Noah’s offering in early reading

Says Noah “built an altar to the Lord” and “offered burnt offerings” (Gen 8:20; עֹלֹת, 'olot). The Lord smelled רֵיחַ הַנִּיחֹחַ (reakh hannikhoakh, “the pleasing aroma”) and said אֶל־לִבּוֹ (el-libbo, “to His heart”; BSB “in His heart”) that He would not curse the ground again (8:21); “seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall never cease” (8:22).

Pseudo-Jonathan makes this the altar Adam built, on which Cain and Abel offered, destroyed by the flood and rebuilt by Noah, and at 8:21 the Lord “accepted his oblation”. Josephus has Noah fear that God would “drown the earth every year” and pray “that nature might hereafter go on in its former orderly course”. In Jubilees Noah “made atonement for the earth” with a kid’s blood, and the Lord “smelt the goodly savour” and made “a covenant with him that there should not be any more a flood” (6:2–4). Keil calls Noah’s altar “the first altar mentioned in history” and reads the smell as God graciously accepting “the feelings of the offerer”. Calvin asks “by what impulse Noah offered a sacrifice to God, seeing he had no command”, and holds that Moses here “invests God with a human character” to accommodate “the capacity of an ignorant people”. These are their views. See also Gen 7:2 → Gen 8:20 and Gen 6:5 → Gen 8:21.

Uncertain Whether “smelled” is chiefly accommodated language or an idiom of accepted sacrifice is open. No lean is taken, and these readings do not fix the meaning of 8:20–22.