And he waited yet other seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark.
Noah has already tested the earth twice. A raven never came back. A dove found nowhere to land. Now, instead of acting, he counts out another full week. This verse is about waiting. Why would a man with the mountaintops in sight sit still for seven more days?
God used the whole delay — from the open window to the open door — to train Noah, not just to inform him.
Noah now took another step, after the tops of the mountains appeared. God had given the warning needed to save life, but He exercised Noah's dependence and patience to the full.
This waiting was not idle. Noah kept testing, again and again.
But it is beautiful to notice how Noah can wait. Many days had passed before he opened the window of the ark. Many more passed while he tested the state of the renewed earth by the messengers he sent out again and again — and not in vain.
The pull in the other direction was strong. The ark had done its work, and Noah wanted out. One writer reads the two birds as a rebuke to that impulse.
Noah had been a witness for God's mind, against the wilfulness of everyone around him. He worked for many years to prepare the ark. Now, as soon as it has given him salvation, he is impatient to leave it… The freed raven, going back and forth, is a fitting picture of the restlessness of our impatient spirits. The dove reads Noah a different lesson… The dove tells him first that he must have patience. How humbling to be rebuked by the weak, gentle tones of trusting love! The dove had a home in the ark — why should Noah not have one? The second time, the dove returns with the branch of peace. So not only must he submit; patience has done its perfect work, and he wants nothing.
The raven's absence proved nothing to Noah. An unclean bird can be content in a ruined world. So he put the question to a creature he could trust.
The raven never returns. The earth may still be uncleansed, but the unclean nature can put up with it… But Noah will not trust her. What beautiful discernment! The raven may stay outside; but that is no proof to Noah that the earth is clean, or fit for the sole of his foot. He sends out a clean creature after her… The dove returns by instinct. There was no rest for her in a place still under God's judgment and not yet cleansed. Noah knows he can trust her, and can leave the question to her to settle, so he sends her out a second and a third time.
The two birds behaved exactly as their natures required, and that is the point of the contrast — one settled among the ruins, the other could not.
There is surely nothing far-fetched in noticing how the unclean nature finds its satisfaction outside, where death reigns; while the clean returns to the shelter of the ark — first with no sign of life, then after seven days more with a freshly plucked olive leaf in her beak.
Commentators read the returning dove as a picture of the renewed mind. Such a heart cannot settle in a scene under judgment.
A sweet emblem of the renewed mind. In the middle of the surrounding desolation, it seeks and finds its rest and portion in Christ. And not only that: it also takes hold of the down payment of the inheritance, and gives the blessed proof that judgment has passed away and a renewed earth is coming fully into view. The carnal mind, by contrast, can rest in anything and everything except Christ.
Other writers see the dove as a picture of the Holy Spirit, who makes known what Noah could not yet see.
The dove is sent out three times to make known the state of what was not visible. On his first flight he finds nothing but a scene of desolation. The raven will feed on the refuse of what God has judged; the dove, in contrast, returns to the ark. The Spirit of God can find nothing in a world under judgment to rest on, and returns, as it were, to Christ.
On that reading, the seven-day pause is not empty time. It is the gap before the same messenger goes out again and comes back with something from the new world.
Next, the dove brings back something from the new earth — an olive leaf, a pledge of fruitfulness after the judgment. So the Spirit is for us the down payment of our inheritance — the foretaste and the pledge of what is to come. The olive leaf itself suggests the fruits of the Spirit — the olive produces oil — and these belong to the new creation.
- Wait. God had already saved Noah. The seven extra days exercised his dependence and patience. Waiting well is a beauty in him, not a delay.
- Test. The raven's silence proved nothing. So Noah sent out a clean creature whose report he could rely on.
- Return. The dove came back because a world under judgment offered her nothing. That is the mark of a renewed mind: it rests in Christ and nowhere else.
- Receive. The second time, she brings back an olive leaf — a pledge of fruitfulness after judgment, a first instalment of the world to come.
- Beware. The restless raven pictures our impatient spirits. The gentle dove rebukes them by coming home.
And the dove came to him at eventide; and behold, in her beak was an olive-leaf plucked off; and Noah knew that the waters had become low on the earth.
Noah has been shut in the ark for months, and the flood is his only horizon. Then the dove comes back with one small leaf — his first news from the world outside, and a picture, many writers say, of much more.
Noah could not see the ground. He had to learn its condition from a creature that could:
The dove was a clean bird. Noah sent it out the first time, and it came back, because it found no place to set its foot. But when he sent it out the second time, it returned with proof of dry land... There is much more to learn from this event. For now we will stop here and stress one point: the olive leaf was a sure witness to Noah that the flood had gone down.
The word "plucked" matters. The leaf was not floating wreckage. Something alive had grown it.
In the New Testament the dove becomes the picture of the Spirit of God... The second time, the dove came back with "a freshly plucked olive leaf." Here was the first evidence of life appearing above the waters of death. This leaf had not been drifting among the wreckage; it came from a living tree. Death entered by sin, and "so death spread to all men" (Rom. 5:12), as much after the flood as before it. The first evidence of real life rising up beyond the scene of death was when Christ rose from the dead.
Two birds went out from the ark. Each found a different resting place.
The unclean bird made its escape, and found, no doubt, a resting place on some floating carcass. It never went back to the ark. Not so the dove... "in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf." A sweet picture of the renewed mind. Surrounded by desolation, that mind seeks and finds its rest and its portion in Christ. More than that, it takes hold of the pledge of the inheritance. And it gives blessed proof that judgment has passed away and that a renewed earth is coming into full view. The mind ruled by the flesh, on the other hand, can rest in anything and everything except Christ.
Noah's own conduct is part of the lesson. He did not accept the raven's silence as an answer:
The raven may remain outside; but that is no proof to Noah that the earth is clean, or fit for the sole of his foot. Noah will not trust her, but sends out a clean creature after her. And the news she brings is different indeed... Her only sympathy is with the pledges of peace and of a new creation.
Of all the trees that might have supplied it, the message came from an olive — the tree that yields oil.
A leaf stands for profession or testimony ("So Noah knew," Gen. 8:11)... The leaves hold the mouths and lungs of the plant. They surround it like so many tongues, telling what tree it is and what fruit is (or should be) on it... Here the testimony given is of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit... The tree is a remarkable one, and its main feature is the oil (Judges 9:9). That is, what marks out the vessel of testimony is that it holds the Holy Spirit as the source of light... It is evergreen, and it will grow in the most barren and stony soil.
Everything depends on where that leaf came from.
One thing that had been under the waters of judgment had risen above them. One spot was clear of the judgment, and from that spot the dove brought an olive leaf to Noah. There is today one spot that has emerged from under the judgment of God: it is Christ... "So Noah knew." Through the testimony that the Holy Spirit gives to the risen Christ, we too may know that Christ has borne our judgment and put our sins away forever.
The leaf was small. It did not carry Noah out of the ark; it told him the day was coming.
Next, the dove brings back something from the new earth — an olive leaf, pledge of fruitfulness after the judgment. So the Spirit is for us the guarantee of our inheritance — the foretaste and the pledge of what is to come.
- Judgment. The first flight found nothing. The water still covered everything, and the dove had nowhere to set her foot.
- Life. The leaf came from a living tree — the first sign of life rising above the water of death.
- Witness. A leaf is testimony; an olive leaf, from the tree of oil, carries the message back to the man shut inside.
- Knowledge. "So Noah knew" — he learned the state of an unseen world from what the bird brought him.
- Pledge. One leaf is not the harvest. It is the sample that guarantees the whole new world is coming.