the great reversal

 Genesis 7

¹⁷ For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. ¹⁸ The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. ¹⁹ They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. ²⁰ The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits. ²¹Every living thing that moved on land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. ²² Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. ²³ Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.

 ²⁴ The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.

***

In a way, it's a reversal. The water that were separated in Genesis 1 are now once again joined - dry land disappears and chaos returns. Water swamps and reduces the landscape once more to a formless, empty mass.

Except for that ark, floating, dwarfed by the sheer extent of the flood waters - even the mountains are covered.  Everything outside the floating zoo is destroyed - everything with that life-breath, that thing that makes us alive.  That which is living no longer breathes: it is dead, destroyed by the water that re-covers the earth, taking back what it had been denied.  

A de-creation of sorts.

A bleak image, but holding a glimmer of hope that the water will not hold sway forever, that the land that was eaten will again be regurgitated, that life will repopulate the land.