Great flood

⁵ The Lord saw that humanity had become thoroughly evil on the earth and that every idea their minds thought up was always completely evil. ⁶ The Lord regretted making human beings on the earth, and he was heartbroken. ⁷ So the Lord said, “I will wipe off of the land the human race that I’ve created: from human beings to livestock to the crawling things to the birds in the skies, because I regret I ever made them.” ⁸ But as for Noah, the Lord approved of him.

⁹ These are Noah’s descendants. In his generation, Noah was a moral and exemplary man; he^[a] walked with God. ¹⁰ Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

¹⁴ We know that the Law is spiritual, but I’m made of flesh and blood, and I’m sold as a slave to sin. ¹⁵ I don’t know what I’m doing, because I don’t do what I want to do. Instead, I do the thing that I hate. ¹⁶ But if I’m doing the thing that I don’t want to do, I’m agreeing that the Law is right. ¹⁷ But now I’m not the one doing it anymore. Instead, it’s sin that lives in me. ¹⁸ I know that good doesn’t live in me—that is, in my body. The desire to do good is inside of me, but I can’t do it. ¹⁹ I don’t do the good that I want to do, but I do the evil that I don’t want to do. ²⁰ But if I do the very thing that I don’t want to do, then I’m not the one doing it anymore. Instead, it is sin that lives in me that is doing it.

²¹ So I find that, as a rule, when I want to do what is good, evil is right there with me.