"And God spake unto Noah, sayng, Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons' wives with thee. Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth; that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth. And Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him: every beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl, and whatsoever creepeth upon the earth, after their kinds, went forth out of the ark. And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the Lord smelled a sweet savour; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake: for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth: neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease." (Genesis 8:15-22)
Finally, more than a year after having entered the ark, Noah and his family, and all the animals, were instructed by God to leave the ark. There are a couple of things to consider here.
The first is that if all of these animals were on the ark for a year, male and female, is it possible that there were no other animals born to them during the flood and the months waiting for the waters to recede? I don't think that was possible or even probable. In fact, in the third sentence of this section of scripture it is said that the animals left the ark "after their kinds," which indicates to me that there were many of each kind that needed to depart from the ark. I think it would be safe to assume that the animal population increased while on board the ark, so that there were most likely many more leaving the ark than arrived on the ark in the beginning.
The second thing, then, that must follow, is that God certainly allowed for expansion of the animal population when He instructed Noah to build the ark. That wasn't something we considered in chapter 7 of Genesis when all first boarded the ark, for at that moment we had nothing to tell us how long the flood would last or how long they would occupy the ark. But, now we have been told earlier in this same chapter (8) that they occupied it for 53 weeks; therefore, now we also know that the animal population increased.
What doesn't appear to have happened is that Noah's sons had any children, either before they entered the ark, or that were born during the voyage, as no mention has ever been made of children; just an interesting side note.
Noah immediately takes one of each and every "clean" animal and fowl and offered all up to God on an altar (literally: a high place, i.e. a mound of earth perhaps); these are the odd "sevens" of the "clean" animals that we saw mentioned in Genesis 7:2, the ones that the Lord provided to Noah for the specific purpose of sacrifice. God receives Noah's offering; and, perhaps because of Noah's willingness to offer it out of a heart of gratitude and thanksgiving, not because of a commandment to do so, it is a "sweet savour" unto the Lord. So much so that the Lord shows mercy to Noah and to his many descendants to come by promising never to destroy every living thing on the earth so long as the earth remains (which, by the way, indicates to us that the earth will not always remain; evidenced as well by prophetic scriptures that will be seen further along in our study).
So, God's promise or covenant of there always being "seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night" for as long as "the earth remaineth" is given because of Noah to us today. We see then that God's Word directly contradicts those purveyors of global warming we are constantly hearing from, for God promises that we will always have both heat and cold until the time when the world must end, according to His Word; I trust His Word over theirs, don't you?
More on God's Covenant with Noah tomorrow.
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