Genesis 7:1

"And Jehovah! said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation."

It is stated in Genesis 7:4 that this event occurred a full week prior to the beginning of the Deluge; and it must be reckoned as a stupendous act of faith that Noah obeyed this injunction implicitly. It was one thing to build the ark, and quite another to enter it and live there a week without any sign whatever of the necessity for it. We are not told how his fellow mortals reacted to this, but human nature being what it is, it is a foregone certainty that such an action was met with all kinds of scornful mockery.

"Thee have I seen righteous before me ..." Noah's righteousness before God consisted of two things - his faith and his obedience. Noah had already been obeying God for a full 120 years while the ark was in preparation, his obedience consisting of his construction of the ark according to the pattern that God gave him, and his continual preaching to the wicked generation who were his contemporaries. Any effort to view Noah's "righteousness" as merely the existence of a subjective faith within himself should be resisted.