Genesis 7

The great flood (vs. 1-24)--And the flood came. It apparently took Noah about 100 years to build the ark, but he didn’t have a lot of help and it was a big boat—about 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high. It was at least that big—it depends upon the measure of a “cubit,” which is generally assumed to have been eighteen inches, but could have been longer. By any reckoning, it was a big boat. It wasn’t designed to sail, it was intended to float. A craft with those proportional dimensions is almost impossible to overturn, regardless of how violent the waters might become. And no doubt, the waters became turbulent.

To keep alive the animal world, Noah brought into the ark seven of each “clean” animal (undefined here, but God obviously told Noah), and two of each “unclean” animal. That didn’t mean he had to bring every single kind of dog or cat into the ark; within the genetic make-up of “dog” nearly all different breeds can be perpetuated. Every race of man came from Noah, thus we were all in his genetic composition. That is almost assuredly how God created Adam and Eve.

Incidentally, Noah obviously wouldn’t have had to bring fish into the ark. Most animals could have slept much of the time, so the need for food could have been minimized. God took care of the situation.  I do wish Noah had swatted those two mosquitoes, though....

The waters lasted on the earth for a total of almost exactly one year. Or, more accurately, it was one year from the time Noah entered the ark until he left.

While it rained for 40 days and 40 nights (v. 10), the key to the flood was probably “all the fountains of the great deep were broken up,” (v. 11). Regardless of atmospheric conditions, 40 days and nights of rain is not going to produce the amount of water necessary to do what is described in chapter 7:17-20. Though it’s speculation, I’m convinced that the flood was more tidal—coming from “the fountains of the deep” even more than the water from the sky. The theory runs like this: when God created the earth, it was “very good,” i.e., perfect. There were no extremities of cold or heat—no polar ice caps or Sahara deserts. The earth had an axis of zero, which meant the sun shined equally on every part of the earth; and, indeed, fossils of tropical plants have been found in the polar regions. But think of this: if the earth’s axis was at zero, but then violently tipped to its current angle of 23 degrees, what would have happened to all the water in the oceans? Try it. Get a bowl, put a lot of water in it, then quickly tip it to a 23 degree angle. What’s going to happen to the water? It’s going to slosh over the sides, isn’t it. Such a brutal change in the earth would have tremendous geological repercussions, causing land forms to shift, mountains to rise, continents to be rearranged—it’s impossible to conceive of all the changes that could have happened through such an event. And since the earth is currently tilted 23 degrees, we have the ice caps—snow began to fall in those regions immediately after the flood, ice packs began to form, and it’s been happening for 1,000s of years now. Hotter weather on the equator, colder weather in the northern and southern regions, and that is because of the wobble of the earth on its current axis as it journeys around the sun.

The above is just a general—and speculative—summary of what might have occurred, but it would explain a lot of the current geologic formations on our planet, formations that evolution is unable to account for. For Bible believers, an exact clarification for how the flood occurred is not necessary; we simply believe what God said. But, given the evolutionary theories which so dominate the “intellectual” world, it behooves us to have some reasonable explanation of things without Darwinism. The flood answers the questions, though we don’t—and never will on this earth—have all the details.

Regardless, the flood came, “And all flesh died that moved on the earth: birds and cattle and beasts and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every man,” (Gen. 7:21).