Entering the Ark

7 Then the Lord said to Noah, “Enter the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you alone are righteous before Me in this generation.^{(A) 2} You are to take with you seven pairs, a male and its female, of all the clean animals,^(B) and two of the animals that are not clean, a male and its female, ³ and seven pairs, male and female, of the birds of the sky—in order to keep offspring alive on the face of the whole earth. ⁴ Seven days from now I will make it rain on the earth 40 days and 40 nights, and I will wipe off from the face of the earth every living thing I have made.” ⁵ And Noah did everything that the Lord commanded him.^(C)

⁶ Noah was 600 years old when the flood came and water covered the earth. ⁷ So Noah, his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives entered the ark because of the waters of the flood. ⁸ From the clean animals, unclean animals, birds, and every creature that crawls on the ground, ⁹ two of each, male and female, entered the ark with Noah, just as God had commanded him. ¹⁰ Seven days later the waters of the flood came on the earth.

The Flood

¹¹ In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the sources of the watery depths burst open,^(D) the floodgates of the sky were opened,^{(E) 12} and the rain fell on the earth 40 days and 40 nights.

¹² And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant^(A) I am making between Me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all future generations: ¹³ I have placed My bow in the clouds,^(B) and it will be a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth. ¹⁴ Whenever I form clouds over the earth and the bow appears in the clouds, ¹⁵ I will remember My covenant^(C) between Me and you and all the living creatures:^[a] water will never again become a flood to destroy every creature. ¹⁶ The bow will be in the clouds, and I will look at it and remember the everlasting covenant^(D) between God and all the living creatures^[b] on earth.” ¹⁷ God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have confirmed between Me and every creature on earth.”