Gen 7:19-20, 2Pe 3:5-6 | JFB

‏ Genesis 7:19-20

20. Fifteen cubits upward ... and the mountains were covered--twenty-two and a half feet above the summits of the highest hills. The language is not consistent with the theory of a partial deluge.

‏ 2 Peter 3:5-6

5. Refutation of their scoffing from Scripture history.

willingly--wilfully; they do not wish to know. Their ignorance is voluntary.

they ... are ignorant of--in contrast to 2Pe 3:8, "Be not ignorant of this." Literally, in both verses, "This escapes THEIR notice (sagacious philosophers though they think themselves)"; "let this not escape YOUR notice." They obstinately shut their eyes to the Scripture record of the creation and the deluge; the latter is the very parallel to the coming judgment by fire, which Jesus mentions, as Peter doubtless remembered.

by the word of God--not by a fortuitous concurrence of atoms [Alford].

of old--Greek, "from of old"; from the first beginning of all things. A confutation of their objection, "all things continue as they were FROM THE BEGINNING OF CREATION." Before the flood, the same objection to the possibility of the flood might have been urged with the same plausibility: The heavens (sky) and earth have been FROM OF OLD, how unlikely then that they should not continue so! But, replies Peter, the flood came in spite of their reasonings; so will the conflagration of the earth come in spite of the "scoffers" of the last days, changing the whole order of things (the present "world," or as Greek means, "order"), and introducing the new heavens and earth (2Pe 3:13).

earth standing out of--Greek, "consisting of," that is, "formed out of the water." The waters under the firmament were at creation gathered together into one place, and the dry land emerged out of and above, them.

in, &c.--rather, "by means of the water," as a great instrument (along with fire) in the changes wrought on the earth's surface to prepare it for man. Held together BY the water. The earth arose out of the water by the efficacy of the water itself [Tittmann].

6. Whereby--Greek, "By which" (plural). By means of which heavens and earth (in respect to the WATERS which flowed together from both) the then world perished (that is, in respect to its occupants, men and animals, and its then existing order: not was annihilated); for in the flood "the fountains of the great deep were broken up" from the earth (1) below, and "the windows of heaven" (2) above "were opened." The earth was deluged by that water out of which it had originally risen.