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Genesis 8
8:1 Then God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters subsided. 2 The fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven were also stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained.3 And the waters receded continually from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters decreased.4 Then the ark rested in the seventh month, the seventeenth day of the month, on the mountains of Ararat.5 And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month. In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen. Where did the waters go? Well God says that the wind began to blow and much water is then absorbed in the atmosphere. I have no idea how much water we regularly have in our atmosphere but it is significant. In addition, if the waters had come from below the depths of the seas then the cavern left by the water escaping would create a vacuum that was filled by part of the crust lowering, like the western pacific basin indentations(see attached map). Some of the water obviously became frozen as glaciers and as an ice age. Frozen water over the seas does not change the sea level but water frozen on land does lower the level of the seas marginally. The attached map does represent underwater canyons that are miles deep pressed into the earth. With a cooling of the caverns vast amounts of water could have been returned from whence they came. Then again God could have supernaturally removed the water too!
6 So it came to pass, at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made.7 Then he sent out a raven, which kept going to and fro until the waters had dried up from the earth.8 He also sent out from himself a dove, to see if the waters had receded from the face of the ground.9 But the dove found no resting place for the sole of her foot, and she returned into the ark to him, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took her, and drew her into the ark to himself.10 And he waited yet another seven days, and again he sent the dove out from the ark.11 Then the dove came to him in the evening, and behold, a freshly plucked olive leaf was in her mouth; and Noah knew that the waters had receded from the earth. It took awhile for life to begin again with most of the vegetation probably washed away in waves of water and mud but what remained and the seed that fell to the ground quickly sprouted again to restore life. The dove and the olive being to symbols of Gods love, peace and healing upon the land. 12 So he waited yet another seven days and sent out the dove, which did not return again to him anymore.13 And it came to pass in the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, that the waters were dried up from the earth; and Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and indeed the surface of the ground was dry.14 And in the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dried. It must have been strange because the Earth would have changed from before the flood. There no longer remained the four great rivers heading throughout the Earth. The cities and the people all gone but here was a chance to go out and start anew. 15 Then God spoke to Noah, saying,16 "Go out of the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons' wives with you.17 "Bring out with you every living thing of all flesh that is with you: birds and cattle and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, so that they may abound on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth."18 So Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him.19 Every animal, every creeping thing, every bird, and whatever creeps on the earth, according to their families, went out of the ark.20 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. Finally Noah went out and rather then mourn the loss He gave thanks for God delivering him and his family. God noted what this righteous man had done. 21 And the LORD smelled a soothing aroma. Then the LORD said in His heart, "I will never again curse the ground for man's sake, although the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done.22 "While the earth remains, Seedtime and harvest, Cold and heat, Winter and summer, And day and night Shall not cease." Then the Lord promised Noah He wouldn’t do it again until the Earth ceases to be. They went out to be fruitful and went throughout the World until the days of Peleg but that story is still to come. |
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