What Does Genesis 7:6 Mean?
And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth.THE KEY
The man whose name is associated with rest stands inside the sentence where the waters overtake the earth.
THE MEANING
You meet the flood at its point of arrival: the waters are upon the earth, and Noah is six hundred years old. His name, נֹחַ (Noach, “rest”), sits within the sentence as the familiar ground is being covered. The verse holds these together without making the rising waters harmless.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Rest can exist only after danger has passed. The verse places a name associated with rest at the moment the flood arrives.
THE ROOT
נֹחַ
Noach
GROWS FROM
נוח
To rest, settle, or come to rest.
Noah’s name is associated with נוח (nuach), “to rest, settle, or come to rest.” The same root appears when the ark later “rested” on Ararat: rest is woven into the flood story, while the destruction remains real.
ALSO GROWS
vatannach: And it rested (Genesis 8:4).
וַתָּנַח
The ark’s verb for settling on the mountains carries the same root as Noah’s name.
menuchah: Rest, repose, or a resting place.
מְנוּחָה
This form presents rest as somewhere to settle, sharpening the contrast with the ground hidden beneath the floodwaters.
THE PATTERN
Floodwaters can cover the ground and destroy life while a remnant is carried through their force.
And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.And the children of Israel walked on the dry ground in the midst of the sea, and the waters were a wall to them, on their right hand and on their left.who once refused to yield, while the slowness to heat of God waited in the days of Noah, as the ark was being built, in which few, eight living souls, were delivered through water.THE THREAD
And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.נֹחַ (Noach, “rest”) carries the root נוח (nuach, “to rest, settle”), which reappears in the Hebrew verb translated “rested.” The flood does not become harmless; the shared root finds a concrete echo when the ark comes to rest on Ararat.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us