Q. 101: Did the water of the ‘fountains of the great deep’ come from a subterranean source?

CPT Q. #101 – 101 Q&A on Catastrophic Plate Tectonics

Question: 101. Is it possible that the water which emerged from the ‘fountains of the great deep’ was from a subterranean source?

Response: First it is important to be clear on the meaning of the phrase ‘great deep’. When one looks into the meaning of the Hebrew word ‘tehom’, generally translated ‘deep’, in most places it means deep water. Examples include Genesis 1:2, “And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep (tehom), and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters;” Ps. 104:6-7, “You covered it (the earth) with the deep (tehom) as with a garment; the waters were standing above the mountains; at Your rebuke they fled, at the sound of Your thunder they hurried away;” Job 38:16, “Have you entered into the springs of the sea? Or have you walked in the recesses of the deep (tehom)?”; Prov. 8:23-29, “From everlasting I (wisdom) was established, from the beginning, from the earliest times of the earth. When there were no depths (tehom) I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills I was brought forth, while He had not yet made the land and the fields, nor the first dust of the world. When He established the heavens I was there, when He inscribed a circle on the face of the deep (tehom), when He made firm the skies above, when the springs of the deep (tehom) became fixed, when He set for the sea its boundary, so that the water should not transgress His command, when He marked out the foundations of the land.”

I quote these verses not only to highlight the association of the terms ‘waters’, ‘sea’, and ‘springs’ with the word ‘tehom’, but also to illustrate that these associations apply during creation (Gen. 1:2, Prov. 8:23-29), through the Flood (Ps. 104:6-7), and after the Flood (Job 38:16). With this bit of backdrop, what are the possibilities for the meaning of the phrase ‘fountains of the great deep’ found in Genesis 7 and 8? Let’s begin with the two words ‘great deep’. The Hebrew word ‘rab’ for ‘great’ is a common Hebrew word with a meaning very close to the English word ‘great’ in most cases. To me most natural interpretation, especially given the way ‘tehom’ is used in so many places, and the way most commentators through the centuries have understood it, is that of the ‘deep ocean.’ To me it is a real stretch to interpret it as some seem to desire to interpret it as ‘waters deep below the land surface’, that is, a subterranean water chamber. I recall Job 41:31-32 where God Himself is describing Leviathan to Job, “He (Leviathan) makes the depths (tehom) boil like a pot; he makes the sea like a jar of ointment. Behind him he makes a wake to shine; one would think the deep (tehom) to be gray-haired.” Surely, it is the open sea that is in view here, not a subterranean water chamber.

So if the ‘great deep’ is referring to the deep ocean in the sense of the present earth, and I earnestly believe that is the case, then the fountains I describe in the context of CPT are very much from this ‘great deep’. In this CPT framework the steam in these spectacular fountain-like jets as well as the water that becomes entrained in the fringes of the jets and lofted high into the atmosphere is ocean water. A possibility I have generally not addressed is whether or not these fountains might also be supplying some new water to the earth’s surface instead of merely recycling existing pre-Flood ocean water. In regard to that issue, there was almost certainly some water, that had been present within the crystal lattices of the minerals in the mantle rock which melted at the spreading ridges, which in turn was released as water vapor as part of the seafloor spreading process. However, this water would have been partially, if not mostly, compensated for by the water carried back into the earth at subduction zones by the subduction process. I do not dismiss out of hand the possibility that prior to the Flood there may have been more water in upper mantle rock than the roughly 0.1% level currently estimated for these rocks. If that were the case, then there well could have been a net increase in the water in the oceans at the result of the Flood. However, at this point, however, I see no compelling reason, either from Scripture or from any observational data I know of, to include this extra complexity, especially when it is so difficult to constrain in any quantitative way.

In summary, if the term ‘great deep’ in Scripture refers to the deep ocean, as I earnestly believe it does, then the ‘fountains of the great deep’ referred to in Genesis 7 and 8 logically must be originating from the bottom of the pre-Flood ocean basins. To me it is also likely that these fountains have a close connection with the ‘springs of the deep’ mentioned in Proverbs 8 in the context of creation and the ‘springs of the sea’ and ‘recesses of the deep’ mentioned in Job 38 in the context of the earth after the Flood.