Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Parashah 2: Noach (Noah) 6:9–11:32

⁹ Here is the history of Noach. In his generation, Noach was a man righteous and wholehearted; Noach walked with God. ¹⁰ Noach fathered three sons, Shem, Ham and Yefet. ¹¹ The earth was corrupt before God, the earth was filled with violence. ¹² God saw the earth, and, yes, it was corrupt; for all living beings had corrupted their ways on the earth.

¹³ God said to Noach, “The end of all living beings has come before me, for because of them the earth is filled with violence. I will destroy them along with the earth. ¹⁴ Make yourself an ark of gofer-wood; you are to make the ark with rooms and cover it with pitch both outside and inside. ¹⁵ Here is how you are to build it: the length of the ark is to be 450 feet, its width seventy-five feet and its height forty-five feet. ¹⁶ You are to make an opening for daylight in the ark eighteen inches below its roof. Put a door in its side; and build it with lower, second and third decks.

¹⁷ “Then I myself will bring the flood of water over the earth to destroy from under heaven every living thing that breathes; everything on earth will be destroyed. ¹⁸ But I will establish my covenant with you; you will come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife and your sons’ wives with you.

¹⁹ “From everything living, from each kind of living being, you are to bring two into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they are to be male and female. ²⁰ Of each kind of bird, each kind of livestock, and each kind of animal creeping on the ground, two are to come to you, so that they can be kept alive. ²¹ Also take from all the kinds of food that are eaten, and collect it for yourself; it is to be food for you and for them.” ²² This is what Noach did; he did all that God ordered him to do.

²⁴ The water held power over the earth for 150 days.

¹⁴ It was on the twenty-seventh day of the second month that the earth was dry.

(iv) ¹⁵ God said to Noach, ¹⁶ “Go out from the ark, you, your wife, your sons and your son’s wives with you. ¹⁷ Bring out with you every living thing you have with you — birds, livestock and every animal that creeps on the earth — so that they can swarm on the earth, be fruitful and multiply on the earth.” ¹⁸ So Noach went out with his sons, his wife and his sons’ wives; ¹⁹ every animal, every creeping thing and every bird, whatever moves on the earth, according to their families, went out of the ark.

¹⁶ For I am not ashamed of the Good News, since it is God’s powerful means of bringing salvation to everyone who keeps on trusting, to the Jew especially, but equally to the Gentile. ¹⁷ For in it is revealed how God makes people righteous in his sight; and from beginning to end it is through trust — as the Tanakh puts it, “But the person who is righteous will live his life by trust.”^[a]

²² and it is a righteousness that comes from God, through the faithfulness of Yeshua the Messiah, to all who continue trusting. For it makes no difference whether one is a Jew or a Gentile, ²³ since all have sinned and come short of earning God’s praise. ²⁴ By God’s grace, without earning it, all are granted the status of being considered righteous before him, through the act redeeming us from our enslavement to sin that was accomplished by the Messiah Yeshua. ²⁵ God put Yeshua forward as the kapparah for sin through his faithfulness in respect to his bloody sacrificial death. This vindicated God’s righteousness; because, in his forbearance, he had passed over [with neither punishment nor remission] the sins people had committed in the past; ²⁶ and it vindicates his righteousness in the present age by showing that he is righteous himself and is also the one who makes people righteous on the ground of Yeshua’s faithfulness.

²⁷ So what room is left for boasting? None at all! What kind of Torah excludes it? One that has to do with legalistic observance of rules? No, rather, a Torah that has to do with trusting. ²⁸ Therefore, we hold the view that a person comes to be considered righteous by God on the ground of trusting, which has nothing to do with legalistic observance of Torah commands.

²⁹ Or is God the God of the Jews only? Isn’t he also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, he is indeed the God of the Gentiles; ³⁰ because, as you will admit, God is one.^[a] Therefore, he will consider righteous the circumcised on the ground of trusting and the uncircumcised through that same trusting. ³¹ Does it follow that we abolish Torah by this trusting? Heaven forbid! On the contrary, we confirm Torah.

²¹ “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord!’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, only those who do what my Father in heaven wants. ²² On that Day, many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord! Didn’t we prophesy in your name? Didn’t we expel demons in your name? Didn’t we perform many miracles in your name?’ ²³ Then I will tell them to their faces, ‘I never knew you! Get away from me, you workers of lawlessness!’^[a]

²⁴ “So, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a sensible man who built his house on bedrock. ²⁵ The rain fell, the rivers flooded, the winds blew and beat against that house, but it didn’t collapse, because its foundation was on rock. ²⁶ But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a stupid man who built his house on sand. ²⁷ The rain fell, the rivers flooded, the wind blew and beat against that house, and it collapsed — and its collapse was horrendous!”

²⁸ When Yeshua had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at the way he taught, ²⁹ for he was not instructing them like their Torah-teachers but as one who had authority himself.