One of the fundamental tenets of exegesis is to understand the context in which a statement is being made. This is no less important in the creation narrative than in any other text. For example, in Gen. 2, after God places Adam in the garden, we are told that God caused the plants to grow (2:8-9). This seems to contradict Gen. 1, which states that God created plants before human beings (1:11-12). But when we look at the context, we realize that the statements in chapter 2 are only being made with reference to the garden of Eden—that God caused the plants he had just planted in the garden to grow, not that there weren’t any plants prior to the creation of human beings.
The geographical context of Gen. 2 is made explicit in verses 8-14 when we are told there is land outside of Eden. If the description of events given in chapter 2 was meant to apply to the entire earth, it is inexplicable why the text specifically limits the context by pointing out that Eden had geographical boundaries. Similarly, since Gen. 1:27-30 states that God created human beings on the sixth day of creation, the description of the events in Gen. 2, which is a more detailed account of this same event, should also be understood as taking place on day six. If we ignore this context, we open ourselves up to misunderstanding God’s Word, and this can have disastrous results.
In fact, ignoring the context of the creation narrative has had disastrous results. Starting in the 18th century, some of the early textual critics of the Bible argued that the order of events in Gen. 1 and 2 contradict each other, and thus neither is true.{i} They used this to claim that these two chapters are independent creation traditions which an editor put together at a later date.{ii} But, of course, their whole argument is fallacious, because the description of events in Gen. 2 is concerned with what happened in the garden of Eden on the sixth day of creation, whereas the description of events in Gen. 1 is global in extent and spans all seven days. By (intentionally?) ignoring this, they initiated an interpretation which is still popular among liberal theologians today.
In order to make the sequence of events in Gen. 1 contradict the sequence in Gen. 2, these textual critics had to take a very uncritical view of the text. Their “exegetical approach can only be described as simplistic. They presumed that the order in which various creation events appeared on the Bible page represented the chronology of the text. For the most part, they ignored verb choice, verb forms, contextual cues, indicators of parenthetical comment, and virtually all other syntactic features.”{iii} Unfortunately, instead of challenging their interpretations, many Christians blindly accepted them and sought to defend them as God’s Word. Young-earth creationism, in fact, employs the same chronology of Gen. 1 as these liberal (not literal) interpreters, although they recognize that Gen. 2 is only describing the events of day six. This is reminiscent of some Christians who argued that the earth is flat because “the Bible says so,” forgetting that it was only in the 19th century that skeptics began heavily advocating such an interpretation in order to discredit the Bible.
Geography in Genesis 2
Since the context of the Gen. 2 narrative is the garden of Eden on the sixth day of creation, its descriptions should probably not be applied beyond this. Thus, when we are told in verse 2:5 that the plants hadn’t grown because it hadn’t yet rained and there wasn’t anyone to till the ground, this applies only to the garden of Eden on day six, not to the whole world and all of creation week. This probably just means that once God planted the garden, he created Adam and put him in it before it rained there.
By specifically limiting the geographical extent of the Eden narrative, the text tells us that there was something special or unique about Eden as opposed to the rest of the world. If the whole world was paradise (by being in the same essential state as Eden was) then it was meaningless for God to divide it up by making Eden a particular area rather than the whole world. Moreover, the expulsion from Eden would be unintelligible if the rest of the world was also paradise.
We are not told specifically what made Eden unique, but the text gives us some clues. For example, as stated above, Gen. 1:27-30 tells us that God created human beings on day six. Since Gen. 2 describes the same event in greater detail, the account in the second chapter also took place on day six. Conversely, since Gen. 2 limits the context of the creation of human beings to the garden of Eden, this also applies to Gen. 1:27-30. That is, the descriptions in both passages are only describing the circumstances of the garden. So if, when God tells humanity (Adam and Eve) that he gave them and the animals plants to eat (1:30), he meant that they were to eat only plants, this would only refer to the animals in Eden. That is, the animals in Eden were herbivores. This wouldn’t mean that there were no carnivorous animals in the original creation plan, only that there weren’t any in the garden. Eden, then, was a kind of sanctuary where God kept Adam and Eve safe from carnivorous animals.
Death before sin?
An objection frequently made at this point is that if there were carnivorous animals killing and eating each other before the fall of humankind, even if it was outside of Eden, it would contradict the biblical statements that sin brought death into the world. Moreover, since Christ died to rescue us from the punishment of sin, i.e. death, the claim that there was death before the fall denies Christ’s atonement.
There are two possible answers to this: first, since Adam and Eve were tempted by Satan, obviously he had already sinned and become evil, and had access to the world. The Bible states that a) Satan was a murderer and sinner “from the beginning” (John 8:44; 1 Jn. 3:8), which would either mean his beginning (that is, he fell immediately upon being created) or is a reference back to Gen. 1:1 and the beginning of creation. And b) the angelic host witnessed God’s acts during creation week (Job 38:4-7), so they had obviously already been created—and this would include Satan. Thus, there’s nothing particularly unusual in the hypothesis that Satan may have poisoned the universe before God created human beings.
The second possible answer to this objection is present in the objection itself: whom did Christ die to save? Did he die to save frogs and bugs and chinchillas from death? Of course not: he died to save human beings from death. Thus, the fall of humankind initiated human death; sin results in death, and among all the forms of life on Earth, only human beings can sin (Jms. 1:15). While this refers to the physical death of human beings, it also refers to our spiritual death, that is, separation from God. The fall in the garden initiated spiritual death as well as the physical death of spiritual beings, i.e. human beings. This point is made very explicitly in Gen. 3:22-24, Rom. 5:12-21, and 1 Cor. 15:20-58. All of these passages specifically limit their context to human beings, and the latter two directly contrast the death that was initiated with the fall in Eden with the salvation which Christ offers to all people: “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned… Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men” (Rom. 5:12, 18, italics added). To apply this passage to animals obviously goes beyond what the text actually says. There’s nothing here, or in any other passages anywhere in the Bible, to suggest that the death of non-spiritual beings wasn’t present before the fall—or that it’s evil. In fact, God’s providence in the predator-prey relationship is explicitly sanctioned in the Bible (Job 38:39-40; Ps. 104:21, 27-28). Besides, how could God command the slaughter of innocent animals in the ancient Hebrew sacrificial system if it was evil? What’s evil is that human beings experience death when we were created not to.
In fact, most young-earth proponents freely acknowledge this: since Gen. 1:29-30 states that God gave human beings and animals plants to eat, plants did experience death before the fall, even in Eden. But animals supposedly did not. The problem here is that this draws the line of “death initiated by the Fall” between the death of plants and the death of animals, whereas the Bible draws this line between the death of spiritual beings (humans) and the death of non-spiritual beings. While the Bible applies the categories of life and death to animals, it does so to plants as well (Job 14:8-10; Ps. 37:2; Matt. 6:28-30). Because of the similarities between animals and humans it’s very easy when we see animals hunting, killing, and eating each other to ascribe human categories of suffering to it. But this is simply anthropomorphism. Ultimately we can’t really know how animals experience pain.{iv}
In fact, this demonstrates three great ironies of the young-earth creationist movement: first, equating animal pain and death with that of human beings would only be a valid assumption if human beings were merely animals. Those who make this argument don’t seem to realize that it presupposes the atheistic worldview in which human beings are just animals that are “more evolved” than others, the very idea they’re trying to refute.
Second, the ecosystem, which involves animals eating each other, is extremely complex (Job 38:39-39:30). If the complexity of living creatures can only be explained supernaturally as the result of an intelligent designer, and not by evolution (I am not making any judgments about this here), we would have to say the same about the ecosystem. We can't simply remove carnivorous activity from the mix and expect it to still work.
Third, some of the leaders of the young-earth movement maintain that God did not create animals to be carnivores, so the specialized properties of carnivores must have evolved after the fall of humankind from the herbivorous animals God did create. However, the biological differences between carnivores and herbivores are so significant that this would qualify as macro-evolution rather than micro-evolution. It can’t even be passed off as theistic evolution (i.e. evolution directed by God), since the Bible clearly represents God’s role in creating new types of physical things as being over after the creation of humanity (Gen. 2:1-3). In fact, since the earth is believed to be so young, it is claimed that this macro-evolution took place more quickly and efficiently than any Darwinian would ever even suggest.{v}
Thus, I contend that when God created human beings, he created the garden of Eden as a sort of “sanctuary” for them. When Adam and Eve sinned, they were forced to leave Eden, cut off from the tree of life (which would have allowed them to live forever), and go into the larger world God created, thus becoming subject to death like everything else (Gen. 3:22-24).
It also needs to be pointed out that Ps. 104 (see below) is a poetic restatement of Gen. 1, and refers to God’s providence in the predator-prey relationship within the context of creation week. Moreover, it calls this carnivorous activity “good.” It states, “The lions roar for their prey and seek their food from God. … These all look to you to give them their food at the proper time. When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things” (Ps. 104:21, 27-28). A similar passage is in Job where God challenges Job by asking him if he can do everything God does. In 38:39-40 God says, “Do you hunt the prey for the lioness and satisfy the hunger of the lions when they crouch in their dens or lie in wait in a thicket?” Since this comes in a list of things of how God provides for his creation, it means that God is the one who brings other animals to the lion for it to kill and eat as the lion waits in a place hidden from them.
A global flood in a localized context?
Since Gen. 2 limits the geographical context to Eden, we have to ask when the Bible returns to the global context it had in Gen. 1—or, more appropriately, when the possibility of a global context is re-established. At first, the banishment from the garden of Eden in chapter 3 would seem to be a prime candidate, since this clearly involves an expansion of the geographical context. But in the next chapter, Cain is further banished from the land he was dwelling in after the fall, so we have to look elsewhere.
The most likely candidate is the flood chapters. When God flooded the world, we are told that everybody died, that all the animals died, and that the waters covered “all the surface of the earth” (Gen. 8:9) as well as “all the high mountains under the entire heavens” (Gen. 7:19). This certainly seems to be describing a global event, and, as such, would imply that the objects of this judgment (humanity) had spread out and occupied the entire world. Thus, these descriptions may imply that the context of the flood chapters re-establishes the global perspective of Gen. 1.
Before I critique this interpretation, I must first point out that the geographical extent of the flood has become almost as controversial an issue as the age of the earth. This is totally unnecessary. As with the age of the earth, what a Christian believes about the geographical extent of the flood has absolutely no bearing on his spiritual life, his walk with God, or his theology. I shouldn’t even have to point this out, but this issue has become so emotionally charged that I think it is warranted.
So here are the problems I find in understanding the flood as a global phenomenon: first of all, universal terminology is frequently employed in the Bible (and all ancient literature, for that matter) to describe local events in a hyperbolic fashion. This is particularly true of the specific phrases used to describe the flood, such as “the face of all the earth,” and “under the entire heavens.” The first phrase is used to describe local events—sometimes just a small area—elsewhere in the Bible (1 Sam. 30:16; 2 Sam 18:8, both translated in the NIV as “the whole countryside”), not to mention the extreme geographical diversity the phrase “all the earth” (kol haerets) by itself encompasses.{vi} The second phrase is used with the exact same words in Hebrew (tachat kol hashamayim—”under all the heavens”) only six other times in the Old Testament, one of which (Deut. 2:25) only refers to the area the Jews were traveling in during the Exodus.{vii} This pattern even extends into the New Testament: Luke wrote that there were converted Jews in Jerusalem from every nation under the heavens (Acts 2:5; cf. Gen. 41:57), but nobody thinks this means that there were Jews from New Zealand and Tierra del Fuego in Jerusalem at that time.
Tied to this is the fact that there is a Hebrew term which always refers to the entire planet earth: tevel.{viii} But this term is never used to describe the extent of the flood. In fact, tevel is used 16 times in order to specifically qualify erets as the entire planet.{ix} The point being that there was a term available with which God could have more clearly defined the flood as a worldwide phenomenon, but which was not used.
Second, one of the only recorded commandments God gave to all people prior to the flood is to multiply and fill the earth (Gen. 1:28). The people were so evil and disobedient to God that he destroyed all of them except Noah and his family—and then told them to fill the earth (9:1). If the people were that evil and disobedient, it seems odd to suggest that they had actually been obedient to God’s command to fill the earth prior to the flood. Similarly, the reiteration to Noah to follow through with the original command implies that it hadn’t been obeyed and that humanity hadn’t filled the earth by the time that God sent the flood. And since the point of the flood was judgment on the human race, it would have accomplished its task without covering the whole earth.
Some verification of this comes from the fact that “Genesis mentions no geographical place-names beyond Greater Mesopotamia” in the pre-flood and flood chapters.{x} In fact, it’s not until Gen. 10 (the Table of Nations) when human beings finally began to disperse across the earth that other areas are mentioned.
Third, the word used to describe the animals that were killed in the flood, and had representatives taken on board the ark, is basar (root meaning: “flesh”), a term which, when it describes animals, may only refer to those animals whose “flesh” was used for some purpose; namely, hunted, domesticated, or sacrificial animals.{xi} In other words, when basar animals are clearly defined in the Old Testament, they only describe animals that fit this description, which could imply that this term is not used generically for all animal life (elsewhere, the animals on board the ark are referred to as nephesh, which, as has already been noted, may only refer to mammals and birds). The significance of this is that, if basar only refers to certain types of animal life, and only basar animals were taken on board the ark, obviously all non-basar animals would have gone extinct in a worldwide flood. The fact that such animals were and are present after the flood would thus constitute evidence that the flood was not in fact worldwide. The purpose in taking the basar animals on board the ark, then, was not to reestablish the global ecosystem, but to reestablish the local ecosystem, as well as human society, which was agrarian and depended on these animals.
Finally, one of the biggest problems with the global flood scenario is that the physical dimensions of the ark translates into its capacity and, according to young-earth proponents, it could only have carried animal pairs numbering in the tens of thousands.{xii} Moreover, we have to bear in mind that there were only eight people on board the ark to feed, care for, and clean up after the animals, and this limits their number even more, certainly placing it under ten thousand, and perhaps even under a thousand. Since there were millions of different animal species that were present on the earth immediately following the flood, it is claimed that they must have evolved, via natural processes, from the animals Noah took on the ark. This would mean that the descendents of each animal pair Noah took on the ark evolved into between 100 and 1,000 distinct species within a few hundred years. Once again, this posits a naturalistic macro-evolution much more efficient than anything evolutionary biologists have ever claimed.{xiii}
Psalm 104
As pointed out above, Ps. 104 is a creation psalm which is a poetic reiteration of the creation narrative in Gen. 1. This is demonstrated by the parallel references between these two passages:
Ps. 104:2-5/Gen. 1:1—Creation of the universe
Ps. 104:6-9/Gen. 1:6-10—Formation of dry land
Ps. 104:14-17/Gen. 1:11-13—Creation of plants (for men and animals)
Ps. 104:19-23/Gen. 1:14-19—Establishment of the heavens as calendar “markers”
Ps. 104:24-30/Gen. 1:20-25—Creation of animals
What is especially significant for our present purposes is the parallel accounts of the formation of dry land. There are three things of note here: first, in both accounts, the earth is totally covered with water; second God orders the dry land to appear; third, Ps. 104:9 concludes by stating, “You set a boundary they [the waters] cannot cross; never again will they cover the earth.” Since this is a creation psalm describing the events of creation week, it necessarily follows that after the formation of dry land during creation week, God never again allowed water to cover the whole earth. In other words, the flood could not have been global.
The only way out of this is to claim that, perhaps, Ps. 104:6-9 is not referring to the establishment of dry land during creation week but to the flood itself. However, the parallels between Ps. 104 and Gen. 1 confute this: essentially, this would require that Ps. 104 parallel Gen. 1 regarding the creation of the universe, jump ahead to describe the flood, then jump back to paralleling Gen. 1, while skipping over the account of the creation of dry land out of the water (which just happens to sound exactly like what was just described). This is an extremely ad hoc explanation. Thus, this passage is a strong argument against the flood having been global.
Global context
Obviously, the geographical boundaries of Eden or the Mesopotamian valley don’t determine the context for the rest of the Bible—any given passage’s geography must be determined by its immediate and overall context, if geography has anything to do with its context at all. However, since the context had not expanded to include the entire earth by the time we reach the chapters describing the flood, we have to ask when the Bible does in fact return to the global context it had in Gen. 1. While I’m certainly open to other possibilities, I suggest the following three prospects as being the most likely candidates:
1) After Noah’s flood—As was just mentioned, God specifically tells Noah and his family to fill the earth when they get off the ark, and, if they obeyed, this may be a statement reestablishing a global context. There are two arguments in support of this: first, Gen. 9:19 states, “These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the earth.” Second, Gen. 10 (the Table of Nations) describes how Noah’s descendants spread out after the flood. Against the first argument, 9:19 does not actually state that humanity spread out over the earth at that time—only that when they did, the people in question were descendants of Noah’s sons (there being no other men to be descended from). In response to the second argument, the spreading out described by the Table of Nations is not global in extent, although it may have been the beginning of such a movement. Therefore, this may not be the best option.
2) The time of Peleg—Gen. 10:25 tells us that there was a man who was named Peleg “because in his time the earth was divided” (Peleg means divided). If we understand this to mean that in his time the people were widely dispersed, it may imply a global context. Unfortunately, this verse is extremely ambiguous, and, unless we don’t have any better options, we should avoid reading too much into it.
3) The tower of Babel—Gen. 11:1-9 tells us that humanity (kol haerets!) settled in a plain in Shinar. This in itself tells us that they hadn’t yet spread out over the whole earth, and thus suggests that this took place prior to the spreading out described in Gen. 10. Then they started to build a huge tower, but God confounded their plans by confusing their languages and spreading them out “over the face of the whole earth” (or land). While “the face of the whole earth” is used elsewhere to describe a local area, the fact that here it’s contrasted with a local area (the plain in Shinar) implies that it’s meant to be understood globally. Moreover, the point of this story is to explain how the geographical and linguistic diversity of the human race came about. In fact, it’s very possible that the Table of Nations describes the early stages of this development. Therefore, I contend that this is probably when the Bible reestablishes the global perspective that it had in Gen. 1.
Genesis 1 and the Promised Land
John Sailhamer, a renowned scholar of Semitic languages, has recently championed what he calls “historical creationism,” a view which was held by a medieval Jewish theologian.{xiv} This view notes that the Hebrew phrase “the land” (haerets) is frequently used as a name of Israel. Since the Pentateuch is a unified narrative primarily concerned with bringing God’s people into “the land” he has promised them, the description of events in Gen. 1 (after the first verse) is merely describing God’s creation and preparation of Israel, not the whole earth. So all of the references in Gen. 1 to what God did to the land only refer to the land God had set aside for his chosen people. All of the references to what happens in the heavens refer only to the sky as seen from this land.
While Sailhamer is certainly an excellent scholar, there are several objections that can be made to this view. First of all, Gen. 2 clearly focuses our attention on a specific part of God’s acts of creation, and this focusing involves a delimitation of the geographical boundaries being described. This strongly implies that these boundaries were not a part of the description in Gen. 1 (except insofar as some of the first chapter is describing the same events as the second chapter). Second, while haerets is frequently used as a name of Israel (and is done so even today—one of Israel’s biggest newspapers is Haaretz), it is very diverse; the Pentateuch uses it to describe the land in which one is dwelling or has dwelt, whatever that land may be (Gen. 12:1; Exod. 1:7), as well as the whole earth (Gen. 18:25). So just because the Pentateuch is concerned with God bringing his people into the promised land, it doesn’t necessarily mean that all of the references to “the land” in Gen. 1 mean Israel; we need more exegetical evidence for this assertion.
My third objection is anthropological rather than biblical or theological. One of the fundamental needs of all human beings is to know who we are, and how we relate to the world in which we live. Throughout human history this need has been met with various “creation myths” which explain our origin and that of the world around us. Virtually every culture and society has some kind of creation myth; but these myths are always universal in scope. If Sailhamer is right, God never really addresses this need, except to say that “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” It seems much more likely to me that God is addressing our need to know who we are, and that Gen. 1 is also universal in scope rather than that he’s just describing the creation of a certain stretch of land.
Objections and responses
Objection: The geographical boundaries of Eden aren’t given until Gen. 2:8-14. Therefore, these limits can’t be applied to events described before this.
Response: Just because the boundaries aren’t given until Gen. 2:8-14 doesn’t mean that they don’t apply until Gen. 2:8-14. The description of the garden of Eden in Gen. 2:4-25 is a unified account, and whatever geographical boundaries are listed in this account apply to the whole. Similarly, they apply to any other descriptions of Eden anywhere in the Bible.
Objection: The conditions in Eden weren’t unique to the garden. The whole creation was created in a similar way.
Response: There was something unique about the garden, because otherwise the naming of geographical boundaries serves no purpose. The Bible doesn’t specify what this uniqueness was, but the suggestions I’ve given are reasonable, and are implied by the text. Besides, we have to acknowledge that there were conditions hostile to life somewhere in the universe before the fall of humankind if we want to avoid absurdities like that outer space could support human life before the fall in the garden.
Objection: The whole world was paradise, but when Adam and Eve fell God changed it.
Response: If this were the case, then there was no need to expel Adam and Eve from Eden. The fact that God banished them only makes sense if there was something unique about Eden versus the rest of the world.
Objection: “The law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Heb. 9:22). If there was bloodshed before the fall of humankind, the pattern of bloodshed = sacrifice is controverted.
Response: The fact that all sacrifice is made via bloodshed does not mean that all bloodshed is sacrificial in nature—anymore than the fact that all dogs are mammals means that all mammals are dogs. Besides, we are told just a few verses later that “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Heb. 10:4, 11).
Objection: The Old Testament describes both animals and human beings as nephesh chayyah, i.e. living creatures. This phrase is not used to describe plants. Therefore, plants are not “alive” in the biblical sense.
Response: The Old Testament describes plants with the terms for life (chayyah) and death (mout) (Job 14:8-10; Ps. 37:2). Therefore, and obviously, plants are alive in the biblical sense and can experience death in the biblical sense. The fact that there are phrases and terms that are sometimes used to describe animals and humans but not plants does not somehow demonstrate that plants were not considered to be alive; especially in light of the more relevant fact that the terms for life and death are applied to plants in the Bible.
Objection: When God expelled Adam and Eve from Eden, he put a curse on the ground. This means that the second law of thermodynamics wasn’t in effect until then. Moreover, he created thorns and thistles at this point (Gen. 3:17-18), so he may have created the carnivorous animals then as well.
Response: This goes far beyond what the text actually says. There’s nothing here, or anywhere else in the Bible, to suggest that when Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden, God changed the laws of physics, or created new forms of life. Quite the opposite: Gen. 2:1-2 clearly represents God’s acts of creating new types of physical things as unique to creation week. While this is certainly open to debate, I contend that when Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden, God told them that the land would be cursed, because they weren’t going to be in the paradise God created for them anymore. When he says that thorns and thistles would inhibit their efforts when they tried to plant and harvest crops, this is because they weren’t going to be in the paradise God created for them anymore.
Objection: If Eden was a sanctuary from the rest of the world, what was the original plan for humanity’s relation to the rest of the world?
Response: First, any answer to this, from either a young-earth or old-earth perspective, would be completely speculative. C. S. Lewis even wrote that it is part of Christianity’s glory that it doesn’t matter what the answer to this question is.{xv} I suspect that it would have involved slowly expanding paradise to include the whole earth and eventually the whole universe, but I could very easily be wrong; and what this would mean for possible harms to human beings, I have no idea. Nor should I: such things cannot be known unless God tells us, and he has not. It is not a weak point in any particular theological system to not have the answer to this, since none of them do.
Second, while those Christians who ask this question would never assert this, this objection seems to assume that the fall took God by surprise. He had an “original plan” that was thwarted by human beings, and now he’s just trying to get us back on the original track. Obviously, this is inconsistent with the doctrine of God’s omniscience. Since he knew what would happen, we have to say that something else was going on here; in some sense, God is arranging human history, including the fall and every subsequent sin, in such a way as to bring about some counter-balancing good that could not have been brought about otherwise.
Objection: If we extrapolate backwards, and apply the geographical boundaries of Eden to Gen. 1:27-30, there are no grounds not to extrapolate further, and apply it to all of Gen. 1.
Response: We don’t have exegetical grounds for applying these boundaries to all of Gen. 1. But we do have exegetical grounds for applying them to Gen. 1:27-30—namely, these verses are referring to the same thing as Gen. 2: the creation of Adam and Eve. 1:27-30 tells us that the temporal context is the sixth day of creation, while 2:8-14 tells us that the geographical context is the garden of Eden.
Objection: If the flood was just a local event, there would have been no point in building the ark. Noah and his family could have simply moved to higher ground.
Response: “Noah [was] a preacher of righteousness” (2 Pet. 2:5). God kept him there as a witness to the “ungodly people” to condemn them (Heb. 11:7) and give them every opportunity to repent. If Noah and his family had simply left, it could be claimed that the people would have repented if they had been given one last chance.
Objection: While the Bible sometimes refers to “all the land” or “under all the heavens” hyperbolically to describe local events, Gen. 7:19 uses this term twice in a single phrase to describe the extent of the floodwaters: “all [kol] the high mountains under the entire [kol] heavens were covered.” This repetition emphasizes the geographical extent of the event; thus, the flood covered the entire planet.
Response: By itself, this is certainly a possible interpretation. The problem it faces is that there was a clear and specific way to refer to the entire planet that is never used anywhere in the Old Testament to refer to the flood: tevel. Plus, it runs up against Ps. 104, which states that God never let the water cover the entire earth after he first formed dry land.
Objection: After the flood, God said, “Never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth (erets)” (Gen. 9:11). If it was just a local flood, then God lied, since there have been many local floods since the time of Noah.
Response: And how many of them destroyed the earth? Clearly, everything that was destroyed by the flood (the human race, society, culture, etc.) has not been re-destroyed since, by flood or any other means.
Objection: Ps. 104 does not parallel Gen. 1, since it refers to animals and human beings concurrently with the plants, before the former would have been created.
Response: Ps. 104 parallels Gen. 1, by describing what God created the various elements of creation for. It is pointing to God’s providence, by showing how, at each stage of creation, he provides for his creatures. So when it describes the creation of plants, it points out that God created plants for the people and animals to eat. This doesn’t imply that the people and animals were already there when he created plants, it just refers to the plants’ purpose.
Objection: Ps. 104 does not refer to the world before the fall, since it contains themes which were not present until later, such as human beings sailing ships (v. 26). Therefore, its reference to carnivorous activity is not referring to conditions before the fall.
Response: Ps. 104 is describing God’s providence for his creation, and does this by showing how each step in creation provides for other steps: precipitation and springs provide water for plants and animals (v. 10-13, 16); plants provide food for animals and people (14-15); the sun, moon, and stars provide a temporal pattern for all living things (19-23); etc. All of these elements are current phenomena arranged (roughly) according to God’s creation of them as described in Gen. 1. So Ps. 104 describes the sea that God created, the creatures that live in it, and how humanity uses it to sail from one place to another.
Now this objections asks a very good question: couldn’t the same thing be said of the lion hunting it’s prey? That, after all, is a current phenomenon, and we do not necessarily have to ascribe it to creation week. The problem with this is that, in addition to being a creation psalm, Ps. 104 is a praise psalm. That is, it’s describing the good things God has done, not the negative result of sin. The psalmist praises God for providing the lion with its food (that it kills and eats) and calls this good (v. 27-28). This echoes the many similar statements in Gen. 1, where God, after creating something, similarly calls it “good.”{xvi}
Notes:
{i} Even if their premises were true, this is still a fallacious argument.
{ii} R. K. Harrison (1999), 11-18; Josh McDowell (1981), 43-6; Hugh Ross (1998), 81-7.
{iii} Hugh Ross (1998), 82.
{iv} See C. S. Lewis’s excellent treatment of this in chapter 9 of Lewis (1962), 129-43, as well as the criticism of it by C. E. M. Joad and Lewis’s reply in Lewis and Joad (1970). Joad later became a Christian; see Joad (1952).
{v} For example, John Morris (1997).
{vi} See chapter 1.
{vii}
{viii} BDB, 385; TWOT, 359 (835h); GHCL, 855.
{ix}
{x} Ross (1998), 156.
{xi} Ross (1998), 162-3; see also BDB, 142; TWOT, 136 (291a); GHCL, 146.
{xii} John Whitcomb and Henry Morris (1961), 66-9.
{xiii} Ross (2004), 121-9; Greg Moore (2004). For examples, see the references in note {xi} in chapter 10.
{xiv} John Sailhamer (1996); see also Sailhamer (1992), 81-102; (1998).
{xv}
{xvi} verses 3, 9, 11, 18, 21, 25, and 31.