And Noah went in. I.e. began to go in a full week before the waters came (vide Genesis 7:10). "A proof of faith and a warning to the world." And his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him. In all eight persons (1 Peter 3:20); whence it is obvious that "each had but one wife, and that polygamy, as it began among the Cainites, was most probably confined to them" (Poole). Into the ark, because of the waters of the flood. Literally, from the face of the waters, being moved with fear and impelled by faith (Hebrews 11:7).
Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth, there went in two and two into the ark, the male and the female. In obedience to a Divine impulse. Nothing short of Divine power could have effected such a timely and orderly entrance of the creatures into the huge vessel (cf. their mode of exit, Genesis 8:18). The seeming inconsistency of this verse with Genesis 7:2, which says that the clean animals entered the ark by sevens, will be at once removed by connecting Genesis 7:7 and Genesis 7:8 instead of 8 and 9, and commencing a new sentence with Genesis 7:9. It favors this, that "of" is awanting before "everything that creepeth," and that the LXX. begin Genesis 7:8 with "and". As God had commanded Noah.