Read with Me
Genesis 7:11-16 (HCSB)
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the sources of the watery depths burst open, the floodgates of the sky were opened, and the rain fell on the earth 40 days and 40 nights. On that same day Noah along with his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, Noah’s wife, and his three sons’ wives entered the ark with him. They entered it with all the wildlife according to their kinds, all livestock according to their kinds, the creatures that crawl on the earth according to their kinds, all birds, every fowl, and everything with wings according to their kinds. Two of all flesh that has the breath of life in it entered the ark with Noah. Those that entered, male and female of all flesh, entered just as God had commanded him. Then the LORD shut him in.
Listen with Me
Noah was a careful record keeper, noting the exact day that the floodwaters came on the Earth. He was 600 years old at that time, and the floodwaters arrived on the seventeenth day of the seventh month of that year.
The flood was caused by much more than heavy rain. Moses carefully notes that on the day Noah and his family completed loading the animals and themselves onto the ark, the fountains of the great deep were opened. This indicates powerful seismic activity that fractured the crust of the earth, both on land and under the sea, releasing powerful jets of superheated water which reached high into the atmosphere where it quickly condensed into massive clouds. Those clouds then proceeded to dump prodigious quantities of rain on the land.
At the same time, the earthquakes produced by those rifts in the earth’s crust sent massive tsunamis over the land, sweeping away everything in their path, and burying plants and animals in deep layers of sedimentary deposits. Successive waves added to these layers sometimes even moving previously laid layers and their contents as new layers were rapidly added, one on top of another.
The water deepened both from rain falling from above and from subterranean rivers brought to the surface through the rifts in the crust and. In a surprisingly short time, all land was quickly submerged. The great chunks of broken crust began to move and shift, tectonic activity breaking up the single land mass that had been raised out of the waters on the third day of creation into several continents. As these tectonic plates separated, lava rose to the surface along the fracture lines, forming mountains, although they were completely under the water to begin with. And the ash from those volcanic eruptions filled the atmosphere and darkened the sky.
Moses notes that just as the first quakes hit, since Noah and his family and all the carefully selected animals were safely aboard, God himself shut the door to the ark. There were two reasons for Him to do this. First, He was able to seal the door completely so that no water could enter around the door as waves struck the sides of the ark. But by sealing the door, God also ensured that kind-hearted Noah couldn’t open it in answer to the panicked knocks of those who only decided to “repent” after the rain had begun.
Pray with Me
Father, so many, even in the Church, have been educated in the scientific philosophy of gradualism, that is slow and steady processes shaping the earth over vast ages of time. And it jolts our minds to think of this kind of literally earth-shattering event that did much of that shaping in an amazingly short time span. Moses was able to share with us not a philosophy of how the world was formed and later shaped, but Your first-hand account of how You did it. Thank You for that, Lord. And thank You for the salvation of Noah and his family, a salvation that foreshadowed our own salvation (1 Peter 3:19-22). Amen.