According to Genesis, on what date did the floodwaters begin?

According to Genesis, the floodwaters began on the 17th day of the second month. Genesis 7:11 dates the start of the flood to the 600th year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day.

The verse combines Noah’s age with a day and month in an ancient calendar system. Because the biblical calendar’s relationship to modern calendar dates is not directly fixed here, the passage gives a relative ancient date rather than a universally convertible modern one.

This date is different from later milestones in the account, including the Ark’s resting on the mountains of Ararat and Noah’s eventual departure. Readers sometimes merge all of these moments into a single event, but Genesis presents them as a sequence with separate dates and intervals.