The Flood

¹The Lord told Noah:

^5-6-7Noah was 600 years old when he went into the boat to escape the flood, and he did everything the Lord had told him to do. His wife, his sons, and his daughters-in-law all went inside with him.[#Mt 24.38,39; Lk 17.27.]

^8-9He obeyed God and took a male and a female of each kind of animal and bird into the boat with him.

¹⁰Seven days later a flood began to cover the earth.

^11-12The water under the earth started gushing out everywhere, the sky opened like windows, and rain poured down for 40 days and nights. All this began on the seventeenth day of the second month of the year.[#2 P 3.6.]

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

¹⁴They took along every kind of animal, tame and wild, including the birds.

¹⁵Noah took a male and a female of every living creature with him,

¹⁶just as God had told him to do. And when they were all in the boat, the Lord closed the door.

^17-18For 40 days the rain poured down without stopping. And the water became deeper and deeper, until the boat started floating high above the ground.

^19-20Finally, the mighty flood was so deep that even the highest mountain peaks were about seven meters below the surface of the water.

²¹Not a bird, animal, reptile, or human was left alive anywhere on earth.

^22-23The Lord destroyed everything that breathed. Nothing was left alive except Noah and the others in the boat.[#3 Macc 2.4.]

²⁴A hundred fifty days later, the water started going down.