The Flood Begins

7 Then the Lord said to Noah, “I have seen that you ·are the best person [alone are righteous] among ·the people of this time [^Lthis generation], so you and your ·family [household] can go into the ·boat [ark]. ² Take with you seven pairs, each male with its female, of every kind of clean [^Cin a ritual sense; Lev. 11] 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 [heavens], 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 [blot out] from the ·earth [^Lface of the ground] every living thing that I have made.”

⁵ Noah did everything the Lord commanded him.

⁶ Noah was six hundred years old when the [^Lwater of the] flood came [^Lon the earth]. ⁷ He and his wife and his sons and their wives went into the ·boat [ark] to escape the waters of the flood. ⁸ The clean animals [7:2], the unclean animals, the birds, and everything that ·crawls [creeps] on the ground ⁹ came to Noah. They went into the ·boat [ark] in groups of two, male and female, just as God had commanded Noah. ¹⁰ Seven days later the ·flood started [^Lwaters of the flood came on the earth].

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 [^Lfountains/springs of the deep] ·split [burst] open, and the ·clouds [floodgates; ^Lwindows] in the ·sky [heavens] ·poured out rain [^Lwere opened]. 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 [9:18—10:32], and their wives went into the ·boat [ark]. ¹⁴ They had every kind of wild and tame animal, every kind of animal that ·crawls [creeps] on the earth, and ·every kind of bird [^Levery bird, every winged creature]. ¹⁵ ·Every creature [^LAll flesh] that had the breath of life came to Noah in the ·boat [ark] in groups of two. ¹⁶ One male and one female of ·every living thing [^Lall flesh] came, just as God had commanded Noah. Then the Lord ·closed the door behind them [^Lshut them in].

¹⁷ ·Water flooded the earth [^LThe flood continued] for forty days, and as it rose it lifted the ·boat [ark] off the ground. ¹⁸ The water continued to rise [^Land increase], and the ·boat [ark] floated on ·it above the earth [^Lthe face of the waters]. ¹⁹ The water rose so much [^Lover the earth] that even the highest mountains under the ·sky [heavens] were covered by it. ²⁰ It continued to rise until it was more than ·twenty feet [^Lfifteen cubits] above the mountains.

²¹ All ·living things [^Lflesh] that moved on the earth died. This included all the birds, tame animals, wild animals, and [^Lswarming] 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 [^Lits nostrils] died. ²³ God ·destroyed [blotted/wiped out] from the earth every living thing that was on the ·land [^Lface of the ground]—every man, animal, ·crawling [creeping] thing, and bird of the ·sky [heavens]. All that ·was left [survived] was Noah and what was with him in the ·boat [ark]. ²⁴ And the waters continued to cover the earth for one hundred fifty days.