Genesis 7:24

And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.

The waters prevailed. In this calculation, which exhibits the length of time that elapsed ere the waters reached their utmost height, the forty days' rain is most probably included. This very gradual increase of the diluvial waters encourages the hope that many, roused at length to a sense of their perilous condition, would, by repentance and faith in the righteousness which Noah had zealously preached to them, turn to God. No doubt, prompted by the instinctive love of life, they might, in the first instance, as is too common still, betake themselves to other refuges, endeavour with breathless haste and laborious perseverance to reach some place of fancied security, and for a while indulge in dreams of safety. But when each branch of the tallest trees, and each ridge of the adjoining mountain were threatened with being successively dipped in the rising surge, despair of earthly deliverance would drive many to look to Him who is the only "refuge from the storm and covert from the tempest; and we cannot doubt that, as in the later history of the Church, many memorable instances have occurred of genuine repentance at the eleventh hour, so many of the antediluvians might be saved from eternal death (see Dr. Horsley on 1 Peter 3:18-20) on the very eve of the deluge.

The awful character of this deluge as a divine judgment is apparent from the copious details which the sacred historian has given of the catastrophe. His narrative of this dispensation is more minute and circumstantial than that of any other event which occurred during the sixteen previous centuries; in fact, it occupies as much space as he has allotted to the whole history of man after his creation. So tremendous an exhibition of divine justice was it, that in the providential government of God it never was, and, we are assured, never will be parallelled while time endures (Genesis 8:22). As described in this inspired history, it was subservient to moral purposes alone. Whether purely natural causes were sufficient to produce the flood, or the effusion of waters, as well as their subsequent disappearance, is to be considered miraculous-the direct agency of God in this act of punitive justice is attested by the terms in which it was announced (Genesis 6:17; cf. Psalms 29:10 - Hebrew, the Lord sat at the flood), as well as by the long premonition given of its threatened infliction; while, on the other hand, the mercy and forbearance of God were manifested by the protracted opportunity afforded for repentance during the active and earnest ministry of Noah. The destructive agent employed swept away, in its wide overwhelming range, people of all characters and in all conditions-the professedly religious as well as the worldly and profane;-the posterity of Seth, that "other seed whom God appointed instead of Abel," perished in the same watery grave with the descendants of the apostate Cain.

The judgment stopped short only of the entire annihilation of the human race; for both the purpose and the promise of God prevented such a dreadful result. A solitary family was preserved; but this small exception served only to display the severity of the divine vengeance on "the world of the ungodly" in more striking contrast with the exercise of divine grace. It was a terrible remedy for a terrible disease. 'This dispensation, dreadful as it was, seems to have been absolutely necessary.' So low was the Church reduced before the deluge that, according to human apprehension, she could not have existed for another generation. Had she not been 'saved by water,' she must have been swept away by the flood of iniquity. Thus, the circumstances vindicate the judgment, and show that God could not have acted otherwise, mankind continuing in such a state, without virtually renouncing His claim to the moral government of the world (Jamieson's 'Sacred History').

The character of this narrative of the flood has been impugned as unhistorical. Some have endeavoured to trace an analogy between the flood of Noah and a destructive inundation of the Nile, both as to the season of the year, the vernal equinox, when the deluge occurred, and to the manner in which the waters rose, as well as to the height they attained. Others have maintained that it was nothing more than an unusual fall of rain, followed by the necessary melting of the snows on the Armenian mountains, which, overspreading the adjacent country to a wide extent, occasioned an immense destruction to life and property; and that this overflow of waters, exaggerated by the excited imaginations of the inhabitants, who fled in terror from the overwhelming torrent, was afterward magnified in the popular traditions into a flood, which destroyed all mankind, except a small remnant who saved themselves in a boat. A very little consideration will suffice to show the futility of this allegation, that the narrative of the flood is a fable or legendary tale.

The distance of time from the flood to Moses was more than it is from the Norman Conquest until the present age; but half of this time Noah himself was living; and therefore, allowing for the greater length of men's lives in those ages than in ours, the time when Moses wrote cannot be computed at so great a distance from the flood as we are from the Reformation. But is it possible to make any man of tolerable sense among us believe that Henry VIII, who introduced the Reformation, was the first king of England? that there was a deluge in his time, which swept away all the inhabitants of this island, and of the whole world besides, but some seven or eight persons, and that all whom we now see were born of them? And yet this, ridiculous as it seems, is not more absurd than Moses' account of the flood must have been to those of his own time, if it were false. Besides, the multitude of minute specifications contained in this narrative relating to the form and dimensions of the ark, the position of the door and the window, the number of beasts clean and unclean, that were to be admitted, the storing of victuals, the height of the waters, and not only the year, but the month and day when the waters were brought upon the earth, and when they ceased-these are recorded with a minuteness and a precision altogether inconsistent with the hypothesis of its being a fabulous account. Writing, according to Josephus, was in use before the flood; and the accurate observations made by the inmates of the ark on the course of every day's transactions seem to have been faithfully recorded in a log book, from which (or from copies of that ancient document) the relation of Moses was probably derived.

It has long been a subject of discussion whether the flood was partial or universal in its extent. Those who adopt the latter view naturally appeal to the language of the sacred historian, who, by speaking of 'the flood being on the earth,' of "all the high hills under the whole heaven," of 'every living substance being destroyed upon the face of the ground,' seems to intimate in the plainest manner that the waters of the deluge overspread the globe. They refer also to the multitude of birds which were taken into the ark-a species of animals which possessed advantages above all other terrestrial creatures for saving themselves by flight to more distant regions, had there been any, that were exempt from the desolating waters. And, lastly, they lay great stress on the fact that traditions of this flood, which was so destructive to the human race, are found in almost every quarter of the world.

In opposition to these arguments, it may be replied, in the first place, that the language of the sacred historian by no means necessarily implies that the flood overspread the whole earth. Universal terms are frequently used in a partial and restricted sense in Scripture. An example occurs in the course of this very narrative (cf. Genesis 6:12; Genesis 6:17, with Genesis 6:8). Various other instances occur of a limited region being described in the universal language, as "all the earth "denotes the empire of Chaldea (Jeremiah 51:7; Jeremiah 51:25; Jeremiah 51:49), of Alexander the Great (Daniel 2:39), or the land of Canaan (Deuteronomy 34:1; Isaiah 7:24; Isaiah 10:14; Jeremiah 1:18; Jeremiah 4:20; Jeremiah 8:16; Jeremiah 12:12; Jeremiah 40:4; Zephaniah 1:18; Zephaniah 3:8; Zephaniah 3:19; Zechariah 14:10; Romans 9:28); and instances of a great number or a large quantity only being expressed by universal terms are found (Genesis 41:56-57, "all countries," meaning the contiguous nations; Exodus 9:6; Exodus 9:9-10; Exodus 9:19; Exodus 9:22; Exodus 9:25, compared with Genesis 11:25; Genesis 10:5; Genesis 10:15; Genesis 32:3; Deuteronomy 2:25; Joshua 11:23; 1 Kings 4:34; 1 Kings 10:24; 1 Chronicles 14:17; 2 Chronicles 9:23; Luke 2:1; Colossians 1:23).

While the usus loquendi among the sacred historians shows that universal terms are used in a limited sense on many occasions, considerations suggested by various branches of science compel us to view the language of Moses as so restricted in this narrative, and to believe, although probably neither Noah nor Moses may have entertained any other thought than that the world was wholly submerged, that this destructive flood covered but a limited part of the world-did not, in fact, extend far beyond the region inhabited by man. The sacred narrative mentions two natural agents employed in the production of the flood-namely, incessant rain for nearly six weeks, and an extraordinary efflux of water from the ocean. These accumulating in any particular spot still frequently occasion disastrous inundations. But the whole waters of the great deep, together with all the rain that falls-which is only vapour raised into the atmosphere from the ocean, to descend again by rivers or in showers to the original reservoir-are of such limited extent as would not suffice, if diffused all over the earth, to cover it beyond the depth of a few inches. Whereas a deluge that should envelop the summits of the highest mountain range known in the world would require an aqueous mass to the height of five miles above the ordinary sea level - i:e., as Dr. Pye Smith calculates, a quantity of water eight times larger than the contents of the existing sea. Almighty power could doubtless have created such a destructive element, and annihilated it, when its fatal commission had been accomplished. But the sacred story says nothing of such a creation; and besides, so mighty a collection of waters, by increasing the equatorial diameter, must have immensely added to the earth's gravitation, causing such serious derangements throughout the whole solar system as could only be remedied by the multiplication of other stupendous miracles.

Moveover, a universal flood must have been destructive to the vegetation of the world. For, as the writer just quoted remarks, 'not only the most delicate flowers that flourish in valleys, but the larger number of land plants, and those the most important for size and utility (as timber and fruit trees, and the different kinds of corn and grasses), lose their vitality by a short submersion in water; so that, in a period equal to the duration of the deluge, they would have become putrescent, and in a great measure decomposed. Thus, upon the supposition of a strict universality, a new creation of the chief part of the vegetable tribes would have been necessary after the waters had subsided.' But there is no evidence of the seeds being again created in Asia, and distributed throughout the world; for America is still distinguished by her wondrous peculiarities of vegetable produce. Geology is against the hypothesis of a universal deluge; because it is now the established opinion that those shells which are found on high grounds were deposited there by previous floods of a violent character, very different from the comparatively tranquil inundation described in the sacred narrative; and besides, that the light pumice stones which lie on the volcanic summits of the Auvergne Mountains, and which must have been washed away by the action of the diluvial waters, have not, so far as the calculations of the most eminent geologists can determine, been disturbed within the historic period. In connection with zoology, difficulties far greater surround the theory of a universal deluge. No provision was made in the ark for the preservation of those myriads of animals which ply in the waters; and it was assumed that there could be no need for it, as they were safe enough in their native element. But a large portion of fish have been formed by the Creator to live in rivers and fresh-water lakes-all of which must have perished by the prevalence of a salt sea, or brackish water; and even those of the finny tribe which are naturally inhabitants of the ocean must have gradually languished and died, owing to the quality of the water being so much altered and diluted by the copious and long-continued descent of rain. All classes would have been seriously affected, not only by the loss of their usual food, aquatic plants or small fry, which would perish, but by the increased volume and pressure of water.

Then, in the department of land animals, formidable objections present themselves-creatures of the most opposite temper and habits would have been associated in the ark-the lion and the tiger with the cow and the sheep; the eagle, the vulture, and the hawk with the dove and the sparrow; the walrus and hippopotamus would have been placed in dry stalls, and the most deadly serpents with peaceful mammals.

Besides, the natural history of the present day comprises a vast accumulation of well-ascertained facts respecting the numbers as well as the geographical distribution of the various orders of the inferior animals, which were unknown to former ages, and by which the traditional calculations of the old commentators have been exploded as totally inadequate. For instead of the two, or at most the 300 species of living creatures which, according to their views, were all the inmates of the ark along with Noah and his family, modern science forms a very different estimate of the members of the animal kingdom. According to the latest and best authorities on the subject of zoology, the number and classification of the known species are reckoned as follows: 1,658 Mammalia, 6,266 Birds, 642 Reptiles, not including sea-serpents and turtles, which are amphibious, and 500,000 Insects; so that the gross amount of these different species (and accessions are ever and anon being made to our knowledge) must now be stated at 508,566. By multiplying this number-the unclean by two, and the clean by seven-the result will be found to exceed one million of living creatures, for which, if every species of terrestrial animals were represented in the ark, accommodation according to their various habits, with a sufficient stock of provisions, would have had to be provided in that gigantic vessel.

Moveover, as every region is distinguished by its own indigenous fauna and flora, all these different species have their native countries, their special habitats, where their proper food abounds, and their constitutions are adapted to the temperature. On the hypothesis, therefore, of a universal flood, we must imagine motley groups of beasts, birds, and reptiles, directing their way from the most distant and opposite quarters to the spot where Noah had prepared his ark-natives of the polar regions and the torrid zones repairing to sojourn in a temperate country, the climate of which was unsuited alike to arctic and equatorial animals. What time must have been consumed! What privations must have been undergone for lack of appropriate food! What difficulties must have been encountered! What extremes of climate must have been endured by the natives of Europe, America, Australia, Asia, Africa, and the numerous islands of the sea! They could not have performed their journeys unless they had been miraculously preserved. Nay, after the flood had subsided, and they were to be dispersed to their several homes, years would be spent in crossing seas and continents, in traversing mountains and plains; nor could they have reached, without a repetition of the miracle, the precise regions which each was destined to inhabit. 'Indeed,' says Hitchcock, 'the idea of their collection and dispersion in a natural way is altogether too absurd to be believed; and we must therefore either resort to a miracle, or suppose a new creation to have taken place after the deluge.' These and other difficulties which beset the theory of a universal flood, have led the generality of modern writers to advocate the notion that the deluge was partial-limited to the area inhabited by man.

The conditions of the sacred story are fully satisfied by the fact that all mankind perished in the awful visitation, except Noah and his family. The human race as yet occupied a small tract of western Asia, their numbers being comparatively few, as is evident from the single fact that the preaching of Noah was within the hearing of all that generation. But it has been confidently and repeatedly urged by a recent caviller at the unhistorical character of the Mosaic narrative, that the idea of a partial flood is opposed by mathematical and physical science, which teaches that, unless gravitation be miraculously suspended, waters must find their own level on the earth's surface. The objection is founded in ignorance of the geological doctrine, now firmly established, that the submergence of large portions of the earth beneath the deep has been a phenomenon of frequent occurrence.

No further back than the year 1819, two thousand square miles of country subsided in the delta of the Indus, and were changed into an inland sea. In fact, it is now the universal belief that partial deluges are produced by a subsidence of the land; and the opinion entertained is, that what has repeatedly taken place from natural causes happened in the days of Noah, but on that occasion miraculously; because divine premonition had been given of the coming event. The earth began, by slow and imperceptible degrees, to sink under the feet of that patriarch's heaven-defying contemporaries. As it gradually subsided, fissures were made in the sinking surface, some of which soon communicated with the ocean, 'broke up the fountains of the great deep,' and let in an inundation of waters. Atmospheric disturbances in the sky combined at the same time with the dislocated ground below, to increase the horrors of the scene, by discharging a heavy and continuous fall of rain, which, swelling every paltry rivulet into a mighty and resistless torrent, added to the rapidly accumulating deluge, although the catastrophe was effected in reality more by the influx of the ocean than by the aqueous contributions from the clouds.

One after another, the inferior eminences began to disappear, until at length the summit of the loftiest mountain was enveloped in the abyss; and with the exception of the ark, nothing appeared within the range of the visible horizon but a wide-spread dreary waste of waters. The narrative of the flood, as given by the sacred historian, describes things according to appearance, and in the language of common life; hence, it is said, "the waters stood above the mountains." But this, in the technical phraseology of science, means that the land having subsided, the waters of the ocean rushed in, filling up the sunken area; and after the punitive dispensation had been completed, there was an upheaval of the earth, when, the waters flowing back to their old channel, the land was restored to the level it formerly occupied.

Now, there is in Western Asia a remarkably depressed area, extending from the Sea of Aral to the Steppes of the Caucasus on the north, and sweeping round the southern shores of the Caspian, comprehending Ararat and the Great Salt Desert, which, as Ansted has remarked, 'forms no inconsiderable portion of the great recognized center of the human family, The Caspian Sea (83 1/2 feet below the level of the sea, and in some parts of it 600 feet deep) and the Sea of Aral occupy the lowest part of a vast space, whose whole extent is not less than 100,000 square miles, hollowed out, as it were, in the central region of the great continent, and no doubt formerly the bed of an ocean. Dr. Pye Smith and Hugh Miller conjectured that this immense district might have been partly the scene of the Noachian Deluge. The latter supposes that this depressed region subsided until "the fountains of the great deep were opened" by the influx of waters from the Gulf of Finland, the Black Sea, and the Persian Gulf, on opposite sides; and though the area included within these isolated seas was probably far larger than was occupied by the antediluvian population, the circle might be widened for the inlet of the waters.

The ideas of those two writers have been strongly corroborated by the testimonies of several scientific travelers who have carefully examined the whole of this region, Mr. Hamilton, President of the Geological Society, thus records the results of his observations:-`A little beyond Maurek I found a thin bed of pale yellow sand, filled with innumerable shells, resembling those near Khorasan, overlying a bed of concretionary calcareous marl. These beds all dip a little to the northwest under the black peperite with which the neighbouring hills are capped, and contain no traces of volcanic matter. I shall not enter into any discussion of the manner in which these geological events took place, nor attempt to explain the theory of their formation; but I cannot help observing that the whole geology of this district of Armenia seemed to me to coincide in a remarkable manner with the account of the sacred historian, from which it derives a charm to coincide in a remarkable manner with the account of the sacred historian, from which it derives a charm and interest which is most satisfactory to the lovers of geological investigations.

One of the most interesting features in the geology of this district is a remarkable bed of marl, containing a thin layer of tertiary shells, extending over a considerable space of ground. I particularly remarked it near Khorasan, and to the north of Anni: it appears to be identical with a similar formation observed on the banks of the Arpachai or Araxes, further south, but in the same plains of Armenia, by M. Dubois de Montpereux. They bear incontrovertible evidence of the existence of a large body of water containing animal life for a short period after the cessation of the igneous action; because the bed in which they occur overlies the great deposits of tuff and volcanic ashes. The probability is that they are fresh water, although the specimens of Mytilus which I brought home closely resemble both fresh water and marine species. I am disposed to look upon these marl beds as the deposit thrown down when the waters, accumulated on these spots by a great deluge, began to subside: the lakes and inland seas thus formed would, during a portion of their existence, soon teem again with animal life, the remains of which are, I think, preserved to us in the thin shell beds above described.

These considerations naturally lead to the investigation of the great events of which we read in sacred history, and which may have been brought about by secondary causes. The discoveries of modern science lay before us new arguments, and fresh links of evidence, which were concealed from the early generations of mankind. When we read of the Noachian Deluge, it does not seem necessary to inquire whether the whole circumference of the earth was submerged, or whether the water rose above the mountain tops from pole to pole. It is sufficient for the purpose that the deluge extended over all that portion of the earth which was inhabited by man; and it is not difficult to imagine physical agencies by which the waters of the earth may have been drawn on one side previously to, or simultaneously with, the occurrence of great volcanic outbursts, by which the sea was raised above its level, or rather the land subsided, and caused them, when the waters were again drawn off, to re-appear among the higher portions of the globe. Since, then, we have the evidence of Scripture that the ark rested on the mountains of Ararat (Armenia), and consequently that this portion of the globe was flooded by the deluge which occurred in the time of Noah; and as there is no reason to suppose that those plains have ever been subsequently flooded, it does not seem presumptuous to imagine that this shell bed was the result of the Noachian Deluge, and was deposited during the period when the accumulated waters remained in this portion of the world' ('Researches in Asia Minor, Pontus, and Armenia, 1842').

Dr. Ainsworth (Surgeon and Geologist to the Euphrates Expedition under Colonel Chesney) bears a similar testimony. After describing scientifically the character and appearances of this region as abounding with physical evidences of the Noachian deluge, he concludes by saying, that 'the alluvium of the Euphrates divides itself distinctly into that which was ante-Babylonian (being also ante-Noachian) and that which is post-Babylonian; and the comparatively large extent of ante-Babylonian alluvium contains whatever matters the great cataclysm which occurred when "all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened," deposited upon the surface of the earth' ('Researches in Assyria, Babylonia, and Chaldea'). On all these grounds we discard the idea of a geographical universality, and adopt the now prevalent opinion that the deluge was partial, and limited to the region of man's habitation, having been brought in upon the world of the ungodly-the only survivors of the judgment being Noah and his family, together with the animals of a small region preserved along with him in the ark, as 'having been those connected more or less with man by domestication, and by other modes of subserviency to his present and future welfare' (Pye Smith).

The era of the flood is the highest point in antiquity to which pagan chronology goes. Traditions of this awesome punishment are found among all ancient nations; nor does this acknowledged fact at all militate against the theory of its limited or local character, inasmuch as the subsequent generations of mankind, springing from Noah and his family as their common ancestors, would carry the memory of the overwhelming catastrophe along with them into all the countries of their dispersion. The Chaldeans, in the story of 'Xisuthrus;' the Asiatic Greeks, in that of 'Occyges;' the Greeks of Europe and the Romans, in that of 'Deucalion;' the Persians, the Egyptians (for the assertion of Bunsen and Lepsius, that the hieroglyphic monuments of Egypt contain no allusion to it, has been satisfactorily refuted by Osburn, 'Mon. Hist.,' pp. 239,

240); the Chinese and Hindus in the far East; the Mexicans, Peruvians, Chilians, Red Indians, and Cubans in the extreme west; the Scandinavians and British Druids of the north; as well as the aboriginal natives of Polynesia in the South Seas-preserved traditionary legends of the deluge, coloured according to their respective conceptions, either oral and incorporated with the sacred names and rites of their mythology, or inscribed on their monuments of brick and stone-all of these traditions proving, by their general resemblance, that they proceeded from a common source, and regarded it as a judgment from Heaven, inflicted for the unpardonable wickedness of men.

Some of those traditions, particularly the Babylonian or Chaldean narrative of Berosus, closely approximate, even in minutiae, to the Biblical account. But, as Hardwick remarks, 'the simplicity of the account in Genesis, the truthful and historic air of every part of it, its close coherence with all other facts of revelation, as well as, with the Scripture theory of man and of the universe; the absence from it of those manifest depravations, which are only capable of being rectified and made intelligible when brought into the light which it diffuses, give additional weight to the authority on which it is received by Christians (cf. Isaiah 54:9; Matthew 24:37; 1 Peter 3:20; 2 Peter 2:5), and vindicate its claim to be regarded as a genuine copy of the old tradition, that descended, age by age, from Noah to all members of the sacred family.'