8:13-19 God consults our benefit, rather than our desires; he knows what is good for us better than we do for ourselves, and how long it is fit our restraints should continue, and desired mercies should be delayed. We would go out of the ark before the ground is dried; and perhaps, if the door, is shut, are ready to thrust off the covering, and to climb up some other way; but God's time of showing mercy is the best time. As Noah had a command to go into the ark, so, how tedious soever his confinement there was, he would wait for a command to go out of it again. We must in all our ways acknowledge God, and set him before us in all our removals. Those only go under God's protection, who follow God's direction, and submit to him.
Every beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl, and whatsoever creepeth upon the earth,.... All went out, not one was left, and they went out
after their kind; not in a confused disorderly manner, mixing with one another; but as they went in by pairs, male and female of every sort, so they came forth in like manner, or, "according to their families" (c); by which it seems as if the creatures did breed in the ark, and had their families of young ones; and which is the sense of some in Aben Ezra, and he himself thinks it not foreign, though he interprets it as we do, and as the Greek version does, "after their kind": thus they
went forth out of the ark; everyone with his mate, in order to procreate and multiply upon the earth.
(c) "juxta familias suas", Tigurine version, Pagninus, Montanus, &c.
