We cannot wonder, that such eminent holiness and obedience, shining forth in the midst of so much profligacy and corruption, were honoured with the signal favour of Almighty God. A righteous character, which is always “of great price in the sight of God,” is peculiarly honourable in an age overspread with impiety and guilt. The man, who stands forth to maintain the cause of God against a universal host of enemies; who is untainted by the moral contagion which is every where diffused around him; who perseveringly opposes the mighty stream of iniquity, which is ready to overwhelm his soul; that man is a spectacle for angels to behold with joy; and one in whom the holy God Himself is well-pleased; he is as “a light shining in a dark place,” made more conspicuous and attractive by the surrounding gloom. Such was Noah; and God distinguished him accordingly by especial tokens of favour and blessing: for He said, “Behold I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die. But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons’ wives with thee.” { 62a}
A question has been raised respecting the nature of the covenant here intended; but the words themselves, taken in connexion with the subject, would lead us to conclude, that the covenant to be established, in the first instance, was a covenant of safety in the ark, during the flood; and this sense is abundantly confirmed by the same word being afterwards used in the 9th chapter, when God made His promise to the patriarch, that the world should never again be so destroyed: “Behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you, and with every living creature that is with you—neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.” { 62b} Yet, though this was the immediate import of the covenant, it probably had, like the ark itself, a further and a typical signification, which is thus very admirably expressed by one of the best commentators; “I will most certainly make good the promise I have formerly made to thee, of preserving thee and thy family from the said destruction; and further I will make good, in due time, to thee or thy seed after thee, _all_ those covenants or promises, which I have made to mankind from the beginning of the world, and which remain to be made good; especially the grand covenant concerning the promised seed, of Messiah: to which end, I will certainly preserve thee and thy family from the destruction I am now bringing on the rest of mankind.” { 63}