Higher & Higher (Gen 7:19–20)
The Flood
New to the column? We’re doing a close reading of Genesis, which started in September 2022. Find links to all the posts on Genesis 1 here, then visit the Archive and plunge in, or look here or here to get oriented.
Get your free Biblical Hebrew Starter Kit here!
Last time, we saw that v. 18 — subtly but surely — combined the meteorological Flood of the J version of the story with the cosmic, Earth god vs. Ocean god Flood of the P version. As I called that post, “Primordial Chaos Returns.” It looked like rain, but (as the expression goes) first slowly and then all at once, the world was covered with water. That’s what we’ll watch happening today.
19 When the waters had manned up maximally — maximally! — atop the Earth
וְהַמַּ֗יִם גָּֽבְר֛וּ מְאֹ֥ד מְאֹ֖ד עַל־הָאָ֑רֶץ
they covered the highest mountains anywhere under the sky.
וַיְכֻסּ֗וּ כָּל־הֶֽהָרִים֙ הַגְּבֹהִ֔ים אֲשֶׁר־תַּ֖חַת כָּל־הַשָּׁמָֽיִם׃
V. 18 told us that the waters va-yigb’ru ‘manned up’ and proliferated m’ōd ‘maximally’. See that last post for an explanation of those terms; I’ll just repeat once more that I’m deliberately saying “man” because the unspoken implication of the word is that a sentient being other than YHWH God wants the planet to be a water-world. Now we repeat gavru and get a double dose of max: m’ōd m’ōd. All this introduces two words we have not yet seen in our reading of Genesis: הר har ‘mountain’ and גבוה gavo’ah ‘tall, high’. Franz Delitzsch remarks snidely:
It seems here that we are to imagine that the summits of the Himalayas and the Cordilleras were covered. But the statement is to be understood according to the limited geographical perspective of the time.
Delitzsch was a 19th-century guy, and Cordilleras (in English usage, at least) is a 19th-century word for a mountain range like the Andes. He was feeling sorry for the poor biblical writers who could not imagine a genuinely high mountain. Sorry, but no, that is exactly what they were imagining. The entire point of what we’ve been reading — as we discussed not just last time but back in v. 11 — is that the dry land revealed on Day Three of creation has vanished again.
Don Isaac Abarbanel (in my Commentators’ Bible translation) does admit to certain doubts:
According to the gentile geographers, the Torah is speaking here about the mountains of Armenia.
We’ll have more to say about Armenia when we get to 8:4. From my perspective, it is not that our author (or any of the biblical writers) had a “limited geographical perspective.” It’s that this is a story. The details — including the one we’re about to read — are not there to record facts. They are there to provide verisimilitude, to make the story sound real.
20 15 cubits above them the waters had manned up, and they covered the mountains.
חֲמֵ֨שׁ עֶשְׂרֵ֤ה אַמָּה֙ מִלְמַ֔עְלָה גָּבְר֖וּ הַמָּ֑יִם וַיְכֻסּ֖וּ הֶהָרִֽים׃
When the waters covered those Cordilleras in v. 19, presumably they just covered them. Some of the earth was thousands of feet below the surface; some of it would actually have let you walk around if you didn’t mind getting your ankles wet (as rabbinic tradition says Noah did). גבר מאוד was enough to interfere with normal life for everyone; גבר מאוד מאוד covered the entire surface. Now, the very highest point on earth was looking up at 15 cubits of water.
I suppose I should mention that the Greek translation has a different verb here. Hendel translates:
20 Fifteen cubits higher the water rose,f and the mountains were covered.
And note f explains:
f. Reading gbhw ("rose") with the LXX, rather than gbrw ("was strong") with the MT and SP. The latter is probably a reminiscence of gbrw in 7:19.
He doesn’t say so, but the Greek version of v. 20 also repeats that the mountains are “tall,” adding another word from the root גבה to the Hebrew text. I prefer to think that g‑b‑r in v. 20 is original, again doing the subtle mythological work that I perceive in it, and that the Greek translator was trying to polish the text — or perhaps he simply misread it, as Hendel suggests not in his new Anchor Bible commentary but in his critical edition of Genesis 1–11, dating to 1998:
The difference of only a single letter between גברו and גבהו makes such reminiscence an easy error. A graphic confusion of ה/ר may have contributed to this change.
This may also be the time to go back to the dimensions of the box: 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and (the critical number for this purpose) 30 cubits high. Hendel explains:
The flood reaches a height at 15 cubits (ca. 22 feet) above the mountains, so that the ark, which is 30 cubits in height, can come to rest on them (8:4). The draft of the ark is approximately half its height.
Vault lights (a/k/a deck prisms) are pushing my nautical expertise to the very limits, so I will let Rashi, the 11th-c. commentator from Troyes in very much inland France, offer his perspective, from his comment to v. 17:
Like any heavily loaded boat, some of it was below the waterline—as the verses to come demonstrate. The draft of the ark was 11 cubits.
Where Rashi gets that number from is unknown to me. I’ll end today simply by sharing another verse about a “tall mountain” that also has the word waters in it:
Isa 30:25 And on every high mountain [הַ֣ר גָּבֹ֗הַ] and on every lofty hill, there shall appear brooks and watercourses [יִבְלֵי־מָ֑יִם]—on a day of heavy slaughter, when towers topple. [NJPS]
We too will see a great slaughter when we continue reading, next time.