³⁸ For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage,^(A) up to the day Noah entered the ark;

²⁶ “Just as it was in the days of Noah,^(A) so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. ²⁷ People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.

²⁸ “It was the same in the days of Lot.^(B) People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building.

¹⁸ “But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said, ‘I have just bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me.’

¹⁹ “Another said, ‘I have just bought five yoke of oxen, and I’m on my way to try them out. Please excuse me.’

²⁰ “Still another said, ‘I just got married, so I can’t come.’

¹³ Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness,^(A) not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy.^{(B) 14} Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ,^(C) and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.^[a](D)

⁴⁵ But suppose the servant says to himself, ‘My master is taking a long time in coming,’ and he then begins to beat the other servants, both men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk.

² the sons of God^(A) saw that the daughters^(B) of humans were beautiful,^(C) and they married^(D) any of them they chose.

²⁹ What I mean, brothers and sisters, is that the time is short.^(A) From now on those who have wives should live as if they do not; ³⁰ those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; ³¹ those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away.^(B)

³⁴ “Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life,^(A) and that day will close on you suddenly^(B) like a trap.

¹⁹ And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’

³⁰ At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage;^(A) they will be like the angels in heaven.