Genesis 6–11

The Human Race Becomes Evil

6The number of people on earth began to grow, and daughters were born to them. ²When the sons of God saw that these girls were beautiful, they married any of them they chose. ³The Lord said, “My Spirit will not remain in human beings forever, because they are flesh. They will live only 120 years.”

⁴The Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also later. That was when the sons of God had sexual relations with the daughters of human beings. These women gave birth to children, who became famous and were the mighty warriors of long ago.

⁵The Lord saw that the human beings on the earth were very wicked and that everything they thought about was evil. ⁶He was sorry he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. ⁷So the Lord said, “I will destroy all human beings that I made on the earth. And I will destroy every animal and everything that crawls on the earth and the birds of the air, because I am sorry I have made them.” ⁸But Noah pleased the Lord.

Noah and the Great Flood

⁹This is the family history of Noah. Noah was a good man, the most innocent man of his time, and he walked with God. ¹⁰He had three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

¹¹People on earth did what God said was evil, and violence was everywhere. ¹²When God saw that everyone on the earth did only evil, ¹³he said to Noah, “Because people have made the earth full of violence, I will destroy all of them from the earth. ¹⁴Build a boat of cypress wood for yourself. Make rooms in it and cover it inside and outside with tar. ¹⁵This is how big I want you to build the boat: four hundred fifty feet long, seventy-five feet wide, and forty-five feet high. ¹⁶Make an opening around the top of the boat that is eighteen inches high from the edge of the roof down. Put a door in the side of the boat. Make an upper, middle, and lower deck in it. ¹⁷I will bring a flood of water on the earth to destroy all living things that live under the sky, including everything that has the breath of life. Everything on the earth will die. ¹⁸But I will make an agreement with you—you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives will all go into the boat. ¹⁹Also, you must bring into the boat two of every living thing, male and female. Keep them alive with you. ²⁰Two of every kind of bird, animal, and crawling thing will come to you to be kept alive. ²¹Also gather some of every kind of food and store it on the boat as food for you and the animals.”

²²Noah did everything that God commanded him.

The Flood Begins

7Then the Lord said to Noah, “I have seen that you are the best person among the people of this time, so you and your family can go into the boat. ²Take with you seven pairs, each male with its female, of every kind of clean animal, and take one pair, each male with its female, of every kind of unclean animal. ³Take seven pairs of all the birds of the sky, each male with its female. This will allow all these animals to continue living on the earth after the flood. ⁴Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth. It will rain forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe off from the earth every living thing that I have made.”

⁵Noah did everything the Lord commanded him.

⁶Noah was six hundred years old when the flood came. ⁷He and his wife and his sons and their wives went into the boat to escape the waters of the flood. ⁸The clean animals, the unclean animals, the birds, and everything that crawls on the ground ⁹came to Noah. They went into the boat in groups of two, male and female, just as God had commanded Noah. ¹⁰Seven days later the flood started.

¹¹When Noah was six hundred years old, the flood started. On the seventeenth day of the second month of that year the underground springs split open, and the clouds in the sky poured out rain. ¹²The rain fell on the earth for forty days and forty nights.

¹³On that same day Noah and his wife, his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives went into the boat. ¹⁴They had every kind of wild and tame animal, every kind of animal that crawls on the earth, and every kind of bird. ¹⁵Every creature that had the breath of life came to Noah in the boat in groups of two. ¹⁶One male and one female of every living thing came, just as God had commanded Noah. Then the Lord closed the door behind them.

¹⁷Water flooded the earth for forty days, and as it rose it lifted the boat off the ground. ¹⁸The water continued to rise, and the boat floated on it above the earth. ¹⁹The water rose so much that even the highest mountains under the sky were covered by it. ²⁰It continued to rise until it was more than twenty feet above the mountains.

²¹All living things that moved on the earth died. This included all the birds, tame animals, wild animals, and creatures that swarm on the earth, as well as all human beings. ²²So everything on dry land that had the breath of life in it died. ²³God destroyed from the earth every living thing that was on the land—every man, animal, crawling thing, and bird of the sky. All that was left was Noah and what was with him in the boat. ²⁴And the waters continued to cover the earth for one hundred fifty days.

The Flood Ends

8But God remembered Noah and all the wild and tame animals with him in the boat. He made a wind blow over the earth, and the water went down. ²The underground springs stopped flowing, and the clouds in the sky stopped pouring down rain. ^3–4The water that covered the earth began to go down. After one hundred fifty days it had gone down so much that the boat touched land again. It came to rest on one of the mountains of Ararat ⁿ on the seventeenth day of the seventh month. ⁵The water continued to go down so that by the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains could be seen.

⁶Forty days later Noah opened the window he had made in the boat, and ⁷he sent out a raven. It flew here and there until the water had dried up from the earth. ⁸Then Noah sent out a dove to find out if the water had dried up from the ground. ⁹The dove could not find a place to land because water still covered the earth, so it came back to the boat. Noah reached out his hand and took the bird and brought it back into the boat.

¹⁰After seven days Noah again sent out the dove from the boat, ¹¹and that evening it came back to him with a fresh olive leaf in its mouth. Then Noah knew that the ground was almost dry. ¹²Seven days later he sent the dove out again, but this time it did not come back.

¹³When Noah was six hundred and one years old, in the first day of the first month of that year, the water was dried up from the land. Noah removed the covering of the boat and saw that the land was dry. ¹⁴By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the land was completely dry.

¹⁵Then God said to Noah, ¹⁶“You and your wife, your sons, and their wives should go out of the boat. ¹⁷Bring every animal out of the boat with you—the birds, animals, and everything that crawls on the earth. Let them have many young ones so that they might grow in number.”

¹⁸So Noah went out with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives. ¹⁹Every animal, everything that crawls on the earth, and every bird went out of the boat by families.

²⁰Then Noah built an altar to the Lord. He took some of all the clean birds and animals, and he burned them on the altar as offerings to God. ²¹The Lord was pleased with these sacrifices and said to himself, “I will never again curse the ground because of human beings. Their thoughts are evil even when they are young, but I will never again destroy every living thing on the earth as I did this time.

²²“As long as the earth continues,

planting and harvest,

cold and hot,

summer and winter,

day and night

will not stop.”

The New Beginning

9Then God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Have many children; grow in number and fill the earth. ²Every animal on earth, every bird in the sky, every animal that crawls on the ground, and every fish in the sea will respect and fear you. I have given them to you.

³“Everything that moves, everything that is alive, is yours for food. Earlier I gave you the green plants, but now I give you everything for food. ⁴But you must not eat meat that still has blood in it, because blood gives life. ⁵I will demand blood for life. I will demand the life of any animal that kills a person, and I will demand the life of anyone who takes another person’s life.

⁶“Whoever kills a human being

will be killed by a human being,

because God made humans

in his own image.

⁷“As for you, Noah, I want you and your family to have many children, to grow in number on the earth, and to become many.”

⁸Then God said to Noah and his sons, ⁹“Now I am making my agreement with you and your people who will live after you, ¹⁰and with every living thing that is with you—the birds, the tame and the wild animals, and with everything that came out of the boat with you—with every living thing on earth. ¹¹I make this agreement with you: I will never again destroy all living things by a flood. A flood will never again destroy the earth.”

¹²And God said, “This is the sign of the agreement between me and you and every living creature that is with you. ¹³I am putting my rainbow in the clouds as the sign of the agreement between me and the earth. ¹⁴When I bring clouds over the earth and a rainbow appears in them, ¹⁵I will remember my agreement between me and you and every living thing. Floods will never again destroy all life on the earth. ¹⁶When the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and I will remember the agreement that continues forever between me and every living thing on the earth.”

¹⁷So God said to Noah, “The rainbow is a sign of the agreement that I made with all living things on earth.”

Noah and His Sons

¹⁸The sons of Noah who came out of the boat with him were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) ¹⁹These three men were Noah’s sons, and all the people on earth came from these three sons.

²⁰Noah became a…