Texts in Conversation
The flood in Genesis 7 shares Ugarit's picture of waters above and below the earth, which the Tale of Aqhat calls the two deeps, showing how the sources of fertility can also threaten human life.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
KTU 1.19 I:45
Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit
Ancient Near East
Over her father’s house some falcons hovered, a flock of hawks was watching. Pughat wept in her heart, she cried in her liver. She tore the garment of Danel the man of healing, the cloak of the hero, the devotee of Hrnm. Then Danel the man of healing cursed the clouds, which rain on the dreadful heat, the clouds which rain on the summer-fruit, the dew which settles on the grapes: “For seven years Baal shall fail, for eight, the Charioteer of the clouds! No dew, no rain, no welling up of the deeps, no goodness of Baal’s voice! no surging of the two deeps, no For she has torn the garment of Danel the man of healing, the cloak of the hero, the devotee of Hrnm!”
Genesis 7:11
Hebrew Bible
11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month—on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst open and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. 12 And the rain fell on the earth 40 days and 40 nights. 13 On that very day Noah entered the ark, accompanied by his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, along with his wife and his sons’ three wives. 14 They entered, along with every living creature after its kind, every animal after its kind, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth after its kind, and every bird after its kind, everything with wings. 15 Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life came into the ark to Noah. 16 Those that entered were male and female, just as God commanded him. Then the Lord shut him in.
Genesis 8:2
Hebrew Bible
2 The fountains of the deep and the floodgates of heaven were closed, and the rain stopped falling from the sky. 3 The waters kept receding steadily from the earth, so that they had gone down by the end of the 150 days. 4 On the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the ark came to rest on one of the mountains of Ararat. 5 The waters kept on receding until the tenth month. On the first day of the tenth month, the tops of the mountains became visible. 6 At the end of 40 days, Noah opened the window he had made in the ark 7 and sent out a raven; it kept flying back and forth until the waters had dried up on the earth. 8 Then Noah sent out a dove to see if the waters had receded from the surface of the ground.
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Notes and References
“... Ezekiel’s stone miptan corks all cosmic chaos, not merely subterranean chaos
lying below the temple. This is crucial, because Gen 7:11 and 8:2 speak of chaos-waters
bursting out from above in heaven as well as from under the earth. This parallels the
“surging of the two thmt-waters” in KTU 1.19 [1Aqht]: I:45. Also parallel are the as-
sumptions of Ps 107:24–26 and Jonah 1. The Lord is God of sea storm and rainstorm.
Thus, God’s mountain throne lies at the world’s horizon, at the meeting of sky and
ocean. There, God is enthroned above both upper chaos-water and lower chaos-water.
In Ugaritic myth, El dwells in the midst of the two thmt-waters, the meeting of
the “double-deep” (Clifford 1972, 49). This “double-deep” of El’s abode is not the river
of life, in its dual, Mesopotamian form (see Note Double river on 47:9), but rather
chaos split in two, like monster Tiamat’s dead body. Tsumura (1989, 151) thus rightly
draws attention to the coupling of the two chaos-waters in the composite Ugaritic
deity Šmm-w-Thm as well as in the couple Šamūma (Heaven-Water) and Tahāmatu
(Ocean-Water).
Alternatively, El’s double-deep may refer not to the pairing of the two mighty
chaos-waters, but to the pairing of chaos-water and fresh/sweet water. In other words,
the pair in mind may be Tiamat (ocean water) and Apsu (fresh water). These dual pri-
mal waters appear in the image of Ea/Enki treated shortly (see fig. 1). ...”
Cook, Stephen L.
Ezekiel 38-48: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary
(p. 268) Yale University Press, 2018
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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