Genesis 7:11

Summary

Genesis 7:11 dates the onset of the flood precisely: the six-hundredth year of Noah's life, the second month, the seventeenth day. On that specific day, two cosmic sources of water are said to open simultaneously — the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the sky.

Key words

• shesh-me'ot shanah ("six hundred year", H8337/H3967/H8141) — a construct chain giving the exact year count of Noah's life, using the singular shanah after the compound number.
• chayyei-Noach ("life of Noah", H2416E/H5146) — construct plural chayyei ("life of...") linked to the proper name, marking the date as measured from Noah's own lifespan rather than a general calendar era.
• nivqe'u ("they were split open", H1234) — niphal perfect, third person plural; the niphal stem marks the springs as undergoing an action (being split) rather than acting themselves, with no explicit agent named.
• ma'yenot tehom rabbah ("springs of the great deep", H4599/H8415/H7227A) — construct chain: "springs of" + "deep" + adjective "great" modifying tehom, describing the subterranean water source.
• niftachu ("they were opened", H6605A) — niphal perfect, third person plural, parallel in form and voice to nivqe'u, describing the heavenly floodgates as likewise acted upon.

What the text says

The verse opens with a triple temporal marker built through prepositional and construct phrases: bi-shnat ("in year of") + the compound number shesh-me'ot shanah ("six hundred year") + le-chayyei-Noach ("of the life of Noah"). This construction ties the flood's beginning not to an absolute calendar but to Noah's biological lifespan, then narrows to month (ba-chodesh ha-sheni, "in the month, the second") and day (be-shiv'ah-'asar yom la-chodesh, "on the seventeen day of-the month"). The repetition of chodesh ("month", H2320G) in both the ordinal phrase and the "day of the month" phrase is a Hebrew stylistic pattern not always preserved smoothly in translation.

The main clause pairs two niphal perfect verbs, nivqe'u ("they were split open") and niftachu ("they were opened"), both third-person plural, both passive in form. Grammatically, this construction leaves the agent of the splitting and opening unstated — the text describes the springs and floodgates as undergoing the action, not as self-acting subjects nor as acted upon by a named actor within this verse. The subjects are kol-ma'yenot tehom rabbah ("all the springs of the great deep") and arubbot ha-shamayim ("the floodgates of the heavens"), joined by the conjunction va ("and", H9002), presenting the two events as simultaneous and parallel in structure.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the date formula differently, using ἐν τῇ ζωῇ τοῦ Νῶε τοῦ μηνός structured around "year" and "life" but attaching "of the month" awkwardly per the given Greek text, and translates chodesh with μηνός ("month") consistently. The Vulgate's vitae Noë mirrors the Hebrew chayyei-Noach construct closely. Both LXX (ἐρράγησαν, "were broken/burst") and Vulgate (rupti sunt, "were broken") render nivqe'u with verbs of breaking, while the Hebrew niphal specifically denotes "splitting" (H1234) rather than general breakage, a nuance the target-language verbs approximate rather than reproduce exactly.