theophilus wrote:He set the earth on its foundations,
so that it should never be moved.
You covered it with the deep as with a garment;
the waters stood above the mountains.
At your rebuke they fled;
at the sound of your thunder they took to flight.
The mountains rose, the valleys sank down
to the place that you appointed for them.
You set a boundary that they may not pass,
so that they might not again cover the earth.
(Psalm 104:5-9 ESV)
The first sentence describes the creation. The next sentence, "You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains", tells us that flood that took place after the creation. The next three describe how the flood ended.
Psalm 104:6 is not talking about Noah's Flood... or any flood for that matter
You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains.
This verse tells us that the whole earth was covered by water before God made the land appear in Genesis 1:9.
At your rebuke they fled;
at the sound of your thunder they took to flight.
The mountains rose, the valleys sank down
to the place that you appointed for them.
Psalm 104:7-8 is describing the events of Genesis 1:9
9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.
So when did God settle the mountains and when did God set the boundaries of the waters?
During Creation or after the Flood?
Well, fortunately for us Scripture answers that question pretty explicitly.
Proverbs 8:22-29
22 “The Lord possessed me at the beginning of His way,
Before His works of old.
23 “From everlasting I was established,
From the beginning, from the earliest times of the earth.
24 “When there were no depths I was brought forth,
When there were no springs abounding with water.
25 “Before the mountains were settled,
Before the hills I was brought forth;
26 While He had not yet made the earth and the fields,
Nor the first dust of the world.
27 “When He established the heavens, I was there,
When He inscribed a circle on the face of the deep,
28 When He made firm the skies above,
When the springs of the deep became fixed,
29 When He set for the sea its boundary
So that the water would not transgress His command,
When He marked out the foundations of the earth;
The Proverbs 8 Creation account explicitly associates both of these events with Creation... not the Flood.
1. Settling the mountains - Psalm 104:8, Proverbs 8:25
2. Setting the boundaries for the sea - Psalm 104:9, Proverbs 8:29
To summarize...
The Proverbs 8 Creation account confirms that the events described in Psalm 104:1-9 refer to Creation... not the Flood
Which means that the following two assertions are contradicted by Scripture.
The preflood mountains weren't as high as the ones that exist today.
After the flood parts of the earth rose up to form the continents and islands that exist today.
In Christ