The dates and the days (Genesis 8:3–14)

Says In 8:3 the waters decreased at the end of a hundred and fifty days, the figure of 7:24. The Masoretic Text dates the ark’s rest to the seventeenth of the seventh month (8:4), the mountain tops to the first of the tenth (8:5), the drying of the waters to the first of the first month of year 601 (8:13), and the dry earth to the twenty-seventh of the second month (8:14). 8:13 and 8:14 use two verbs (dried; the BSB has fully dry at 8:14). The preposition in 8:14 is on (the BSB has By). Swete has the twenty-seventh at 8:4 and the eleventh month at 8:5, and agrees at 8:14. The Samaritan main text has the Masoretic figures at 8:4 and 8:5. See the textual note, and the Genesis 7 notes on 7:11, the chronology and the calendar.

Uncertain How the figures fit is open, and no reconstruction is adopted. With thirty-day months, 7:11 to 8:4 is five months, the hundred and fifty days; others count from the end of the rain, or reckon a lunar year. From 7:11 to 8:14 is a year and ten days in the Masoretic figures; whether that is meant as a solar year is debated. Which figures at 8:4–5 are original is open. The printed wording is the Masoretic Text, with medium confidence, and no lean is taken.