Genesis 6-9

EasyEnglish Bible

6 People began to grow in number all over the earth. They gave birth to daughters. ² The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful. They chose for themselves any of them that they wanted to become their wives.^[a]

³ The Lord said, ‘My Spirit will not give life to humans for ever. One day they will die. I will not let them live for more than 120 years. Then they will die.’

⁴ The Nephilites lived on the earth at that time, and for some time after that. During that time, the sons of God were having sex with the daughters of men, who gave birth to their children. The Nephilites were famous great men and fighters.

⁵ The Lord saw that men and women on the earth had become very bad. They thought only of evil things all the time. ⁶ The Lord was sorry that he had made humans and put them on the earth. He became very upset. ⁷ So the Lord said, ‘I made humans, but now I will destroy them. I will completely take them off the earth. As well as human people, I will also destroy the animals, the living things that move on the ground, and the birds. I am sorry that I made them.’

⁸ But as for Noah, the Lord was happy about him.^[b]

God saves Noah

⁹ This is the report about Noah and his family.

Noah was a good man. He was the only person at that time who lived in a completely right way. He stayed near to God in his life. ¹⁰ Noah became the father of Shem, Ham and Japheth.

¹¹ God saw that everything on the earth had become spoiled. Everywhere, people were attacking each other. ¹² God saw how much the earth had become spoiled. Everyone was doing bad things. ¹³ God said to Noah, ‘I will destroy everyone. That is what I have decided to do. Everywhere on the earth, people are attacking each other. Now I will destroy the people and also the earth. ¹⁴ So make a ship for yourself. Use wood from cypress trees to make it.^[c] The ship must have rooms in it. Cover the inside and the outside of the ship with tar.^[d]

¹⁵ This is how you will build the ship: It must be 150 metres long, 25 metres wide and 15 metres high.

¹⁶ Make a roof for the ship. Leave a space 45 centimetres high all round under the roof. Put a door in the side of the ship. Inside the ship, make three floors above each other.

¹⁷ I will cover the earth with deep water. I will destroy all living things, wherever they live. Everything that breathes will die. ¹⁸ But I will make a covenant with you, Noah. You will go into the ship. You will take your wife with you, and also your three sons and their wives. ¹⁹ You must also take two of every different kind of animal into the ship. One will be male and the other will be female. Then they will stay alive with you. ²⁰ Bring two of every different kind of bird, two of every different animal and two of every different living thing that moves along the ground. All these will come to you. You will take care of them so that they will stay alive. ²¹ You must also take every different kind of food. That will be food for you and food for the animals.’

²² Noah obeyed God. He did everything that God had told him to do.

God destroys people and animals

7 Then the Lord said to Noah, ‘Go into the ship. Take your wife and family with you. I can see that you alone do what is right, among all the people on the earth.

² Take seven of every different kind of clean animal. Take a male and a female together. Take two of every different kind of unclean animal. Take a male and a female together. ³ Take seven of every kind of bird. Take males and females. Do this so that they will give birth to young ones. Then each different kind of animal and bird will continue to live on the earth.^[e]

⁴ In seven days, I will cause rain to fall on the earth. It will rain for 40 days and 40 nights. In that way, I will destroy every living thing that I have made on the earth.’

⁵ Noah did everything that God told him to do.

⁶ Noah was 600 years old when the deep water covered the earth. ⁷ Noah and his wife went into the ship. His sons and their wives also went in. They all went into the ship to be safe from the deep water. ⁸ Pairs of clean animals and unclean animals came to Noah in the ship.^[f] Also, pairs of birds and pairs of all the living things that move across the ground came to him. ⁹ Each pair was one male and one female. They all came to Noah in the ship. Everything happened as God had said to Noah. ¹⁰ After seven days had passed, God sent the deep water to cover the earth.

¹¹ When Noah was 600 years old, on the 17th day of the second month, streams of water came up everywhere from below the earth. Also, the water in the heavens poured down on the earth. ¹² Rain fell on the earth for 40 days and 40 nights.

¹³ On the day that the rain began to fall, Noah and his wife went into the ship. Noah's three sons (Shem, Ham and Japheth) and their three wives also went in. ¹⁴ With them was every different kind of wild animal and every different kind of farm animal. They also had with them every kind of living thing that moves along the ground. Every different kind of bird and other flying things were there too. ¹⁵ Pairs of every kind of animal that lived came to Noah and went into the ship.^{[g] 16} Each pair was one male and one female. This happened in the way that God had told Noah. When they were all in the ship, the Lord shut the door.

¹⁷ For 40 days, the water on the earth became deeper. The water lifted the ship high above the ground.

¹⁸ The water became even deeper and completely covered the earth. The ship went safely on top of the water. ¹⁹ More water came until it covered all the high mountains on the earth. ²⁰ The water still became deeper so that it was more than 6 metres higher than the tops of the mountains.

²¹ As a result, everything that had lived on the earth now died. The birds, the farm animals and the wild animals died. Every living thing that moved across the ground died, and so did all the people. ²² Everything that lived on the dry land died. Nothing could breathe any more. ²³ God destroyed everything that lived on the earth. He destroyed people, animals, living things that move across the ground, and birds. God removed them from the earth. Only Noah and his family, together with the animals that were in the ship, stayed alive.

²⁴ The deep water covered the earth for 150 days.

The deep water goes away

8 Then God thought of Noah, and all the wild animals and the farm animals that were with him in the ship. He caused a wind to blow over the earth. As a result, the water began to go down. ² Streams of water stopped coming up from below the earth. Rain stopped coming down from the sky. ³ The deep water continued to go down for 150 days. ⁴ On the 17th day of the seventh month, the ship stopped on the ground. It was sitting on the top of Ararat mountains. ⁵ The water continued to go down until the tenth month. On the first day of the tenth month, the tops of the mountains appeared above the water.

⁶ After 40 more days, Noah opened a window in the ship. ⁷ He sent a raven to fly away. The raven flew away from the ship and then it returned. It continued to do this until the earth was dry.

⁸ Then Noah sent out a dove. He wanted to see if the water had gone away from the top of the ground. ⁹ But the dove could not find anywhere to stand. Water still covered all the ground. So it returned to Noah in the ship. Noah put out his hand and took the dove back into the ship. ¹⁰ He waited for seven days. Then he sent the dove out of the ship again. ¹¹ The dove returned to Noah in the evening. It carried a fresh leaf from an olive tree in its mouth. Then Noah knew that the water had gone down. ¹² He waited for seven more days. Then he sent the dove out again. This time, it did not return to Noah.^[h]

¹³ Noah was now 601 years old. On the first day of the first month, the water that had covered the earth was now gone. The ground had become dry. Noah made a hole in the roof of the ship and he looked around. He saw that the top of the ground was dry. ¹⁴ By the 27th day of the second month, the earth had become completely dry.

¹⁵ God said to Noah, ¹⁶ ‘Come out of the ship. Bring your wife, your sons and their wives with you. ¹⁷ Bring every different kind of living animal out of the ship. Bring out the birds, the animals, and the living things that move across the ground. Now they may give birth to young ones again. They can grow in number all over the earth.’

¹⁸ Noah went out of the ship, together with his wife, his sons and their wives. ¹⁹ All the living animals also went out of the ship. The birds and the living things that move across the ground all went out. Every different kind of animal came out of the ship, each of them in its own group.

God makes a promise to Noah

²⁰ Then Noah built an altar to make sacrifices to the Lord. He took one from each kind of clean animal and clean bird. He offered them to the Lord as sacrifices which he burned on the altar.^[i]

²¹ The Lord smelled the sacrifice and it made him happy. The Lord said to himself, ‘I will never curse the ground again because of the bad things that people do. From the time that they are children, they want to do bad things. But I will never again destroy everything that breathes, as I have done this time.

God's covenant with Noah

9 God blessed Noah and his sons. He said to them, ‘Give birth to many children so that you become very many people. Your descendants will live all over the earth. ² All the animals and all the birds will be afraid of you. You have authority over them. You also have authority over all the living things that move across the ground and all the fish in the sea. ³ You may now eat anything that lives and moves. Before, I gave you the green plants to eat. Now I give you everything to eat as your food.

⁴ But you must not eat meat that still has the blood of life in it.

⁵ If any person or animal kills a human, I will certainly punish them. Their punishment will be death.

⁷ But as for you, you should give birth to many children so that you become very many people. There will be many people and they will live all over the earth.’

⁸ God said to Noah and to his sons, ⁹ ‘I promise you that I will obey the covenant that I am making with you.^[l] I promise this to you and to all your descendants. ¹⁰ I also promise this to all the animals and birds that came out of the ship with you. That is everything that lives on the earth. ¹¹ This is the covenant that I promise to keep: I will never cause water to destroy all living things on the earth again. Deep water will never again come again to destroy the earth.’

¹² Then God said, ‘I will show you clearly that I have made this covenant with you, and with every living animal. I will keep this promise for ever, for as long as people live on the earth. ¹³ I have put my rainbow among the clouds in the sky. It will show you clearly that I have made this covenant with everything on the earth. ¹⁴ When I bring clouds over the earth, a rainbow will sometimes appear. ¹⁵ Then I will remember the covenant that I have made with you and with all the different kinds of living things. Never again will the water become so deep that it destroys everything that lives. ¹⁶ When I see the rainbow in the clouds, I will remember my covenant. It is a promise that I have made with every kind of living thing on the earth.’

¹⁷ Then God said to Noah, ‘The rainbow will show you that I will certainly keep my promise. I will keep my covenant that is between me and everything that lives on the earth.’

Noah's sons

¹⁸ The names of Noah's sons were Shem, Ham and Japheth. They all came out of the ship with Noah. Ham later became the father of a son called Canaan. ¹⁹ All the people who live on the earth are descendants of Noah's three sons.

²⁰ Noah was a farmer. He was the first person to plant vines.

²¹ He used the grapes to make wine. One day, he drank some of the wine and he became drunk. He lay inside his tent and he slept. He was not wearing any clothes. ²² Canaan's father, Ham, saw that Noah was not wearing any clothes. He went out of the tent. He told his two brothers what he had seen. ²³ Then Shem and Japheth took Noah's coat and they put it between their shoulders. They walked into Noah's tent with their backs to Noah. In this way they covered their father with the coat. They looked away from their father so that they did not see him. They did this because Noah was not wearing any clothes.^[m]

²⁴ Later, when he was no longer drunk with the wine, Noah woke up. He found out what his youngest son, Ham, had done. ²⁵ He said, ‘I curse Canaan! He will become a slave that must serve his brothers.’

²⁶ Noah also said, ‘I praise the Lord, the God of Shem! Let Canaan become Shem's slave! ²⁷ I pray that God will make the land of Japheth and his descendants grow bigger. I pray that the descendants of Japheth will share good things with Shem. I pray that Canaan will become Japheth's slave.’^[n]

²⁸ Noah lived for 350 years after God covered the earth with deep water. ²⁹ In his whole life, Noah lived for 950 years. Then he died.