Commentaire de citation sur Les Psaumes 104:9

יקוו המים; this does not mean that the waters should dry up, as many people interpreted it. These people said that the process would be achieved by a substantial part of the oceans freezing and turning to ice such as the polar regions, and that this would be caused by forces in the celestial regions. אל מקום אחד. The waters should not deviate from this location. As a result they became much higher than the surrounding land mass without crashing down on earth as our senses would have us think would be the case. This is why David tells us in Psalms 104,9: גבול שמת בל יעברון, “You have set them limits which they must not cross.” The meaning is that the waters must not flood the earth.”

ויהי כן. The waters did indeed flow all together to a single continuous uninterrupted area, and as a result the dry land did become visible. This was one of the miracles performed by the Creator although in the nature of things, the contraction of the waters which had covered the whole earth and had now contracted so that as a result they must have towered high above the adjoining dry land, they did not cascade down due to the laws of gravity. Seeing that it is a law of nature that waters travels downhill, the fact that these waters did not cross the borders imposed upon them by Divine decree must be viewed as an ongoing miracle. This is reflected in the words of Jeremiah 5,22 אשר שמתי חול גבול לים, “in that I set the sand as the boundary of the ocean.” We find a similar expression in Psalms 104,9. This is also commented upon in Bereshit Rabbah 5,7, the editor writing that it is customary for man to empty a full vessel into an empty one. Who would be able to “empty” a full vessel into another full vessel?