th of feeling and extreme agitation of mind.
This example of wrath so impresses the narrator that for emphasis he
mentions the same thing again and again, and in the same words.

37. This is not the custom of poets and historians. Their emotions are
factitious; they are diffuse in their descriptions; they pile up words
for mere effect. Moses husbands his words, but is emphatic by
repetition that he may arouse the reader's attention to the importance
of the message and compel him to feel his own emotions instead of
reading those of another.

38. Evidently Moses did not only wish to convey by persistent
repetition the extreme agitation of his own mind, but also of that of
Noah himself, who, being filled with the Holy Spirit, and burning with
love, necessarily deplored the calamity when he saw that he could not
avert it. He foresaw the doom of the wisest and most distinguished and
eminent men. Thus did David mourn when he could not call back Absalom
to life. So Samuel mourned when he despaired of saving Saul.

39. The text is not a mere tautology or repetition. The Holy Spirit
does not idly repeat words, as those superficial minds believe, which,
having read through the Bible once, throw it aside as if they had
gathered all its contents. Yet these very repetitions of Moses contain
a statement more startling than any to be found in heathen
records--that Noah entered the ark in the six hundredth year, the
second month and the second day of his life.

40. Opinions differ as to the beginning of the year. One is, that the
year begins at the conjunction of the sun and the moon which occurs
nearest to the vernal equinox. Thus this month is called the first by
Moses in Exodus. If the flood set in on the seventeenth day of the
second month, it must have continued almost to the end of April, the
most beautiful season of the year, when the earth seemingly gathers
new strength, when the birds sing and the beasts rejoice, when the
world puts on a new face, as it were, after the dreary season of
winter. Death and destruction must have come with added terror at that
season which was looked forward to as a harbinger of joy and the
apparent beginning of a new life. This view is substantiated by the
words of Christ in Matthew 24, 38, where he compares the last days of
the world to the days of Noah and speaks of feasting, marriage and
other signs of gladness.

41. A second opinion makes the year begin with that new moon which is
neares