Affirming Bible’s Narration of World-Wide Flood

 

Scoffers take delight in ridiculing the Bible for its astonishing narration of the great flood which prompted Noah, on God’s direction, to build an ark after the Lord had decided that “I Myself am bringing flood-waters on the earth to destroy … all flesh” (Genesis 6:17).  Unfortunately, even Christians have been known to subscribe to the local-flood hypothesis so as to avoid being labelled as gullible in accepting with blind faith that this well-known flood had actually covered the entire world.

 

Staunch believers in the historical occurrence of the world-wide flood invariably turn to the following (or related) verses as the basis for their conviction:

(a)     according to the Lord’s pre-flood decree, “everything that is on the earth shall die” (Genesis 6:17)

(b)     after the onset of the flood which in due course covered the mountains, “all flesh died that moved on the earth” (Genesis 7:21)

(c)     the authoritative conclusion states that “He destroyed all living things which were on the face of the ground: both man and cattle, creeping thing and bird of the air.  Only Noah and those who were with him in the ark remained alive” (Genesis 7:23)

(d)     Jesus unreservedly mentioned to His disciples that “after Noah entered the ark … the flood came and destroyed them all” (Luke 17:27)

(e)     there being no other human survivors after the deluge receded, “from the three sons of Noah was the whole earth populated” (Genesis 9:19).

 

However, many commentators and even theologians have put forward their own arguments for choosing alternate interpretations of words such as “all flesh” and “the earth” to limit the scale of this biblical flood and then counter-propose a localised version instead; there is no point in prolonging the debate with them on hermeneutic grounds given the penchant of scholars for academic liberties.  Neither is it profitable to rely on geological findings which can at best proffer only archaeological inferences (instead of hard scientific evidence).  Seeking to collate flood tales from ancient records or ancestral recollections is equally futile because these orally-transmitted renditions tended to morph as successive cohorts of tribal elders passed their respective perceptions down the generations.

 

Interestingly, irrefutable affirmation is already available in the Bible.  In His interactions post-flood with the surviving family (viz Noah and his sons), God declared that “thus I establish My covenant with you: never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood; never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” (Genesis 9:11)  Like the preceding verses from Genesis 6-7 reproduced in S/No (a)-(c), this covenantal declaration contains the same words “all flesh” and “the earth”.  If Genesis 9:11 refers merely to local inundations (on the supposition that the biblical flood is of limited scale), the regular occurrence of arterial rivers seasonally overflowing their banks and drowning living beings left stranded in the immediate vicinity will imply that God has all through the millennia not been observing what had been covenanted — with the rainbow in the clouds serving as the divinely-designated sign for Him to “remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh on the earth” that “the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh” (Genesis 9:15-16).  As there is no doubt that “God remains faithful” even “if we [humans] are faithless” (II Timothy 2:13), the correct perspective must thence be that the biblical flood unleashed in Genesis 7 is indeed of a global nature.

 

Nevertheless, there is still the need to address the challenging question legitimately posed by scoffers (and Christians as well): Where did all the waters come from for the flood to be on a world-wide scale?  Once again, the answer can be found in the Bible.  At the onset of the flood (which is specifically stated as having happened on the 17^th day of the 2^nd month in the 600^th year of Noah’s life), “all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened, and the rain was on the earth 40 days and 40 nights” (Genesis 7:11).  The sources of water identified in this verse may seem puzzling at first reading.  Fortunately, they are repeated when Genesis recounts in the very next chapter the receding of the flood-waters: “The fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven were also stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained” (Genesis 8:2).  These two verses therefore draw attention to the fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven as sources of flood-water apart from the usual rainfall that Sunday School teachers cursorily allude to during their lessons on Noah’s ark.

(1)     Is rainfall the same as the water torrents released by the windows of heaven when first opened in Genesis 7:11 (before subsequently being stopped in Genesis 8:2)?  Reference has to be made to the second day of creation where God stipulated that there should “be a firmament in the midst of the waters … [which] divide the waters from the waters” (Genesis 1:6); what resulted thereafter was a firmament that “divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament” (Genesis 1:7).  This enigmatic pair of verses is followed immediately by the partial clarification that “God called the firmament Heaven” (Genesis 1:8).  The description here of what God created on the second day seems to indicate the presence of waters gathered above the firmament.  If this be so, these accumulated waters appear to constitute a source when “… the windows of heaven were opened …” (Genesis 7:11).  Whether the stored waters held back by the windows of heaven ought to be merely regarded as rain falling from the clouds floating in the sky is not too clear “for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth” (Genesis 2:5) then.

(2)     On the other hand, what is beyond dispute is the source of water associated with the fountains of the deep.  Subterranean reservoirs of water are known to exist — even in the ancient past as can be seen, for example, from the biblical records of life-sustaining wells dug by the tribes residing in the Promised Land.  Why is water available underground?  On the very first day of creation, “the earth was void and without form; … and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2); only on the third day of creation did God decree that “the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place [to] let dry land appear” (Genesis 1:9).  These verses help to explain why dry land occupies less than 30% of the earth’s surface (which at the beginning was covered by the waters).

 

A related question posed by scoffers is where did the flood-waters recede to after the mass punishment decisively meted out by God.  As for the appearance of dry land in Genesis 1:9, God has since imposed a bound on the seas “by a perpetual decree [so] that the waves cannot pass beyond it” (Jeremiah 5:22).  Likewise, as pointed out by the psalmist when singing praises of the Lord’s power and majesty, for “the waters [that] stood above the mountains, at Your rebuke they fled … to the place which You founded for them [and] You have set a boundary which they may not pass over [so] that they may not return to cover the earth” (Psalm 104:6-9).

 

The flood narrative described at length over 4 chapters in the book of Genesis documents how God had punished human beings en masse after arriving at the judgment “that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5) — so much that the Lord disclosed to Noah that “the end of all flesh has come before Me … and I will destroy them with the earth” (Genesis 6:13).  The book of Revelation portrays the sins of men similarly climaxing right through the end times thereby culminating in the judgment of all before the great white throne — with John foreseeing “a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away” (Revelation 21:1).  A glimpse of how God will punish human beings en masse during the last days is captured in Peter’s vision which foretells that “the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up” (II Peter 3:10).  According to the comparison furnished by Peter, “the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water” whereas “the heavens and the earth which are now preserved … are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men” (II Peter 3:6-7).  As there will be mass destruction by fire on a world-wide basis come the day of the Lord, the flood-waters drowning all flesh following the divine judgment in Genesis 6 must in like vein have been on a global scale (given that these two judgments have been placed alongside each other by Peter for comparative purposes).