The Flood

¹The Lord said to Noah, “Go into the boat with your whole family; I have found that you are the only one in all the world who does what is right.

²Take with you seven pairs of each kind of ritually clean animal, but only one pair of each kind of unclean animal.

³Take also seven pairs of each kind of bird. Do this so that every kind of animal and bird will be kept alive to reproduce again on the earth.

⁴Seven days from now I am going to send rain that will fall for forty days and nights, in order to destroy all the living beings that I have made.”

⁵And Noah did everything that the Lord commanded.

⁶Noah was six hundred years old when the flood came on the earth.

⁷He and his wife, and his sons and their wives, went into the boat to escape the flood.

⁸A male and a female of every kind of animal and bird, whether ritually clean or unclean,

⁹went into the boat with Noah, as God had commanded.

¹⁰Seven days later the flood came.

¹¹When Noah was six hundred years old, on the seventeenth day of the second month all the outlets of the vast body of water beneath the earth burst open, all the floodgates of the sky were opened,

¹²and rain fell on the earth for forty days and nights.

¹³On that same day Noah and his wife went into the boat with their three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives.

¹⁴With them went every kind of animal, domestic and wild, large and small, and every kind of bird.

¹⁵A male and a female of each kind of living being went into the boat with Noah,

¹⁶as God had commanded. Then the Lord shut the door behind Noah.

¹⁷The flood continued for forty days, and the water became deep enough for the boat to float.

¹⁸The water became deeper, and the boat drifted on the surface.

¹⁹It became so deep that it covered the highest mountains;

²⁰it went on rising until it was about twenty-five feet above the tops of the mountains.

²¹Every living being on the earth died—every bird, every animal, and every person.

²²Everything on earth that breathed died.

²³The Lord destroyed all living beings on the earth—human beings, animals, and birds. The only ones left were Noah and those who were with him in the boat.

²⁴The water did not start going down for a hundred and fifty days.

The End of the Flood

¹God had not forgotten Noah and all the animals with him in the boat; he caused a wind to blow, and the water started going down.

²The outlets of the water beneath the earth and the floodgates of the sky were closed. The rain stopped,

³and the water gradually went down for 150 days.

⁴On the seventeenth day of the seventh month the boat came to rest on a mountain in the Ararat range.

⁵The water kept going down, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains appeared.

⁶After forty days Noah opened a window

⁷and sent out a raven. It did not come back, but kept flying around until the water was completely gone.

⁸Meanwhile, Noah sent out a dove to see if the water had gone down,

⁹but since the water still covered all the land, the dove did not find a place to light. It flew back to the boat, and Noah reached out and took it in.

¹⁰He waited another seven days and sent out the dove again.

¹¹It returned to him in the evening with a fresh olive leaf in its beak. So Noah knew that the water had gone down.

¹²Then he waited another seven days and sent out the dove once more; this time it did not come back.

¹³When Noah was 601 years old, on the first day of the first month, the water was gone. Noah removed the covering of the boat, looked around, and saw that the ground was getting dry.

¹⁴By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry.

¹⁵God said to Noah,

¹⁶“Go out of the boat with your wife, your sons, and their wives.

¹⁷Take all the birds and animals out with you, so that they may reproduce and spread over all the earth.”

¹⁸So Noah went out of the boat with his wife, his sons, and their wives.

¹⁹All the animals and birds went out of the boat in groups of their own kind.

Noah Offers a Sacrifice

²⁰Noah built an altar to the Lord; he took one of each kind of ritually clean animal and bird, and burned them whole as a sacrifice on the altar.

²¹The odor of the sacrifice pleased the Lord, and he said to himself, “Never again will I put the earth under a curse because of what people do; I know that from the time they are young their thoughts are evil. Never again will I destroy all living beings, as I have done this time.

²²As long as the world exists, there will be a time for planting and a time for harvest. There will always be cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night.”

God's Covenant with Noah

¹God blessed Noah and his sons and said, “Have many children, so that your descendants will live all over the earth.

²All the animals, birds, and fish will live in fear of you. They are all placed under your power.

³Now you can eat them, as well as green plants; I give them all to you for food.

⁴The one thing you must not eat is meat with blood still in it; I forbid this because the life is in the blood.

⁵If anyone takes human life, he will be punished. I will punish with death any animal that takes a human life.

⁶Human beings were made like God, so whoever murders one of them will be killed by someone else.

⁷“You must have many children, so that your descendants will live all over the earth.”

⁸God said to Noah and his sons,

⁹“I am now making my covenant with you and with your descendants,

¹⁰and with all living beings—all birds and all animals—everything that came out of the boat with you.

¹¹With these words I make my covenant with you: I promise that never again will all living beings be destroyed by a flood; never again will a flood destroy the earth.

¹²As a sign of this everlasting covenant which I am making with you and with all living beings,

¹³I am putting my bow in the clouds. It will be the sign of my covenant with the world.

¹⁴Whenever I cover the sky with clouds and the rainbow appears,

¹⁵I will remember my promise to you and to all the animals that a flood will never again destroy all living beings.

¹⁶When the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between me and all living beings on earth.

¹⁷That is the sign of the promise which I am making to all living beings.”

Noah and His Sons

¹⁸The sons of Noah who went out of the boat were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.)

¹⁹These three sons of Noah were the ancestors of all the people on earth.

²⁰Noah, who was a farmer, was the first man to plant a vineyard.

²¹After he drank some of the wine, he became drunk, took off his clothes, and lay naked in his tent.

²²When Ham, the father of Canaan, saw that his father was naked, he went out and told his two brothers.

²³Then Shem and Japheth took a robe and held it behind them on their shoulders. They walked backward into the tent and covered their father, keeping their faces turned away so as not to see him naked.

²⁴When Noah sobered up and learned what his youngest son had done to him,

²⁵he said, “A curse on Canaan! He will be a slave to his brothers.

²⁶Give praise to the Lord, the God of Shem! Canaan will be the slave of Shem.

²⁷May God cause Japheth to increase! May his descendants live with the people of Shem! Canaan will be the slave of Japheth.”

²⁸After the flood Noah lived 350 years

²⁹and died at the age of 950.

True Happiness

¹Happy are those who reject the advice of evil people, who do not follow the example of sinners or join those who have no use for God.

²Instead, they find joy in obeying the Law of the Lord, and they study it day and night.

³They are like trees that grow beside a stream, that bear fruit at the right time, and whose leaves do not dry up. They succeed in everything they do.

⁴But evil people are not like this at all; they are like straw that the wind blows away.

⁵Sinners will be condemned by God and kept apart from God's own people.

⁶The righteous are guided and protected by the Lord, but the evil are on the way to their doom.