Genesis 7:5-9

7:5 And Noah did all ¹  that the Lord commanded him.

7:6 Noah ²  was 600 years old when the floodwaters engulfed ³  the earth. 7:7 Noah entered the ark along with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives because ⁴  of the floodwaters. 7:8 Pairs ⁵  of clean animals, of unclean animals, of birds, and of everything that creeps along the ground, 7:9 male and female, came into the ark to Noah, ⁶  just as God had commanded him. ⁷ 

[7:5]  ¹ tn Heb “according to all.”

[7:6]  ² tn Heb “Now Noah was.” The disjunctive clause (conjunction + subject + predicate nominative after implied “to be” verb) provides background information. The age of Noah receives prominence.

[7:6]  ³ tn Heb “and the flood was water upon.” The disjunctive clause (conjunction + subject + verb) is circumstantial/temporal in relation to the preceding clause. The verb הָיָה (hayah) here carries the nuance “to come” (BDB 225 s.v. הָיָה). In this context the phrase “come upon” means “to engulf.”

[7:7]  ³ tn The preposition מִן (min) is causal here, explaining why Noah and his family entered the ark.

[7:8]  ⁴ tn Heb “two two” meaning “in twos.”

[7:9]  ⁵ tn The Hebrew text of vv. 8-9a reads, “From the clean animal[s] and from the animal[s] which are not clean and from the bird[s] and everything that creeps on the ground, two two they came to Noah to the ark, male and female.”

[7:9]  ⁶ tn Heb “Noah”; the pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons.