Genesis 8:1

"And God remembered Noah, and all the beasts, and all the cattle that were with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the water assuaged."

God here began to dismantle the prevailing destruction that had been visited upon the whole world, for He had not forgotten His beloved human creation. The loving pity of the Father is the only thing that prevented the total annihilation of mankind, and that merciful concern is evident in God's remembering Noah.

The great point of this entire narrative is that humanity deserved destruction. This Flood is a type and symbol of that ultimate sentence of death that shall yet be executed upon all men for the rebellion against the Creator. This stupendous event was pointed out by Christ himself as a "foreshadowing of the final Assize"[1] that shall at last summons all men before that solemn tribunal where every man shall receive the appointment of his eternal destiny (Matthew 24:37-39). "Extinction is what we deserve and what man has always deserved."[2] (See also under Genesis 8:21, below.)

"God made a wind to pass over the earth ..." Such a phenomenon would have had a dual effect of (1) evaporation, and of (2) substantially aiding the movement of vast quantities of water back into the depression created by subsidence of the land level under the seas. The amount of the waters visible in this narrative requires the understanding that some major shift in land and ocean levels occurred. Tides that rise to great heights when a mighty hurricane moves inland are an illustration of how effective such a wind could have been. Whitelaw also discerned that this event saw both in its onset and its subsidence, "violent changes in the depths of the sea."[3]