Noah and the Flood

This is the account of Noah and his family
Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time
And he walked faithfully with God
Noah had: Shem, Ham and Japheth, the three sons of his line

Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight
And was full of violence
God saw how corrupt the earth had become
For all the people on earth had corrupted their ways

So God said to Noah
“I am going to put an end to all people so they not let forth
For the earth is filled with violence because of them
I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth

So make yourself an ark of cypress wood
Make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out
This is how you are to build it:
And remember – the ark is your way out

The ark is to be three hundred cubits long
Fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high
Make a roof for it
leaving below the roof an opening all around one cubit high

Put a door in the side of the ark
And make lower, middle and upper decks
I am going to destroy all life
I am going to bring floodwaters

The floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens
Every creature that has the breath of life in it
Everything on earth will perish
But I will establish my covenant with you and you will survive it

You will enter the ark—
You and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you
You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female
To keep them alive with you

Two of every kind of bird
Of every kind of animal to be survived
And of every kind of creature that moves along the ground
Will come to you to be kept alive

You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten
And store it away as food for you and for them”
Noah did everything just as God commanded him
Noah was a very righteous man

The Lord then said to Noah
“Go into the ark, you and your whole family
Because I have found you righteous in this generation
Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal

Take with you a male and its mate
And one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate
And also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female
To keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth not to fail

Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth
For forty days and forty nights not looking at what they might prayed
And I will wipe from the face of the earth
Every living creature I have made”

And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him
Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth
And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives
Entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood, as a rebirth

Pairs of clean and unclean animals
Of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground
Male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark
As God had commanded Noah with no sound

And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life
On the seventeenth day of the second month—
On that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth

And the floodgates of the heavens were opened
And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights the dark
On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth
Together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark

They had with them every wild animal according to its kind
All livestock according to their kinds
Every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind
And everything with wings, every bird according to its kind

Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them
Came to Noah and entered the ark to be in
The animals going in were male and female of every living thing
As God had commanded Noah. Then the Lord shut him in

For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth
And as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth
The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth
And the ark floated on the surface of the water, there was no earth

They rose greatly on the earth
And all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered, all the units
The waters rose and covered the mountains
To a depth of more than fifteen cubits

Every living thing that moved on land perished—
All the creatures that swarm over the earth, all mankind
Birds, livestock, wild animals
Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died

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, no one else was around

The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days
But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock gathered
That were with him in the ark
And He sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded

Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed
And the rain had stopped falling from the sky, it was gone
The water receded steadily from the earth
At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down

And on the seventeenth day of the seventh month
The ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat
The waters continued to recede until the tenth month
And on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became rather visible than not

After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark
And sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth
It kept flying and flying
Until the water had dried up from the earth

Then he sent out a dove to see
If the water had receded from the surface of the ground
But the dove could find nowhere to perch
Because there was water over all the surface of the earth, all around

So it returned to Noah in the ark
He reached out his hand and took the dove back
And brought it back to himself in the ark
He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark

When the dove returned to him in the evening
There in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf as fresh as after the rain
Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth
He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again

He waited and waited
But this time it did not return to him
By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year
The water had dried up from the earth, that’s what God made for him

Noah then removed the covering from the ark
And saw that the surface of the ground was dry
By the twenty-seventh day of the second month
The earth was completely dry

Then God said to Noah
“Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives
Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—
With you and that’s why alive

The birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground—
so they can multiply on the earth
and be fruitful and increase in number on it
For to proceed forth”

So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives
All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground
And all the birds—everything that moves on land—
Came out of the ark, one kind after another

Then Noah built an altar to the Lord
And, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds for the start
He sacrificed burnt offerings on it
The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in His heart

“Never again will I curse the ground because of humans
Even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood
And never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done
Never ever would”

“As long as the earth endures
Seedtimes and harvests, colds and heats
Summers and winters, days and nights
Will never cease”