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Bible Dictionaries
Flood
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or FLOOD.—The Flood is referred to only in Matthew 24:38-39 and its parallel Luke 17:27. Jesus is speaking of the concealment of the day and hour of the coming of the Son of Man, and He uses the Flood as an illustration which would be well known to His hearers. Men and women were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark; and did not know until the Flood came and took them all away. So it would be at the time of the coming of the Son of Man. Jesus was, at the time of speaking, warning men of His coming, and the warning was intended, doubtless, to be sufficient to turn them, if they would be turned, from their evil. The emphasis in the use of the illustration is upon the indifference and wickedness of the antediluvians, as paralleled by that of men in the future who would not receive and act upon the warnings now given. The Gospel use, then, of the Flood is, like the meaning of the word used (κατακλυσμός), neutral as to the important questions raised by the OT story of the Deluge. See art. ‘Flood’ in Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible, vol. ii.
O. H. Gates.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Flood'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/f/flood.html. 1906-1918.
