Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

The Flood Begins

7 Then the Lord said to Noah, “I have seen that you are the best person among the people of this time, so you and your family can go into the boat. ² Take with you seven pairs, each male with its female, of every kind of clean animal, and take one pair, each male with its female, of every kind of unclean animal. ³ Take seven pairs of all the birds of the sky, each male with its female. This will allow all these animals to continue living on the earth after the flood. ⁴ Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth. It will rain forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe off from the earth every living thing that I have made.”

⁵ Noah did everything the Lord commanded him.

⁶ Noah was six hundred years old when the flood came. ⁷ He and his wife and his sons and their wives went into the boat to escape the waters of the flood. ⁸ The clean animals, the unclean animals, the birds, and everything that crawls on the ground ⁹ came to Noah. They went into the boat in groups of two, male and female, just as God had commanded Noah. ¹⁰ Seven days later the flood started.

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 Storm

¹³ When a good wind began to blow from the south, the men on the ship thought, “This is the wind we wanted, and now we have it.” So they pulled up the anchor, and we sailed very close to the island of Crete. ¹⁴ But then a very strong wind named the “northeaster” came from the island. ¹⁵ The ship was caught in it and could not sail against it. So we stopped trying and let the wind carry us. ¹⁶ When we went below a small island named Cauda, we were barely able to bring in the lifeboat. ¹⁷ After the men took the lifeboat in, they tied ropes around the ship to hold it together. The men were afraid that the ship would hit the sandbanks of Syrtis,^[a] so they lowered the sail and let the wind carry the ship. ¹⁸ The next day the storm was blowing us so hard that the men threw out some of the cargo. ¹⁹ A day later with their own hands they threw out the ship’s equipment. ²⁰ When we could not see the sun or the stars for many days, and the storm was very bad, we lost all hope of being saved.

²¹ After the men had gone without food for a long time, Paul stood up before them and said, “Men, you should have listened to me. You should not have sailed from Crete. Then you would not have all this trouble and loss. ²² But now I tell you to cheer up because none of you will die. Only the ship will be lost. ²³ Last night an angel came to me from the God I belong to and worship. ²⁴ The angel said, ‘Paul, do not be afraid. You must stand before Caesar. And God has promised you that he will save the lives of everyone sailing with you.’ ²⁵ So men, have courage. I trust in God that everything will happen as his angel told me. ²⁶ But we will crash on an island.”

²⁷ On the fourteenth night we were still being carried around in the Adriatic Sea.^[b] About midnight the sailors thought we were close to land, ²⁸ so they lowered a rope with a weight on the end of it into the water. They found that the water was one hundred twenty feet deep. They went a little farther and lowered the rope again. It was ninety feet deep. ²⁹ The sailors were afraid that we would hit the rocks, so they threw four anchors into the water and prayed for daylight to come. ³⁰ Some of the sailors wanted to leave the ship, and they lowered the lifeboat, pretending they were throwing more anchors from the front of the ship. ³¹ But Paul told the officer and the other soldiers, “If these men do not stay in the ship, your lives cannot be saved.” ³² So the soldiers cut the ropes and let the lifeboat fall into the water.

³³ Just before dawn Paul began persuading all the people to eat something. He said, “For the past fourteen days you have been waiting and watching and not eating. ³⁴ Now I beg you to eat something. You need it to stay alive. None of you will lose even one hair off your heads.” ³⁵ After he said this, Paul took some bread and thanked God for it before all of them. He broke off a piece and began eating. ³⁶ They all felt better and started eating, too. ³⁷ There were two hundred seventy-six people on the ship. ³⁸ When they had eaten all they wanted, they began making the ship lighter by throwing the grain into the sea.