How Long Was the Flood? (Gen 7:24)
The Flood
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24 The waters overpowered the Earth for 150 days.
וַיִּגְבְּר֥וּ הַמַּ֖יִם עַל־הָאָ֑רֶץ חֲמִשִּׁ֥ים וּמְאַ֖ת יֽוֹם׃
Last time, we saw the mythical aspect behind the seemingly straightforward announcement that “the waters overpowered the Earth.” Perhaps this free Sunday post is also the time to provide some links to archaeological discussion of flooding in Mesopotamia:
an article by the esteemed Sumerologist Samuel Noah Kramer
an article about sea level rise ca. 3000 BCE
an article about the Mediterranean flooding over into the Black Sea, ca. 5500 BCE
Now I’ll ask my teacher Shalom Paul to remind us once more about the mythical perspective in the Bible itself, with his comments on Isaiah 51:
A number of ancient Near Eastern epics narrate the rebellion of the sea (in Mesopotamia, Tiamat and her henchmen; in Ugarit, Yam and his allies) against the god of the heavens (in Mesopotamia, Marduk; in Ugarit, Baal), a battle that ends with the capitulation and demise of the instigators. This tradition reverberates throughout many of the biblical genres (wisdom literature, psalms, and prophecy) explicitly and implicitly, through expressions and idioms.
All of which brings us back around to the rest of v. 24, the last verse of Genesis 7. As I said, it’s got two things we need to talk about: (1) the number of days that “the waters overpowered the Earth,” and (2) that pesky period at the end of the verse in most English translations. First, 150 days.
Cassuto writes:
The verb prevailed [his translation of וַיִּגְבְּר֥וּ, which I translated “overpowered”] connotes here a continuing state: the power of the water upon the earth continued a hundred and fifty days, and did not decline in appreciable measure till after this period, which comprised, as we shall see later (viii 4), the tremendous downpour of rain for forty days followed by another hundred and ten days. The word מאוד me’ōd [‘greatly’, ‘mightily’] is not used here as in vv. 18-19; hence the reference is not to the peak of the waters’ strength but to their power in general.
The problem is that we’ve now seen various lengths of time that are not easy to reconcile with each other:
40 days of rainfall (v. 12)
40 days during which the Flood “was” [וַֽיְהִ֧י] upon the earth (v. 17)
150 days when the Flood גבר’d upon the Earth (v. 24)
The rain started — we in the studio audience understand that what really happened is that “all the fountains of Great Deep split apart and the hatches in the Sky opened up” (v. 11) — but the “rain” started “in the 600th year of Noah’s life, in the 2nd month, on the 17th day of the month.” Is it now 150 days later? The rain stopped falling 110 days ago, and the 40 days are the first 40 days of the 150? That’s what Cassuto thinks.
In this case, you will not find the answer in the back of the book. You will find it — or a good clue to it — in 8:4, when we next get a precise date, suggesting that the box ran aground (on the top of a mountain) precisely 150 days after the rain started falling. As we’ll see, 8:3 somewhat complicates that picture.
A large part of the problem is certainly the result of mixing together the J version of the story, with its legendary-sounding “40 days,” and the P version, with precise, scientific-sounding dates. Another part of the problem is caused, surprisingly, by a certain lack of clarity in the text. Let me demonstrate by presenting the NJPS translation of our verse and the next one:
Gen 7:24 And when the waters had swelled on the earth one hundred and fifty days, 8:1 God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the ark …
Yes, that’s a comma — not a period — at the end of a chapter. The late Chaim Cohen of Ben-Gurion University explains:
That Gen 7:24-8:1 must be looked upon as a single verse has been noted by several scholars. Only in the companion volume of notes to the NJPS translation of the Torah is it indicated that Saadiah Gaon, in his tenth-century translation, was the first to translate these two verses together as protasis and apodosis of a single verse, “for 7:24 is actually the protasis (‘when …’), of which 8:1 is the apodosis (= ‘then’), as already recognized by Saadiah in his Judeo-Arabic translation of the Torah: ‘And when (wa-lamma) the waters... God remembered (dhakara Allahu) Noah’ — the whole (7:24 and 8:1) constituting a single sentence.”
Can a single sentence really run over more than a single biblical verse? Uh, yes. Let me remind you that the very first verse of the Bible begins a single sentence that runs through v. 3.
Can a sentence really run across a chapter boundary? Also yes. In this case, it’s worth remembering that the verse divisions in the Bible are Jewish and ancient, being mentioned at least as far back as the Mishnah (ca. 200 CE), while the chapters are Christian and 1,000 years younger. In our case, Jewish tradition does not recognize any break after 7:24. The third synagogue reading of this week’s lectionary — in plain English, the weekly Torah portion — runs from 7:17–8:14. At that point, a ס brings us at last to a stopping point.
Who’s right, the Jews or the Christians? Nahum Sarna isn’t taking sides:
This verse may introduce the next chapter or close the preceding. In the latter case it would be rendered, “The waters swelled on the earth …”
As we’ll see next time, 8:1 definitely marks a new stage in the story, one described in an extremely interesting way.