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The Flood Begins

¹ Then 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. ² Take 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. ³ Take 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. ⁴ Seven 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."

⁵ Noah did everything the Lord commanded him.

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

¹¹ When 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. ¹² The rain fell on the earth for forty days and forty nights.

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

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

²¹ All 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. ²² So everything on dry land that had the breath of life in it died. ²³ God 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. ²⁴ And the waters continued to cover the earth for one hundred fifty days.