And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.
Seventh month - of the year (cf. Genesis 7:11) - not of the flood, which lasted only five months, thirty days in a month. This computation, which seems to have prevailed in Noah's time, since the sacred narrative was probably derived from some Noachic document, is the same as the unintercalated solar year of the Egyptians; and its adoption here by Moses is remarkable, as the lunar year, consisting of twelve months, which began with the appearance of the new moon, and varied in length, was the mode of reckoning used by the early Hebrews.
Rested - evidently indicating a calm and gentle motion.
On the seventeenth day of the month. Dr. Harold Brown (Norrisian Lectures) lays stress on the remarkable coincidence, that the ark rested on the seventeenth day of the seventh month, being the very time on which Christ rose from the dead.
Upon the mountains of Ararat - or Armenia, as the word is rendered, 2 Kings 19:37; Isaiah 37:38. The mountain which tradition points to as the one upon which the ark rested is now called Ara Dagh-the finger mountain, which rises like an immense isolated cone out of the valley of the Apexes; and though connected with a chain of mountains which extend in a north-westerly direction, these are not of an elevation sufficient to detract from the sublimity of this stupendous rock. It consists of two peaks, the one of which is considerably higher than the other. The height of the greater Ararat has been variously estimated at 17,750 or 17,323 feet above sea level, and 14,300 feet above the plain. The lesser Ararat is 13,420, or, as it has been recently measured, 13,093 feet above the level of the sea. The summit of the highest peak is nearly level, and of a triangular shape, the base being about 200 yards in length, and the perpendicular height from the base of the cone to the top is about 6,000 feet, covered with perpetual snow, which is as dry as powder.
How a family of eight persons, with a motley group of the inferior animals, could safely descend from such an Alpine mountain, the scaling of which, though often attempted, has been successfully performed only by a very few adventurous persons in modern times, is a problem of no easy solution, if the mountain was as lofty and precipitous in Noah's time. The traditional Mount Ararat is supported neither by evidence nor probability. But the narrative mentions, not the mountain, but the mountains of Ararat (Jer. 41:27) - i:e., the highland districts of Armenia, lying north of Mesopotamia and Assyria, and east of Asia-Minor-namely, the Gordyaeau or Kurdish chain of hills, which are of low elevation, and known in the present day by the name of Jebel Giodi or Judi. The Jewish Targumist, Jonathan, in his gloss on this passage, says that the ark rested on the mountains of Kurdon or Gordon, thus almost identifying Judi as the resting-place. Most of the pagan writers quoted by Bochart ('Geogr. Sacr.') fix upon the same site. An ancient tradition bore that on its summit were to be seen the remains of the ark, which the pious Emperor Heraclius, in the third century, went to see.
Many remarkable circumstances, too, in the names of places, concur in pointing to this region as the spot of Noah's landing from the ark, such as Baris or Barit, the Mountain of the Ship, and the city of Apamea, at the western extremity of the Gordyaean chain, where were found coins bearing a representation of the ark, with a raven and a dove, and on the reverse the name of Noe or No. Others, who extend the mountains of Ararat beyond the confines of Armenia, fix on the summit of Caucasus as the locale of Noah's landing, founding their opinion chiefly on the fact that the builders of Babel came to Shinar from the East (Genesis 11:2). But from the figure of the ark, which was not adapted for sailing, as well as from the tranquil character of the inundation, it is probable that that vessel had not drifted far from the original abode of the patriarch, the influx of waters from the Persian Gulf carrying it in a northerly direction, and therefore that the former opinion is the true one.