Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

The Flood

7 The Lord said to Noah, “Go into the ship with your whole family because I have seen that you alone are righteous among the people of today. ² Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal (a male and a female of each) and one pair of every kind of unclean ^[a] animal (a male and a female). ³ Also, take seven pairs of every kind of bird (a male and a female of each) to preserve animal life all over the earth after the flood. ⁴ In seven days I will send rain to the earth for 40 days and 40 nights. I will wipe off the face of the earth every living creature that I have made.”

⁵ So Noah did everything that the Lord commanded him.

⁶ Noah was 600 years old when the flood came to the earth. ⁷ Noah, his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives went into the ship to escape the floodwaters. ⁸ Clean and unclean animals, birds, and creatures that crawl on the ground ⁹ came to Noah to go into the ship in pairs (a male and female of each) as God had commanded Noah.

¹⁰ Seven days later the flood came on the earth. ¹¹ On the seventeenth day of the second month of the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, all the deep springs burst open. The sky opened, ¹² and rain came pouring down on the earth for 40 days and 40 nights.

¹³ On that same day Noah and his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, as well as Noah’s wife and his three daughters-in-law went into the ship. ¹⁴ They had with them every type of wild animal, every type of domestic animal, every type of creature that crawls on the earth, and every type of bird (every creature with wings). ¹⁵ A pair of every living, breathing animal came to Noah to go into the ship. ¹⁶ A male and a female of every animal went in as God had commanded Noah. Then the Lord closed the door behind them.

¹⁷ The flood continued for 40 days on the earth. The water increased and lifted the ship so that it rose high above the ground. ¹⁸ As the water rose and became very deep, the ship floated on top of the water. ¹⁹ The water rose very high above the earth. It covered all the high mountains everywhere under the sky. ²⁰ It rose 23 feet above the mountaintops.

²¹ Every creature that crawls on the earth died, including birds, domestic and wild animals, and everything that swarms over the earth, along with every human. ²² Everything on dry land (every living, breathing creature) died. ²³ Every living creature on the face of the earth was wiped out. Humans, domestic animals, crawling creatures, and birds were wiped off the earth. Only Noah and those with him in the ship were left.

²⁴ The floodwaters were on the earth for 150 days.

¹³ When a gentle breeze began to blow from the south, the men thought their plan would work. They raised the anchor and sailed close to the shore of Crete.

¹⁴ Soon a powerful wind (called a northeaster) blew from the island. ¹⁵ The wind carried the ship away, and we couldn’t sail against the wind. We couldn’t do anything, so we were carried along by the wind. ¹⁶ As we drifted to the sheltered side of a small island called Cauda, we barely got control of the ship’s lifeboat. ¹⁷ The men pulled it up on deck. Then they passed ropes under the ship to reinforce it. Fearing that they would hit the large sandbank off the shores of Libya, they lowered the sail and were carried along by the wind. ¹⁸ We continued to be tossed so violently by the storm that the next day the men began to throw the cargo overboard. ¹⁹ On the third day they threw the ship’s equipment overboard. ²⁰ For a number of days we couldn’t see the sun or the stars. The storm wouldn’t let up. It was so severe that we finally began to lose any hope of coming out of it alive.

²¹ Since hardly anyone wanted to eat, Paul stood among them and said, “Men, you should have followed my advice not to sail from Crete. You would have avoided this disaster and loss. ²² Now I advise you to have courage. No one will lose his life. Only the ship will be destroyed. ²³ I know this because an angel from the God to whom I belong and whom I serve stood by me last night. ²⁴ The angel told me, ‘Don’t be afraid, Paul! You must present your case to the emperor. God has granted safety to everyone who is sailing with you.’ ²⁵ So have courage, men! I trust God that everything will turn out as he told me. ²⁶ However, we will run aground on some island.”

The Shipwreck

²⁷ On the fourteenth night we were still drifting through the Mediterranean Sea. About midnight the sailors suspected that we were approaching land. ²⁸ So they threw a line with a weight on it into the water. It sank 120 feet. They waited a little while and did the same thing again. This time the line sank 90 feet. ²⁹ Fearing we might hit rocks, they dropped four anchors from the back of the ship and prayed for morning to come.

³⁰ The sailors tried to escape from the ship. They let the lifeboat down into the sea and pretended they were going to lay out the anchors from the front of the ship. ³¹ Paul told the officer and the soldiers, “If these sailors don’t stay on the ship, you have no hope of staying alive.” ³² Then the soldiers cut the ropes that held the lifeboat and let it drift away.

³³ Just before daybreak Paul was encouraging everyone to have something to eat. “This is the fourteenth day you have waited and have had nothing to eat. ³⁴ So I’m encouraging you to eat something. Eating will help you survive, since not a hair from anyone’s head will be lost.” ³⁵ After Paul said this, he took some bread, thanked God in front of everyone, broke it, and began to eat. ³⁶ Everyone was encouraged and had something to eat. ³⁷ (There were 276 of us on the ship.) ³⁸ After the people had eaten all they wanted, they lightened the ship by dumping the wheat into the sea.