The ark rested in the seventh month.— Of the year; that is, not of the flood, as appears from Genesis 8:13-14. as well as from Genesis 8:11 of the former chapter: on the tenth month of the year the tops of the mountains were seen, Genesis 8:5.
After tossing on the billows, at last the ark rests on Ararat. Note; Though the church suffer long in this tempestuous world, it shall rest at last upon the mount of God. It was two months and upwards after they felt ground, before the mountains were seen. They looked out every day, there is no doubt, and wished for dry land; at last, with joy it appears. Life is a long voyage: in age or sickness the believer perceives he draws near the shore; and when death's shadows are stretching over him, he begins to discover the happy land of glory beyond the grave, as the morning spread upon the mountains.
Upon the mountains of Ararat— The general opinion is, that the ark rested upon one of the mountains which separated Armenia from Mesopotamia, which Ptolemy calls the Gordiaean, and Q. Curtius the Cordaean Mountains. This opinion is supported by the authority of the Chaldee paraphrase and Arabic version, which render Ararat, the Cordae Mountains; as also by Berosus, quoted in Josephus, b. i. c. 4. of his Antiquities. Bochart has been at the pains to collect several testimonies from authors in favour of this opinion. Mr. Whiston remarks here "the care and wisdom of Providence for the preservation of Noah, and all the creatures, after their coming out of the ark, by so ordering it that the ark should rest on one of the highest mountains in the world; for though the earth must have been generally uninhabitable for a considerable time after the flood, by reason of the sediment which the water left upon its surface, and which would require no small space of time to settle, consolidate, and become fit for vegetation; yet on the high mountains, which would be covered by the waters but a little time, the quantity of sediment would be so inconsiderable, that the earth would not be much altered from what it was before, nor its vegetables much hurt by this universal deluge."