Genesis 7:11

the second month, on the seventeenth day P gives, according to its fondness for statistics, the exact date in years, months, and days. Cf. Exodus 12:41 (P). The months and days apparently are reckoned on the assumption that Noah was born on the first day of the year, 600 years previously. LXX here, and in Genesis 8:4, reads "twenty-seventh day," because of Genesis 8:14.

the second month According to Josephus (Ant. i. 3, 3), this second month was Marchesvan, equivalent to our November, the beginning of the season of rain in Palestine. The account is, therefore, well adapted to Israelite presuppositions. But, on the supposition that Abib, or April, was reckoned as the first month, the Flood would have begun in May, the month in which the Tigris and the Euphrates are liable to be flooded through the melting of the snows in the mountains. It is doubtful whether Tisri (October) or Abib is here regarded as the first month of the year.

the fountains of the great deep The origin of the Flood, according to P, was not merely rain. The Israelites believed that beneath the surface of the earth were accumulated enormous reservoirs of water, to supply, through channels or fissures, the seas, lakes, and rivers. This accumulation of water is poetically described as "the deep that coucheth beneath" (Genesis 49:25), and "the great deep" (Psalms 36:6; Isaiah 51:10; Amos 7:4). Here it is supposed that the channels, or, as the account calls them, "the fountains of the great deep," were violently rent asunder, "broken up," whereupon the subterranean waters swept out in portentous volume and violence over the surface of the earth.

the great deep On the "deep" (tehom), here called "great," see note on Genesis 1:2.

the windows of heaven The other source of the Deluge is here given. Above the solid firmament (see note on Genesis 1:6) were stored the masses of water which supplied the rainfall of the earth. Now "the sluices of heaven" (cf. 2 Kings 7:2; 2 Kings 7:19; Malachi 3:10) and "the windows on high" (cf. Isaiah 24:18) are thrown open, and the water descends in unrestrained mass. For this description of the waters above and below, cf. Proverbs 8:27-29; Job 38:16. LXX οἱ καταῤῥάκται τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, Lat. cataractae coeli. Aquila and Symmachus αἱ θυρίδες.

12 (J). the rain In this verse the cause of the Flood and its duration are given by J. Its cause, torrents of rain, the Heb. word denoting something much stronger than ordinary rain. Its duration, forty days and forty nights, as in Genesis 7:4.