Genesis 7:1-14

Expanded Bible

The Flood Begins

7 Then the Lord said to Noah, “I have seen that you ·are the best person [alone are righteous] among ·the people of this time [^Lthis generation], so you and your ·family [household] can go into the ·boat [ark]. ² Take with you seven pairs, each male with its female, of every kind of clean [^Cin a ritual sense; Lev. 11] 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 [heavens], 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 [blot out] from the ·earth [^Lface of the ground] every living thing that I have made.”

⁵ Noah did everything the Lord commanded him.

⁶ Noah was six hundred years old when the [^Lwater of the] flood came [^Lon the earth]. ⁷ He and his wife and his sons and their wives went into the ·boat [ark] to escape the waters of the flood. ⁸ The clean animals [7:2], the unclean animals, the birds, and everything that ·crawls [creeps] on the ground ⁹ came to Noah. They went into the ·boat [ark] in groups of two, male and female, just as God had commanded Noah. ¹⁰ Seven days later the ·flood started [^Lwaters of the flood came on the earth].

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 [^Lfountains/springs of the deep] ·split [burst] open, and the ·clouds [floodgates; ^Lwindows] in the ·sky [heavens] ·poured out rain [^Lwere opened]. 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 [9:18—10:32], and their wives went into the ·boat [ark]. ¹⁴ They had every kind of wild and tame animal, every kind of animal that ·crawls [creeps] on the earth, and ·every kind of bird [^Levery bird, every winged creature].