Genesis 7:17 · World English Bible
Genesis 7:17 Meaning The Flood Was Forty Days
The flood was forty days on the earth. The waters increased, and lifted up the ship, and it was lifted up above the earth.
What does Genesis 7:17 mean?
The mind is overwhelmed and the old way of thinking drowns. The number 40 is the fourfold physical nature of a person, so the flood lasting 40 days is the passage through the whole material, bodily self, every part of the flesh swept under so that a new mind can rise.
From the Esoteric reading below.
Genesis 7:17 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Esoteric
ESOTERIC
Esoteric
The mind is overwhelmed and the old way of thinking drowns. The number 40 is the fourfold physical nature of a person, so the flood lasting 40 days is the passage through the whole material, bodily self, every part of the flesh swept under so that a new mind can rise. As the waters mount, they lift the electrical arc of the neurons firing in the brain up above the flooded mind, and it is carried clear of what is drowning.
This is inner renewal shown as catastrophe. The rising-sea warnings of today and the ancient flood point at the same thing inside a person: the drowning of the old mind so a higher awareness can be borne up and set above it.
Earth: the mind, the ground of a person's thinking Flood: the overwhelming that drowns the old mind so a new one can rise The number 40: the fourfold physical nature, the whole material and bodily self a person must pass through The ark: the electrical arc of the neurons firing in the brain, lifted clear above the drowning mind
Esoteric lensGo deeper in the app
Esoteric lens
Live Genesis 7:17 today
- When a wave hits today, bad news, a bill, a message you did not want, give it ten seconds before you react. In those ten seconds, just watch yourself being flooded. That watching is the part of you that stays above the water.
- If someone is falling apart in front of you, over the phone, at dinner, in a group chat, do not throw them a fix. Sit in it with them and let it be as big as it is. People get carried up by being accompanied, not corrected.
- Under real pressure at work, when you can feel your usual way of handling things failing, stop defending it. Say out loud that you do not know yet. Letting an old approach go under is how a better one gets room to surface.
What way of thinking am I keeping alive with both hands, even though it stopped working a while ago?
The same truth in other traditions
Bhagavad Gita 2
The body and its states come and go like clothes, while the one who watches them is never touched by the drowning. What rises above the wreck was never part of it.
Zen · Dogen
To study yourself is to forget yourself, and to forget yourself is to be carried by everything. The old self has to fall away before the wider awareness can hold you up.
Sufism · Fana
The teaching says the small self must be undone before the real one can appear. The waters that cover you are the same waters that lift you.
Free · No account needed
Read all of Genesis 7 through 17 lenses
Lensightful opens every verse of the Bible through the traditions you choose. Save readings, ask a follow-up question, and get one verse a day.
Get Lensightful on the App Store