Verse 2. - The fountains also of the deep, and the windows of heaven were stopped. וַיִּסָּכְרוּ, from סָכַר = סָגַר, to surround, to enclose; literally, were shut up; ἐπεκαλύφθησαν (LXX.). Their opening was described in Genesis 7:11. And the rain from heaven was restrained. וַיִּכָּלֵא, literally, was shut up, from כָּלָא, to close. Cf. κλείω, κωλύω, κολούω, celo, occulo (Gesenius, Furst), συνεσχέθη (LXX). At the end of the forty days (Genesis 7:12; Augustine, Willet); at the end of the 150 days (Aben Ezra, Murphy).

8:1-3 The whole race of mankind, except Noah and his family, were now dead, so that God's remembering Noah, was the return of his mercy to mankind, of whom he would not make a full end. The demands of Divine justice had been answered by the ruin of sinners. God sent his wind to dry the earth, and seal up his waters. The same hand that brings the desolation, must bring the deliverance; to that hand, therefore, we must ever look. When afflictions have done the work for which they are sent, whether killing work or curing work, they will be taken away. As the earth was not drowned in a day, so it was not dried in a day. God usually works deliverance for his people gradually, that the day of small things may not be despised, nor the day of great things despaired of.The fountains also of the deep, and the windows of heaven, were stopped,.... The passages which let out the subterraneous waters in great quantity upon the earth, and the clouds of heaven, which poured down water upon it like spouts, were stopped from sending forth any more, as they had from the first of the flood unto one hundred and fifty days from thence: Jarchi observes, that it is not said that "all" the fountains of the deep, as when they were broken up, Genesis 7:11 because some of them were left open for the use and benefit of the world; besides, some must be left for the return of the waters:

and the rain from heaven was restrained: which seems to confirm what has been before observed, that after the rain of forty days and nights it ceased not to rain, more or less, though not so vehemently, until the end of an hundred and fifty days, and then it entirely ceased.