Genesis 7:4 - Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth. For yet seven days. This was said on the tenth day (cf. Genesis 7:11). All the special communications which man held with his Creator in the first ages of the world were probably made upon the Sabbath, or weekly day of holiness, and therefore this command to Noah was given on the Sabbath day. During the six days following the Sabbath, then, he enters the ark, and takes in with him his seven human companions, and the beasts and fowls, with provisions for the whole society (Bedford's 'Scriptural Chronology'). Some, indeed, consider that the incidents recorded between Genesis 7:5 and Genesis 7:16 had taken place previously, and that all that remained to be done in the last seven days was for Noah with his family to enter, an additional respite of seven days being given to the world. What a solemn interval this was! Only a week remaining as the last term of grace for the world to repent! How did they use it? Did they laugh and ridicule Noah as a fool still, as they had done at an earlier period? Some, upon witnessing the extraordinary spectacle of the various animals marching in pairs to the ark, might have been brought to serious thought, and might have been converted at the eleventh hour. But in regard to the vast majority of the antediluvian people who were living at the time, He whose eyes saw, and whose heart felt the full amount of human iniquity and perverseness, has told us of their reckless disregard (Luke 17:27).