Day 11 Devotion – When did it Rain for the First Time?

This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, before any plant of the field was in the earth and before any herb of the field had grown. For the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground; but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. Genesis 2:4-6

Picture: Lake Urmia is just west of the Caspian Sea in Northern Iran.

Young-earth creationists take this passage to its literal extreme and believe that the rain that caused the flood of Noah was the first time it ever rained on earth. As an old-earth creationist I obviously believe it rained many times in the billions of years before man was created. So, how do I reconcile this passage? I came across a neat historical note in a western civilization text book that the ancient Sumerians and other Mesopotamian groups believed that a dew rose from the early earth to water the vegetation. The Old Testament and especially Genesis were written during the time that these Mesopotamian beliefs were prevalent. God allowed the authors of the Bible to incorporate a lot of their culture into the writings of the Bible. Although this verse is not accurate from a meteorological standpoint it does certainly fit into the common belief of the time. Many liberal scholars claim that Moses was not the author of Genesis and that it was written much later in time. Phrases like this actually attest to the ancient nature of these scriptures and verify that the author knew what he was talking about because he was intimately familiar with the culture.

This phrase also gives us a clue as to the whereabouts of the Garden of Eden. We will spend more time on this later but the Sumerians believed that the source of this subterranean water that came up and watered the vegetation was located near what is called Lake Urmia. Lake Urmia is in extreme northern Iran and it serves as the headwaters for both the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Before we come back to this in a later devotion, take time to think about what you have been taught about the Garden of Eden. Have you ever wandered where it was? Mark on a map where you would guess it was located.