“Behold, He withholdeth the waters, and they dry up: also He sendeth them out, and they overturn the earth” (Job 12:15).

The great flood of the Bible was such a traumatic global cataclysm, practically all the people groups that developed from its survivors kept its memory alive in their traditions and legends. The Bible itself, of course, has the only completely accurate record (Genesis 6–9). In addition, the ancient book of Job, written only a few centuries after the flood, reflects the still-fresh memories of the awful deluge. Job knew, for example, that the flood had literally “overturned the earth,” eroding away the pre-flood mountains and depositing their debris to form new mountains after the flood.

Job’s friend, Eliphaz, said: “Hast thou marked the old way which wicked men have trodden? Which were cut down out of time, whose foundation was overflown with a flood” (Job 22:15,16). Referring to God’s promise after the flood, Job said: “He hath compassed the waters with bounds, until the day and night come to an end” (Job 26:10). In the climactic 38th chapter of Job, God Himself recalls this promise:

“Who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb? . . . And said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed?” (Job 38:8,11).

The general atmosphere of the entire book of Job seems to reflect the conditions shortly after the flood. Modern skeptics deny that such a flood ever occurred, but it was a real and terrible event to those whose immediate ancestors had gone through it! Today, its testimony is preserved not only in the Bible and ancient traditions, but also in the flood sediments themselves, now seen everywhere as the fossil-bearing rocks of the earth’s crust. HMM