2 Peter 3:6

6. Whereby Literally, through which; that is, through, or by means of, the doubly-mentioned waters. By means of the waters the earth was overflowed with water.

Perished Not was annihilated, but wrecked and ruined; so as to require a renewal for any purpose of a moral kingdom of God on earth. A type, though perhaps a feeble one, of the final dissolution. As Adam Clarke notes, the divine fiat separating the oxygen of the atmosphere from the other elements could reduce the world to molten fluid. The same divine fiat could renew the earth in a new and divine perfection. All these changes may, under divine authority, take place in the natural order of cause and effect, or by the special interposition of the divine cause.