (Ezekiel XIV:19–20 [407]; Sir XLV:16 [408]; Hebrews XI:7 [409]).

"Noah walked with God..." The conclusion of Noah's characterization is a trait already familiar to us from the story of Enoch (V:24). In the sacred language of the Bible, this is a special form in which a completely moral character was usually revealed among sinful contemporaries.

10. Noah begat three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. 11. But the earth was corrupted in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with wickedness. 12. And God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had perverted its way on the earth. 13. And God said to Noah, "The end of all flesh has come before me, for the earth is filled with wickedness because of them; and behold, I will destroy them from the earth.

The four verses in this section are an almost literal repetition of the above in verses V:32; VI:5–7. But this should not confuse anyone: since in verse 9 of this chapter, as we have noted, a new history began, the story of Noah and the flood, which originally formed a special and independent narrative, such a repetition is more than natural; and the surprising coincidence in content is only a new proof of the truth of the very events that are the subject of the narratives under consideration.

"The end of all flesh has come before the face..." Many commentators, not without reason, have suggested that this refers to the end of the one hundred and twenty-year period which God appointed for the repentance of men, and during which he waited in vain for their correction (1 Peter III:19-20 [410]; 2 Peter III:9-15 [411]).

14. His building of the ark.

14. Make thee an ark of gopher wood; Thou shalt make compartments in the ark, and tar it with pitch within and without.

"Make thee an ark of gopher wood..." In the Hebrew text this "ark" is designated by the term theba, which is again applied in the Bible to the basket in which Moses was saved (Exodus II:5); from which it is false to think that Noah's ark of colossal size is a type of such a primitive structure. The gopher tree itself, from which the ark was built, belongs to the species of light, resinous trees, like cedar or cypress (Exodus XXVII:1; XXX:1). In the construction of the wooden ark, where the primitive world, in the person of its representatives, escaped destruction from the water element, the Church Fathers see a symbolic indication of the tree of the cross and the water of baptism, by means of which New Testament mankind finds its salvation.

"Make compartments in the ark..." Literally from Hebrew, "nests" (kinnim) or cages, apparently for the birds and beasts that Noah had divinely commanded to place in the ark.