This episode features Father Mike Schmitz, host of the Bible in a Year podcast produced by Ascension, using the Great Adventure Bible timeline to read through Scripture from Genesis to Revelation.

Day four covers Genesis chapters 7, 8, and 9, plus Psalm 1, using the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE) from the Great Adventure Bible.

The reading focuses on the complete flood narrative: Noah entering the ark, the 150-day flood, the waters receding, God's covenant with Noah, and the incident with Noah's sons after the flood.

Father Mike provides theological commentary on the significance of God's covenant, the prohibition against murder, permission to eat animals, and the brokenness of the human heart requiring God's grace.

The Flood: Timeline and Noah's Obedience

God commanded Noah to enter the ark seven days before sending rain for "forty days and forty nights" to "blot out from the face of the ground" every living thing He had made.

Noah was 600 years old when the flood began, specifically "in the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month."

The repeated refrain throughout the passage emphasizes Noah's complete obedience: "Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him."

The waters prevailed upon the earth for 150 days total, covering even "all the high mountains under the whole heaven" by fifteen cubits deep.

"Only Noah was left, and those that were with him in the ark" - all other flesh on earth died during the flood.

Waters Recede: The Raven, Dove, and Dry Land

After 150 days, "God remembered Noah" and made a wind blow over the earth, causing the waters to subside.

Noah sent out a raven first, which "went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth."

Noah sent a dove three times: first it returned finding no rest, second it returned with "a freshly plucked olive leaf" showing waters had subsided, third it did not return at all.

In Noah's 601st year, first month, first day, the waters were dried, and by the second month, twenty-seventh day, "the earth was dry" and God commanded them to leave the ark.

God's Covenant: The Rainbow and New Permissions

Noah built an altar and offered burnt offerings of clean animals and birds, and "when the Lord smelled the pleasing odor" He promised never again to curse the ground or destroy every living creature.

God declared: "I will never again curse the ground because of man. For the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth."

God established His covenant with Noah, his descendants, and "every living creature" that never again would flood waters destroy all flesh.

"I set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth" - God established the rainbow as an everlasting sign for all future generations.

God granted new permission: "Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you, and as I gave you green plants, I give you everything" - allowing humans to eat animals for the first time.

God explicitly prohibited murder: "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. For God made man in his own image."

Father Mike notes this is "the first clear prohibition" against murder in Scripture, emphasizing human life as God's gift because humans are made in His image.

Noah's Sons: Honor and Dishonor After the Flood

Noah became "the first tiller of the soil," planted a vineyard, drank wine, became drunk, and "lay uncovered in his tent."

Ham "saw the nakedness of his father" and told his brothers, while Shem and Japheth "walked backward" with a garment to cover Noah without seeing his nakedness.

Father Mike explains that "seeing their father's nakedness is an idiomatic expression" believed by many scholars to mean an act of domination, humiliation, and emasculation rather than simple observation.

Noah cursed Canaan (Ham's son): "A slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers," while blessing Shem and Japheth for honoring their father.

Noah lived 350 years after the flood, dying at 950 years old total.

Theological Reflections: Human Dignity and Brokenness

Father Mike quotes Catechism paragraph 2260: "The covenant between God and mankind is interwoven with reminders of God's gift of human life and man's murderous violence."

The Catechism 2416-2417 teaches that "men owe animals kindness" and "it is legitimate to use animals for food and clothing" as God entrusted animals to human stewardship.

Medical and scientific experimentation on animals is "morally acceptable if it remains within reasonable limits and contributes to caring for" human needs.

Father Mike emphasizes the distinction: "Animals may be killed and eaten. Human beings may never, innocent lives may never be taken" because humans are made in God's image.

"The dignity that we have as human beings made in God's image and likeness only seems to accent the murderous intent of our hearts" - Father Mike on the paradox of human nature.

Father Mike's closing prayer: "I place myself under your dominion... In my heart, I'm broken. And so I need your grace, and I ask for your grace."

Psalm 1: The Two Ways of Life

"Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers."

The righteous person "is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither."

"The wicked are not so, but are like chaff which the wind drives away" - contrasting the stability of the righteous with the instability of the wicked.