Wesley Corpus

The same day the fountains of the great deep were broken up - There needed no new creation of waters; God has laid up the deep in store - houses, Ps 33:7, and now he broke up those stores. God had, in the creation, set bars and doors to the waters of the sea, that they might not return to cover the earth, Psa 104:9 Job 38:9 - 11, and now he only removed these ancient mounds and fences, and the waters of the sea returned to cover the earth, as they had done at first, Ge 1:9. And the windows of heaven were opened - And the waters which were above the firmament were poured out upon the world; those treasures which God has reserved against the time of trouble, the day of battle and war, Job 38:22,23. The rain, which ordinarily descends in drops, then came down in streams. We read, Job 26:8. That God binds up the waters in his thick clouds, and the cloud is not rent under them; but now the bond was loosed, the cloud was rent, and such rains descended as were never known before or since. It rained without intermission or abatement, forty days and forty nights - And that upon the whole earth at once. And every beast after his kind - According to the phrase used in the history of the creation, Ge 1:21,24,25, to intimate, that just as many species as were created at first were saved now, and no more. The mountains were covered - Therefore there were mountains before the flood. All flesh died, all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was on the dry land, every living substance - And why so Man only had done wickedly, and justly is God's hand against him, but these sheep what have they done I answer, 1. We are sure God did them no wrong. He is the sovereign Lord of all life, for he is the sole fountain and author of it. He that made them as he pleased, might unmake them when he pleased, and who shall say unto him, What dost thou 2. God did admirably serve the purposes of his own glory by their destruction, as well as by their creation.