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this, WHY should we insist that the Flood which covered "the face of the whole earth [ERETS]"
means a universal flood? The wording is exactly the same in both cases.

When the Israelites escaped from Egypt they were described as "a people...which covered
the face of the earth [ERETS]" -- see Numbers 22:5, 11). In reality, they covered enough land area
for Balak to consider them a threat to his people -- BUT, they quite obviously did NOT cover the
entire planet earth! In Numbers 11:31 we also read that large quantities of quail fell upon "the face
of the earth [ERETS]...a day's journey on this side, and as it were a day's journey on the other side
round about the camp." Clearly, the "face of the earth" in this case was only a few square miles of
land!

Let's look at another example. In II Samuel 18:8 we read that twenty thousand men were
killed in a forested area of Ephraim. Even though this was a relatively small area, we are told that
the battle was "scattered over the face of all the country [ERETS]. Now, the word "country" which
appears here in the King James Version, is obviously the correct meaning -- but it is EXACTLY
the SAME word that is used in the Flood story about the waters covering "the face of all the earth
[ERETS]"!! See Genesis 7:3, 4.

In the book of Jeremiah we are told of a flood overflowing the ERETS and, while Jeremiah
here used "flood" to figuratively describe an invading army, it provides a revealing comparison:
"Behold, waters rise up out of the north, and shall be an overflowing flood, and shall overflow the
land [ERETS], and all that is therein; the city, and them that dwell therein: then the men shall cry,
and ALL the inhabitants of the land [ERETS] shall howl" (Jeremiah 47:2). If we were to translate
ERETS as it has been translated in the Genesis Flood account and apply it to this passage, then it
would read as follows: "Behold, waters rise up out of the north, and shall be an overflowing
flood, and shall overflow the EARTH, and all that is therein; the city, and them that dwell therein:
then the men shall cry, and all the inhabitants of the EARTH shall howl." Wording such as this
would strongly indicate a world-wide flood, yet the reference in Jeremiah only involved the land
[ERETS] of the PHILISTINES! I think we are getting the picture.

We also read that Joshua "took the WHOLE land [ERETS]...and the land [ERETS] rested
from war" (Joshua 11:23). Would you think of reading "earth" into this verse? No -- everybody
knows that the conquest of Canaan did not include Australia, Europe and America!

In passage after passage where ERETS is translated "country," "earth," "ground" or "land"
it is unmistakably used of LIMITED land areas. Now with this knowledge, if we look again at the
expressions used to describe the flood of Noah and read "land" as the correct meaning of ERETS,
we come up with the following: "the LAND was corrupt," "all flesh had corrupted his way upon
the LAND," "the waters of the flood were upon the LAND," "all flesh died that moved upon the
LAND," "the waters returned from off the LAND" [how could the waters return from off the earth
meaning planet?], etc. This gives a whole different slant to these verses. Once ERETS is COR-
RECTLY understood, we can visualize it as a huge flood that involved, primarily, the part of the
world in which Noah lived and other low-lying areas and cachement areas of the earth.

Notes Wayne Mckellips:

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