Rain Before The Flood?
Bodie Hodge, M.Sc., B.Sc., PEI
Biblical Authority Ministries, December 22, 2025 (Donate)
Sadly, within the church the false claim about there being "no rain before the Flood" keeps getting brought up. A friend contacted me this
week and said he just read a prominent Christian who said appealed to the model
that there was no rain before the Flood and it threw up a red flag to
him—and rightly so!
Initial Springs And Vapor; Image requested by Bodie Hodge (Chat GPT)
It’s a common error that people arrive at when they read Genesis 2:5 out of context—and then readers often make a presumption fallacy that the world remained like this until the first mention of rain at the time of the Flood.
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; (Genesis 2:5, NKJV)
Biblical Issues: Initial Conditions
Genesis 2:5–6 does not say it will not rain on the earth for
a long time. Instead, it clarified there was no rain in the initial state of
earth, early in Creation Week until man was created and was available to work
the Garden and fields associated with the Garden. God had not yet caused it to
rain and instead used a mist and created, natural groundwater spring system to
irrigate the land.
This type of design is brilliant and would be coveted by
most farmers today! It really makes the job easier and convenient. Trying to
imagine how intricate and perfect this was is tough for us to grasp. Even so, it
is a taste of God’s revealed God’s design being impeccable from the start. But
this passage describes initial conditions during the Creation Week, not
the entire pre-Flood era.
The Bible nowhere states that rain was unknown for the
centuries leading up to the Flood. The idea of a rainless world is an arbitrary
inference rather than a direct teaching of Scripture. God’s proclamation of
coming judgment with a Flood does not require that rain itself was unfamiliar
(e.g., Genesis 6:13-17, 7:4). It’s just that the devasting scope and destruction
of the Flood were unprecedented.
Rain is seen as a blessing from God—why would God make the
world and deny this blessing? Consider Deuteronomy 11:13–15; Leviticus 26:4;
Job 5:10; Psalm 65:9–10; Psalm 147:8; Hosea 6:3; Jeremiah 5:24; Zechariah 10:1
and in the New Testament in Matthew 5:45.
Scientific Issues
Scientific reasons confirm this too. A world with immense
water vapor (e.g., seas, great deep, mists, waters, and springs in a warm
climate) without rain would cause problems. Where did the water vapor go for
1650 years?
The earth had a “cool of the day”, which can cause condensation.
However, all that evaporation during the day is far too much for an immense dew
scenario. Without sufficient rain, famines, and other ecological
and hydrological problems in a sin-cursed and broken world would be rampant.
Many plants depend on rainfall patterns for growth, soil
health, plant reproductive cycle, and nutrient cycling, making it problematic
to sustain a global ecosystem for over 1650 years without rain. The
presence of rivers and drainage systems before the Flood, as described in
Genesis 2:10–14, indicates a functioning hydrologic cycle that included
evaporation and precipitation.
Conclusion
We should be cautious and “set aside” the model that there
was no rain before the Flood because it is not clearly taught in Scripture.
There are biblical problems with this model and scientific problems too. But because
it goes beyond what the biblical text actually says, one should be hesitant and
skeptical about this model.
Bodie Hodge, Ken
Ham's son in law, has been an apologist since 1998 helping out in various
churches and running an apologetics website. He spent 21 years working at Answers
in Genesis as a speaker, writer, and researcher as well as a founding
news anchor for Answers News. He was also head of the Oversight
Council.
Bodie
launched Biblical Authority Ministries in 2015 as a personal
website and it was organized officially in 2025 as a 501(c)(3). He has spoken
on multiple continents and hosts of US states in churches, colleges, and
universities. He is married with four children.
