Considering the Universal Flood (Genesis 71-20)

Gen. 7:1-5 God prepares Noah for the Flood by sending him into the Ark.

         7:2,3 Noah to take with him animals and birds.

         7:4 Rain predicted for 40 days and nights – What a weather forecast! Purposeful weather!

         7:5 The obedience of Noah.

Gen. 7:6-12 Details of the Predicted Rain Given and Achieved.

7:11 The precise date, with its lack of obvious symbolism, has the mark of a plain fact well remembered; and this is borne out by the further careful notes of time in the story, which are characteristic of the Bible’s texture, knitting together the local and the cosmic …We can infer from the statement about the great deep and the windows of heaven a vast upheaval of the sea-bed, and torrential rain; but the expressions are deliberately evocative of chapter 1: the waters above and below the firmament are, in token, merged again, as if to reverse the very work of creation and bring back the featureless waste of waters. – Kidner

Gen. 7:13-24 Details of the Predicted Flood Given and Achieved.

         7:17 Called a “flood”. In the Old Testament, the authors utilize a unique Hebrew word, mabbûl, when referring to the Flood. This word is used mainly in the Flood narrative, Genesis 6:17; 7:6–7, 10, 17; 9:11, 15. Genesis 9:28; 10:1, 32 and 11:10 utilize mabbûl when referring to the Flood as a past event. Psalm 29:10 is the only other passage in the Old Testament where mabbûl is found.

In the New Testament, we find several references to the Noachian Deluge. The unique Greek word used in these passages of Scripture is kataklusmŏs and its derivatives. Strong’s Concordance defines this word as meaning “to dash, wash down, to deluge, surge of the sea, inundation, flood.” From this we derive the modern English word “cataclysm.” Jesus describes the time of His return as analogous to that of the Flood in Matthew 24:38–39. A local flood was not in Jesus’ view.

7:20 Fifteen cubits deep refers to the clearance above the mountains, not the total depth. Possibly, as many have suggested, the measurement was learnt from the draught of the laden ark (i.e. half its height of thirty cubits), which had cleared all obstacles. It should perhaps be added that some of the writers who consider the flood to have been global conjecture that in the pre-diluvian world the main mountain ranges had not yet been thrust up (see Whitcomb and Morris, The Genesis Flood, pp. 267ff.).