is not to be supposed that God moved
his hand, because the fountains of the deep are said to have been
broken up. It is the custom of Scripture to adapt itself to our
understanding in the phraseology employed, and that under
consideration here denotes that God gives leave to the waters in that
he no longer restrains or coerces them but suffers them to rage and
break forth unchecked according to their nature. That is the reason
the ocean seemed to swell and boil. In the salt works in our
neighborhood there is a spring named after the Germans, which, if it
is not pumped out at certain times, swells and overflows with terrific
force.

51. They say that in olden times the town of Halle was once destroyed
by a violent overflow of a spring of the kind described. If a single
spring could work such destruction what would be the result of the
uncurbed power of ocean and seas? Thus mankind was destroyed before
they even knew their danger. Whither should they flee when the waters
poured in upon them with such force?

52. But this is not all: the windows of heaven also were opened.
Moses' word implies that to that time the windows were closed as they
are closed today. Indeed, the world thought such opening impossible;
their sins, however, made it possible.

53. Moses' use here of the word "windows" signifies the literal
opening of heaven. With rain as we know it, the water appears to fall
by drops from the pores of the rain-clouds, but at the time of the
flood it came down with great force, not through pores, but through
windows, like water poured from a vessel with one movement, or as when
water-skins burst in the middle. Moses uses this figure of speech for
the sake of effect, so that those occurrences are brought to our
vision.

54. A volume of water, therefore, swept over the earth, from the sky
as well as from the innermost parts of the earth, until at last the
whole earth was covered with water, and the fertile soil, or the
entire face of the earth was destroyed by the briny flood. A like
instance occurs nowhere in any book. The Holy Scriptures alone teach
us that these things were visited upon the world sinning in imagined
security, and that to this day the waters suspended in the clouds are
restrained only by the kindness of God. Otherwise they would descend
in vast volume, as in the flood, according to the law of their nature.

Vs. 13-16. _In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and
Japheth, the sons of