The Institute for Creation Research

8:3 continually. This expression, to some degree, suggests a cyclic tidal action, but especially connotes rapid subsidence and drainage. It is significant that all the world’s oceans bear evidence (e.g., sea mounts, submarine canyons, etc.) of former lower levels and that all the world’s continental drainage systems (rivers, lakes) bear evidence of former higher water levels and quantities of flow (e.g., old raised river terraces and lake beaches, vast alluvial valleys and “underfit” streams). These worldwide evidences clearly picture a world in the process of emerging from a recent global inundation.

8:4 seventeenth day of the month. This “resting” of the ark, after its labor of protecting its precious cargo against the terrible cataclysm for five long months, occurred exactly 150 days after the Flood began. It may be significant that, on the anniversary of this date many years later, Jesus Christ rose from the dead! That is, the seventh month of the civil year used by the Jews (almost certainly the calendar used in the Flood narrative) was later set as the first month of their religious year. The Passover was on the fourteenth day of the first month, and Christ rose three days after the Passover. Thus, He “rested” in Joseph’s tomb and then rose from the dead on the seventeenth day of the seventh month of the civil calendar.