Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

A Song of Victory

For the director of music. By the Lord’s servant, David. David sang this song to the Lord when the Lord had saved him from Saul and all his other enemies.

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 split open, and the clouds in the sky poured out rain. 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, and their wives went into the boat. ¹⁴ They had every kind of wild and tame animal, every kind of animal that crawls on the earth, and every kind of bird. ¹⁵ Every creature that had the breath of life came to Noah in the boat in groups of two. ¹⁶ One male and one female of every living thing came, just as God had commanded Noah. Then the Lord closed the door behind them.

¹⁷ Water flooded the earth for forty days, and as it rose it lifted the boat off the ground. ¹⁸ The water continued to rise, and the boat floated on it above the earth. ¹⁹ The water rose so much that even the highest mountains under the sky were covered by it. ²⁰ It continued to rise until it was more than twenty feet above the mountains.

²¹ All living things that moved on the earth died. This included all the birds, tame animals, wild animals, and creatures that swarm on the earth, as well as all human beings. ²² So everything on dry land that had the breath of life in it died. ²³ God destroyed from the earth every living thing that was on the land—every man, animal, crawling thing, and bird of the sky. All that was left was Noah and what was with him in the boat. ²⁴ And the waters continued to cover the earth for one hundred fifty days.

The Flood Ends

8 But God remembered Noah and all the wild and tame animals with him in the boat. He made a wind blow over the earth, and the water went down. ² The underground springs stopped flowing, and the clouds in the sky stopped pouring down rain. ^3-4 The water that covered the earth began to go down. After one hundred fifty days it had gone down so much that the boat touched land again. It came to rest on one of the mountains of Ararat^[a] on the seventeenth day of the seventh month. ⁵ The water continued to go down so that by the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains could be seen.

⁴ When angels sinned, God did not let them go free without punishment. He sent them to hell and put them in caves^[a] of darkness where they are being held for judgment. ⁵ And God punished the world long ago when he brought a flood to the world that was full of people who were against him. But God saved Noah, who preached about being right with God, and seven other people with him. ⁶ And God also destroyed the evil cities of Sodom and Gomorrah^[b] by burning them until they were ashes. He made those cities an example of what will happen to those who are against God. ⁷ But he saved Lot from those cities. Lot, a good man, was troubled because of the filthy lives of evil people. ⁸ (Lot was a good man, but because he lived with evil people every day, his good heart was hurt by the evil things he saw and heard.) ⁹ So the Lord knows how to save those who serve him when troubles come. He will hold evil people and punish them, while waiting for the Judgment Day. ¹⁰ That punishment is especially for those who live by doing the evil things their sinful selves want and who hate authority.

These false teachers are bold and do anything they want. They are not afraid to speak against the angels.