Genesis 2:4-6
These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.
Notice the word heavens is plural. Some people point to that and try to make it sound like a contradiction, because Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” But there is no contradiction there at all. Scripture speaks of heaven in three dimensions.
The first heaven is where the birds fly.
The second heaven is where the stars shine.
The third heaven is the place Paul spoke of, the place of glory, the place too wonderful for words, the place where all believers are headed.
So when the Bible speaks of the heavens, it is speaking of all three. God created the atmosphere above us, the star filled expanse beyond us, and the heaven of heavens where His glory is revealed. He made them all.
Then the text turns and shows us something else about that early world. There was no rain on the earth. Instead, a mist went up from the ground and watered the whole face of it. The Lord had His own built in system, His own way of keeping the earth refreshed and fruitful. The whole world was being watered from below, quietly, steadily, completely.
What a world that must have been.
No thunderclouds rolling in.
No storm fronts sweeping across the land.
No man looking to the sky for rain.
The earth was being cared for by the hand of God in a way so constant and so complete that everything was watered without a drop falling from above.
And that makes Noah’s day even more striking. If rain had never fallen on the earth before, then the sight of Noah building an ark would have seemed ridiculous to the people around him. You can almost hear the mockery. An ark? For what? Water falling from the sky? The whole thing would have sounded absurd to men who had only ever known the mist rising from the earth.
But that is the danger of living by what seems normal. People assume tomorrow must look like yesterday. They assume God will never interrupt the pattern they have grown used to. They assume that because judgment has not yet come, it never will.
And that is always a mistake.
So these verses do more than tell us how the earth was watered. They remind us that God made a world far different from the one we know now, and they quietly prepare us for the day when that world would change dramatically. The early earth was sustained in a gentle way, watered by a mist, held in order by the Lord Himself. But man should never confuse God’s patience with the absence of accountability.
The same God who built in the watering system would later open the heavens.
The same God who made the world in wisdom would later judge it in righteousness.
And the same God who made all three heavens still rules over all of them now.