Noah's Flood: A New Perspective

by Stephen Otto

Some people believe that Noah's flood was a worldwide event that covered the highest mountains (Gen. 7:20), despite the fact that there isn't enough water on Earth to cover those mountains. Others believe it was a regional flood, even though there is no region on Earth completely surrounded by mountains without any passes for the water to escape. For those who debate this topic, I believe that there comes a time when they acknowledge to themselves that their position is, to one degree or another, flawed.

In the beginning, before the seven days of creation, Earth's landmasses were submerged beneath the surface of the water (Gen. 1:2). Then, on the third day of creation, God declared, “Let the water under the air be gathered unto its places, and let the dry land appear.” And it became so. The water which was under the air was gathered unto its places, and the dry land appeared" (Gen. 1:9).

Later, in Noah’s generation, "God saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth..." (Gen. 6:5) and He became "...sorry that He had appointed man to be on the earth..." (Gen. 6:6). As a result, God destroyed the Earth with a great flood.

Just as God blessed mankind on the third day of creation by separating the water from the water and raising Earth’s landmasses above the water level, it makes perfect sense that when He submerged Earth’s landmasses beneath the water, He reversed His blessing with a curse.

Peter wrote, "For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water." (2 Pet. 3:5-6). Here, Peter speaks of the flood in the context of the third day of creation when God raised the land out of the water.

Wikipedia Encyclopedia, in the article Genesis Flood Narrative, states, "The flood is a reversal and renewal of God's creation of the world.[1] Bandstra pictures the destruction of creation as a return to the universe's pre-creation state of watery chaos so that it can be remade through the microcosm of Noah's Ark.[2] In Genesis 1, God separated the "waters above the earth" from those below so that dry land can appear as a home for living things, but in the flood story, the "windows of heaven" and "fountains of the deep" are opened so that the world is returned to the watery chaos of the time before creation...."[3]

1. Bandstra, Barry L. (2008). Reading the Old Testament: an introduction to the Hebrew Bible. Wadsworth/ Cengage Learning. ISBN 978-0-495-39105-0. p. 61.

2. Keiser, Thomas A. (2013). Genesis 1-11: Its Literary Coherence and Theological Message. Wipf and Stock Publishers. ISBN 978-1-62564-092-5. 2013, p. 133

3. ^ Keiser 2013, p.133