Genesis 8:3

And the waters returned, &c. St. Jerome on this passage remarks, "that all waters and torrents repair to the womb of the abyss, through the hidden veins of the earth," and by the abyss understands the sea: according to that of Ecclesiastes i. 7, all the rivers run into the sea. But as the sea itself, on this occasion, exceeded its limits, (otherwise its waters would not have been higher than the land) the sense perhaps confined to this, that the waters by degrees were diminished; as we may say of the inundations of land, that the waters are gone off, not by the regular course of ditches, but from the effects of the sun and winds which dry them up. (Estius)