Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

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.^[a]

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.^[b] 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.^{[c] 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 ship is in a storm

¹³ The wind began to blow from the south, but it was not strong. So the sailors thought, ‘Now we can do what we wanted to do. We can sail to Phoenix.’ So they pulled up the ship's anchor and left the port. Then we sailed as near as we could to the coast of Crete.

¹⁴ But soon a very strong wind began to blow. This wind blew from the north-east and it blew strongly across the island. ¹⁵ The storm hit the ship very powerfully. It was not possible for the sailors to sail the ship straight into the wind. So they did not try to do that any more. Instead, they let the wind blow the ship along. ¹⁶ After that, we passed the south end of a small island called Cauda. Here we found a place where the wind did not blow so strongly. The sailors lifted the ship's small boat out of the water to make it safe. ¹⁷ They tied it on the ship with ropes. Then they tied some more ropes under the ship so that it would not break in pieces. The men were afraid of what might happen. There were some places along the coast of Libya where the water was not very deep. The ship might hit one of these places and then it might break. So they took the ship's largest sail down. Then they let the wind blow the ship along. ¹⁸ The strong storm continued to blow against the ship. The ship was carrying many things. So the next day, the sailors threw some of these things into the sea. ¹⁹ The day after that, they took hold of the sails and ropes and they threw them into the sea. ²⁰ For many days, we did not see the sun or any stars.^[a] The storm continued to blow strongly. So then we thought, ‘It is not possible for us to remain alive.’

²¹ The men on the ship had not eaten any food for a long time. So Paul stood in front of them and he said, ‘Men, you should have listened to me! We should not have sailed away from Crete. If we had not left there, the ship and everything on it would still be safe. ²² Now I ask you, please be brave. The storm will completely destroy the ship, but not one of you will die. ²³ Last night one of God's angels spoke to me. I am a servant of God and I belong to him. He sent his angel to come to me. ²⁴ The angel said, “Paul, do not be afraid. You must go to Rome and Caesar will judge you there. Because of you, God will be kind to all the people on the ship with you. None of them will die.” ²⁵ Because of the angel's message, I say to you, “Be brave, my friends!” I trust God. I know that everything will happen in the way that the angel told me. ²⁶ But the wind will blow the ship so that we hit an island.’

²⁷ The storm had continued for 14 days and nights. The strong wind was blowing the ship across the Mediterranean Sea. About midnight, the sailors thought that we were near to the land. ²⁸ So they used a rope to measure how deep the water was. They saw that the water was nearly 40 metres deep. A short time later they did this again. This time the water was only 30 metres deep. ²⁹ The sailors were afraid that the ship would hit some rocks. So they dropped four anchors on ropes from the back of the ship into the sea.

After that, they prayed that dawn would come soon. ³⁰ Some of the sailors tried to leave the ship. They put the small boat into the sea. They tried to go away secretly. They said, ‘We are going to the front of the ship to put some more anchors down into the sea.’ But that was not true. ³¹ Paul said to the army officer and to the soldiers, ‘These sailors must stay on the ship. If they do not stay, you will not be safe. You will die.’ ³² So the soldiers cut the ropes that held the small boat to the ship. The small boat fell into the water and the wind blew it away.

³³ Now it was almost dawn. Paul said to everyone, ‘Please eat some food. You have now waited for 14 days for the storm to stop. You did not know what would happen. You have not eaten anything during all that time. ³⁴ You must eat some food now. Then you will be strong enough to stay alive. None of you will die. You will not even lose one hair from your head.’

³⁵ After Paul said this, he took some bread in his hands. He stood in front of them all and he thanked God for the bread. Then he broke the bread into pieces and he began to eat it. ³⁶ Everyone became less afraid and we all ate some food. ³⁷ There were 276 people on the ship. ³⁸ After everyone had eaten enough, the sailors threw bags of wheat off the ship into the sea. Then the ship was not so heavy.^[b]