Was the earth dry after the flood on the first day of the first month, or on the twenty-seventh day of the second?

Hard question · Creation, the flood and the patriarchs · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate

The passages

The objection

Genesis 8:13 says that on the first day of the first month the waters were dried up and the face of the ground was dry. The very next verse says that the earth was dried on the twenty-seventh day of the second month. Critics ask which date is right.

The answer

The two verses use two different Hebrew verbs for two stages of drying. In 8:13 the verb is charav: the waters “were dried up from off the earth”, and when Noah removed the covering of the ark “the face of the ground” (ha-adamah) had dried, that is, the flood water had gone from its surface. The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew lexicon gives for this verse the sense ‘be freed from the waters of the flood’. In 8:14 the verb is yavesh, ‘be dry, without moisture’, and the subject is ‘the earth’ (ha-arets): the land as a whole was now firm and dry.

Anyone who has seen land after a flood knows the difference. When the water has drained away, the surface may look dry while the soil beneath is still deep mud, unable to bear people, cattle and laden animals. Noah saw the first stage on the first day of the first month. He waited about eight weeks more, until the earth was fully dry, and only then did God tell him to leave the ark (8:15–16). Gill made the point long ago: 8:14 uses a different word because it means a different kind, or at least a greater degree, of dryness.

What Noah saw

Michael Belknap (Answers in Genesis) adds that the viewpoint changes: 8:13 reports what Noah saw when he looked out from the ark, and 8:14 the state of the land as God judged it, ready for Noah to leave.

Two sources

Critical scholars often assign the dated statements and Noah’s look out of the ark to different sources, as the Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon marks them. Even so, the final text plainly distinguishes two stages, with two dates and two verbs.

From the classic commentators

the ground or surface of the earth looked dry; but was not so dry and hard as to bear heavy bodies, or the foot to tread on it, being soft and tender, through the water so long upon itJohn Gill, Exposition of the Bible, on Genesis 8:13–14 (1746–1763)

a different word from that in the preceding verse is here used for "dry", this being a different kind, or, however, a greater degree of dryness than the other.John Gill, Exposition of the Bible, on Genesis 8:14 (1746–1763)