In the second month. — That is, of the civil year, which commenced in Tisri, at the autumnal equinox. The flood thus began towards the end of October, and lasted till the spring. The ecclesiastical year began in Abib, or April; but it was instituted in remembrance of the deliverance from Egypt (Exodus 12:2; Exodus 23:15), and can have no place here. The year was evidently the lunar year of 360 days, for the waters prevail for 150 days (Genesis 7:24), and then abate for 150 days (Genesis 8:3). Now, as the end of the first period of 150 days is described in Genesis 8:4 as the seventeenth day of the seventh month, whereas the flood began on the seventeenth of the second month, it is plain that the 150 days form five months of thirty days each. But see farther proof on Genesis 8:14.
The fountains of the great deep broken up (Heb., cloven), and the windows (lattices) of heaven were opened. — This is. usually taken by commentators as a description of extraordinary torrents of rain, related in language in accordance with the popular ideas of the time and of the narrator himself. The rains poured down as though the flood-gates which usually shut in the upper waters were thrown open, while from the abysses of the earth the subterranean ocean burst its way upwards. But the words at least suggest the idea of a great cosmic catastrophe, by which some vast body of water was set loose. Without some such natural convulsion it is very difficult to understand how the ark, a vessel incapable of sailing, could have gone against the current up to the water-shed of Ararat. As the annual evaporation of the earth is also a comparatively fixed quantity, the concentrated downpour of it for forty days and nights would scarcely have produced a flood so vast as the deluge of Noah evidently was. It is thus probable that there was, besides the rains, some vast displacement of water which helped in producing these terrific effects.
We shall have occasion subsequently to notice the exactness of the dates (Genesis 8:14). Tradition might for a short time hand them down correctly, but they must soon have been committed to writing, or confusion would inevitably have crept in.