Genesis 7:11 - Meaning and Application

Here is the date of this great event, and Moses records it carefully so the story may be certain. It was in the 600th year of Noah’s life, which, by calculation, was 1,656 years from creation. The years of the old world are measured not by the reigns of giants, but by the lives of the patriarchs, the family leaders chosen by God. Saints matter more to God than princes, and the righteous will always be remembered.

Noah was then a very old man, even in those days when people lived much longer. The longer we live in this world, the more of its misery and trouble we see. That is why Scripture speaks of it as a mercy when someone dies young and does not see the evil that is coming (2 Kings 22:20). Sometimes God gives his oldest servants especially hard tests of obedience and patience. Even Christ’s oldest soldiers must not expect to leave the fight until death releases them.

The year of the flood is also marked by month and day, the second month and the seventeenth day. That was likely around the beginning of November. Noah had just brought in the harvest, so he had supplies to feed those in the ark.

Now consider the immediate causes that came together in this flood. On the very same day Noah was safely shut in the ark, the flood began. Destructive judgments do not come until God has first secured his own people. He said of Lot, “I can do nothing until you are there” (Genesis 19:22), and in Revelation the winds are held back until God’s servants are sealed (Revelation 7:3). When good people are removed, judgment is near, for they are taken away from the evil to come (Isaiah 57:1).

That fatal day for the ungodly world brought two things. First, the fountains of the great deep were broken open. Perhaps God did not need to create new water, but used what he had already made. In ordinary providence, those waters bless the earth, but now his mighty hand turned them into its ruin. God has stored the deep in reservoirs (Psalm 33:7), and now he opened those stores.

Just as our bodies contain humors that can become the seed of deadly disease when God allows it, so the earth itself held waters in its depths that rose up at his command. In creation, God set bars and doors for the sea so it would not cover the earth again (Psalm 104:9; Job 38:9-11). Now he simply removed those old boundaries, and the sea returned to cover the earth, as it had in the beginning (Genesis 1:9). Every creature is ready to turn against sinful man, and any one of them can become the tool of his ruin if God removes the restraint he has placed on it during the day of his patience.

Second, the windows of heaven were opened, and the waters above the sky were poured out on the world. These are the treasures God has stored for times of trouble, for the day of battle and war (Job 38:22, Job 38:33). Rain that usually falls in drops then came down in torrents, like the great downpours sometimes seen in the Indies, where clouds have burst with extraordinary force. Scripture says God normally binds up the waters in his thick clouds, so the cloud does not burst under them (Job 26:8). But now that bond was broken, and rain fell in a way never known before or since.

The clouds were not exhausted, as they usually are after a rain (Job 37:11). They kept returning with more water, and divine power kept supplying them. It rained without stopping or easing for forty days and forty nights (Genesis 7:12), and it covered the whole earth at once, not just one place at a time. God made the world in six days, but he took forty days to destroy it, for he is slow to anger. Yet though the judgment came gradually, it came completely.

From this we learn several things. All creatures are at God’s disposal, and he uses them as he pleases, whether for correction, for mercy, or for blessing, as Elihu says of the rain (Job 37:12, Job 37:13). God often turns what should serve our good into a trap for us (Psalm 69:22). What is usually a comfort and help can become, when he wills, a scourge and a plague. Nothing is more useful than water, from the earth’s springs and the rain from heaven, and yet nothing was more destructive here. Every creature is what God makes it for us.

It is also impossible to escape God’s righteous judgments when they come against sinners with his authority. He can arm both heaven and earth against them (Job 20:27). He can surround people with the messengers of his wrath, so that if they look up, they see horror, and if they look down, they see trouble and darkness (Isaiah 8:21, Isaiah 8:22). Who can stand before God when he is angry?

Finally, in the destruction of the old world by water, God gave a picture of the final destruction of the present world by fire. The apostle sets these two events side by side (2 Peter 3:6, 2 Peter 3:7). As there are waters under the earth, so volcanoes like Etna and Vesuvius show that there are fires beneath it too. Fire also falls from heaven, and lightning has brought many disasters. So when God’s appointed time comes, the earth and everything in it will be burned up, just as the flood came on the old world from the fountains of the great deep and through the windows of heaven.