Let us turn to Noah and the flood.
We have the sons of Elohim. (Chap. 6: 2.) As to them, and in connection with His peculiar dealings with man, Jehovah said (ver. 3), "My Spirit shall not always strive with man." We have "sons of Elohim" (ver. 4), because here the expression is characteristic. "Elohim saw" (ver. 5), because here it was God in His own nature and character looking at man as such. "Jehovah repented" (ver. 6), because here it is His special thoughts and dealings about man as His-His feelings in connection with this relationship. Again (ver. 7) Jehovah, and Jehovah in relationship with Noah. Noah (ver. 9) "walked with God:" here it was morally characteristic, not his relationship to Jehovah under that name.
"The earth was corrupt before Elohim"-again it refers to God's abstract nature and character. (Ver. 11, 12.) So (ver. 13) Elohim takes up His creation to declare its end to Noah. He had the Creator's title to destroy His creation. Elohim Himself commanded Noah what to do in this case. In chapter 7 we enter into the full relationship of God with Noah as a deliverer; and it is Jehovah, just as we saw with Adam. There Elohim created. Jehovah had to do with Adam in a special way in the garden. Here Elohim is going to destroy His creation, and Jehovah has special relationship with Noah in the ark, as we have seen in chapter 6: 3, 6-8, the peculiar relative feelings of Jehovah, not the simple character and supremacy of Elohim.
Yet, fully to identify the two accounts and connect them, we have in chapter 7: 16, "And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as Elohim had commanded him, and Jehovah shut him in" Now here we have the general command of Elohim given in the preceding chapter about His creatures to preserve them as Creator; and then Jehovah shut him (Noah) in-that is, in the same verse, the special name of relationship in case of the faithful and chosen patriarch. Mr. N. says, "The two documents may indeed in this narrative be almost rediscovered by mechanical separation." (Ib.) Certainly it would not be more than mechanical; for German theology nothing more, indeed, would be wanting.
Again, in chapter 8, in preserving mercy we have Εlohim's care of His preserved creation, and its deliverance to subsist on the recovered earth again. Then Noah builds an altar (ver. 20), and Jehovah's name immediately appears again, because it was important to show that it was indeed Israel's God that was thus worshipped-God in relationship with man from the beginning. Elohim then (chap. 9) begins the world, so to speak, again; but the moment it is a question of relationship (ver. 26), we have Jehovah the God of Shem.
I need not pursue this farther. One point only remains to be noticed-the twos and sevens of the animals. In the accounts of Εlohim's directions for saving the different races of creatures, they are directed to be taken two of every sort, the male and female, to keep them alive. Nothing can be more simple than the meaning of this. When Jehovah is stating His thoughts as to Noah, and giving His directions in respect to His relationship with man and the earth, He directs Noah to take of clean beasts by sevens, still two and two, male and female; and they all go in two and two, as Elohim had commanded: thus identifying, in the text itself, the two names in a way which would make the dissevering them difficult, even on the mechanical process. The reason for distinguishing the clean beasts (still two and two, male and female) is too obvious to make the smallest difficulty. The twos refer, moreover, to male and female on a general principle. One must be very hard run up for a difficulty, or for a discovery, to find a contradiction here. The fowls of the air, which went in by sevens, are meant evidently clean ones too, as may be seen in chapter 8: 20.