About the flood

1Yahweh said to Noah, “Go into the boat now, you and your family. I know that you are the only person in all the world today who does what is right.

2Take some animals on to the boat. Take some of the ones that you can eat, seven males and seven females of each kind. And take some of the tabooed ones that you must not eat, one male and one female of each kind.

3And also take seven male birds and seven female birds of each kind. You must take all those animals and birds so that they will stay alive now and so that they will increase again in the world later on.

4“In seven days I will send rain. The rain will keep on falling for forty days and forty nights. It will keep on and on. It will destroy everything I have made in the world, the birds, the animals and the people.”

5And Noah did everything that Yahweh told him to do.

6At the time when the first rain fell, Noah was 600 years old.

7Noah went inside the boat with his wife and his sons and their wives. They went in to keep alive.

8And all the male and female animals and all the male and female birds went inside the boat, the ones that they could eat and the tabooed ones they couldn't eat.

9They went in as God had told Noah.

10Then they waited and waited for seven days. And then the first rain fell on the ground.

11Noah was 600 years old. One month had already passed and now it was full moon, and a great amount of water burst out of the springs under the ground. And the heavens opened and the rain poured down from above.

12The rain kept on and on falling, it didn't stop for forty days and nights.

13But on the day when the first rain fell, Noah and his wife and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, and their wives went into the boat that they had made.

14All the many animals and birds, those that lived in the bush and those that people looked after, they all went into the boat, big ones and little ones.

15Male and female, every kind that breathed, Noah took them all into the boat.

16Noah did everything God had told him to do. Then Yahweh shut the door of the boat, but Noah and the others were already inside.

17The rain fell from above for forty days and nights. And the water bubbled up from under the ground. It covered the land and it rose up and up until the boat began to float.

18The water kept on rising and getting deeper and deeper until the boat was moving freely as the water carried it here and there.

19Then the water still kept rising until it covered the high rocks and the big hills, and even the mountains.

20It kept on rising and rising until it was seven metres above the tops of the mountains. And there the water stopped.

21All the other animals and birds and people died.

22Everything that lived on the earth, everything that breathed died.

23Yahweh destroyed everything. Only Noah and his family, his wife and his sons and their wives, and the animals that went into the boat, they alone stayed alive.

24And the flood stayed for five months.