Do Genesis 7 and 8 imply a month was 30 days long?

Click to join the conversation with over 500,000 Pentecostal believers and scholars

Click to get our FREE MOBILE APP and stay connected

Young’s Literal Translation

Genesis 7:11

…

In the six hundredth year of the life of Noah, in the second month, in the seventeenth day of the month, in this day have been broken up all fountains of the great deep, and the net-work of the heavens hath been opened,

…

Genesis 7:24

…

and the waters are mighty on the earth a hundred and fifty days.

Genesis 8:3-5

…

And turn back do the waters from off the earth, going on and returning; and the waters are lacking at the end of a hundred and fifty days.

And the ark resteth, in the seventh month, in the seventeenth day of the month, on mountains of Ararat;

and the waters have been going and becoming lacking till the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first of the month, appeared the heads of the mountains.

…

These passages explicitly say the waters were strong for 150 days, and then marks out 5 month difference from the 17th of the second month to the 17th of the seventh month. Everything I have ever read said a month followed the phases of the moon (new moon meant a new month), which would have varied from 29 to 30 days, especially in a 5 month period. Even the modern Hebrew calendar varies the length of a month from 29 to 30 days.

Does this passage imply a month is reckoned as 30 days long in the Bible (at least in the Old Testament)?