In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that same day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
Genesis 7:11 fixes the exact day the old world ended. It also names two sources for the water, one below the earth and one above, and both raise one question: was this weather, or was it God?
One writer takes the exact date itself as part of the message:
In verse 11 God gives the date when the flood began, in relation to Noah's age. He gives not only the general time, but the exact day: the 17th day of the second month, in Noah's 600th year. The many dates, names and places recorded in scripture invite anyone to check for himself how accurate the word of God is.
The verse describes a double assault. The deep beneath broke open, and the sky opened above it.
The term, "windows of heaven," is very expressive. It denotes an outpouring from God above; it may be in blessing, as Malachi 3:10 shows, but here it was in judgment... But also there was from beneath a breaking up of the established order. What exactly is signified, when we read of all the fountains of the great deep being broken up, it is impossible to say. The tremendous event had never happened before, and it will never happen again. For we read, "never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth" (Genesis 9:11). So we must be content to know this much: there were immense convulsions inside the earth, which produced a mighty upsurge of earth's waters to meet the waters coming down from above.
The picture behind the word is not glass panes but sluice gates held shut and then thrown open.
At the flood the expression the "windows of heaven" is in the sense of the "floodgates," as the margin note says. Gen. 7:11.
The same image returns later in the Bible, but with the opposite content:
In Genesis 7:11 we read, "the windows of heaven were opened," a scene in which the wrath of heaven was poured out upon a world of violence and corruption. In Malachi 3:10 we read of God's desire and promise: to "open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need." A flood of judgment, required by the holy character of God; but a flood of blessing, expressing the love of God's heart.
People have long argued whether the flood was just extreme weather. One writer answers a critic who suggested the water came from clouds and perhaps the sea:
Scripture uses language found nowhere else. It shows that this was an extraordinary outbreak of waters, unheard of except in this one case, and never known in any other way... Does not the narrative speak of some outburst of water known on no other occasion? But let us be more exact about the fact. The passage speaks neither of clouds nor sea... It never says the water drained back into the sea, but that "the waters receded from the earth continually." It also declares that the fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was held back. That is, the narrator does present it as having its source and its arrest in the extraordinary intervention of God — call it "miracle" or what you please.
Note the two halves of that argument: God started it, and God stopped it. Neither end of the flood belongs to the normal running of nature.
God shut the door, and the waters broke out that same day. Scripture then says almost nothing about the scene itself:
And now the last day came. It was on the seventh day that Noah went in, and then God shut the door. Then the world saw what it had never seen before... And then what panic! To me it is a very striking thing that God has drawn a veil over what happened then. All Christ says is this, "and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away" (Matt. 24:39). They paid no attention. They did not care about their souls. Then the moment came, and judgment overwhelmed them. It is a solemn picture of the terrible judgment coming on a world without Christ.
- Dated. God records the year, month and day the flood began, inviting anyone to check the accuracy of His word for himself.
- Doubled. Judgment came from beneath and above at once: the deep torn open, the sky unsealed. It had never happened before, and God promises it will never happen again.
- Opened. "Windows of heaven" means floodgates. The same open heaven pours out judgment here and blessing in Malachi — one God behind both.
- Beyond nature. The unusual wording points past normal weather. God released the waters, and God later shut them off.
- Sudden. The waters broke out the very day the door closed. That is why the flood pictures a judgment that arrives while people are unaware.
And the pour of rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights.
The rain that began here was no accident of weather; God had fixed the day and said so long before. Two questions come out of this verse: why forty days, and why does Scripture measure the flood so exactly?
Genesis gives two timescales: a long warning and a short one. Commentators read both as proof that the God who spoke was the God who acted.
Here we have clear examples of God's ways in prophecy. First, a short, exactly marked gap of "seven days" in Genesis 7:10, when the blow was to fall. But that came after a long warning of "a hundred and twenty years" in Genesis 6:3, when God's judgment would end man's days for the world of that time. Both stand undeniable in the record. Each is worthy of Him who alone could speak with authority, and He fulfilled both exactly on time. If He carries out judgment on a world that hardens itself in evil and will not believe His word, He also provides mercy for those who keep His word in faith and obey Him, as Noah did, saving his household.
Scripture keeps coming back to this number, and always with the same sense.
"Rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights" (verse 12). Here for the first time in the Word we find the number forty. It is not the last time. Forty means endurance and testing. Moses was forty days on the mountain; his life was divided into three forties. Forty years Israel was in the wilderness. Elijah knew the forty days, and Ezekiel lay forty days on his right side, a typical action (Ezekiel 4). Jonah preached, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown"; and Christ was forty days in the wilderness to be tested.
Genesis says the rain came through the windows of heaven. That picture is not always one of judgment.
The term "windows of heaven" is very expressive. It means an outpouring from God above. It may be in blessing, as Malachi 3:10 shows, but here it was in judgment. The devastating waters came down for forty days and forty nights.
Rain alone could never have done this. Genesis names two sources at once, and neither belongs to the ordinary running of the world.
This was no mere matter of the clouds or of the sea, as it usually is. The inspired writer speaks of sources that were completely different and had never been seen before. All the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of the heavens, as the phrase goes, were opened. Neither the one nor the other was according to the course of nature that God established before or since. This is exactly what makes a miracle clear and impressive. Everyone admits the regular working of the physical laws by which God orders the universe.
One writer works the problem from the other end. Could the sky even hold that much water?
It is claimed that the sky above us would be full to saturation point if it held enough water to cover the earth just thirty feet deep... But to add to the awesome flood, the rain fell for forty days and forty nights (v. 12).
In Genesis 2 a mist waters the ground, and no rain falls. Some commentators think that lasted until the flood. They offer it as a suggestion, not a fact.
Verse 6 shows that a mist rising from the earth kept the plants alive, without water coming down from above. There were waters "above the expanse" (Genesis 1:7), but as yet they had not fallen as showers on the earth. Not until Genesis 7:4 do we read of rain. Some think that the watering of the earth by mist and not rain continued until the time of the flood. It may have been so.
For everyone outside, the rising water meant death. For those inside, the higher it rose the higher they went.
The ark was borne up. And that which was judgment to the world was safety for Noah. As the waters rose, what rose? This ark. A happy and blessed thing for those in the ark.
That reversal is why commentators read the flood as a picture, not just a record:
Plainly, the ark is Christ. The flood it saves through is the judgment of the whole world, and that world perished in it. Those kept safe come through to a new world that rises out of the waters.
- Announced — 120 years of warning, then seven days, then rain: God said it before He did it, and did it on the day He said.
- Measured — forty days marks a full testing. It is the first of many: Moses, Israel, Elijah, Jonah, Ezekiel, and Christ in the wilderness.
- Doubled — water fell from the opened windows of heaven and burst up from the great deep. The sky alone never held enough.
- Miraculous — neither source ran by the course of nature God set. Ordinary weather cannot explain it.
- Lifting — the same water that drowned the world carried the ark upward. Commentators read the ark as Christ: the judgment that ends one world floats His people into a new one.