Genesis 7

¹ Then the LORD said to Noah: "Go into the ark, you and all your household, for you alone in this age have I found to be truly just.

² Of every clean animal, take with you seven pairs, a male and its mate; and of the unclean animals, one pair, a male and its mate;

³ likewise, of every clean bird of the air, seven pairs, a male and a female, and of all the unclean birds, one pair, a male and a female. Thus you will keep their issue alive over all the earth.

⁴ Seven days from now I will bring rain down on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and so I will wipe out from the surface of the earth every moving creature that I have made."

⁵ Noah did just as the LORD had commanded him.

⁶ Noah was six hundred years old when the flood waters came upon the earth.

⁷ Together with his sons, his wife, and his sons' wives, Noah went into the ark because of the waters of the flood.

⁸ Of the clean animals and the unclean, of the birds, and of everything that creeps on the ground,

⁹ (two by two) male and female entered the ark with Noah, just as the LORD had commanded him.

¹⁰ As soon as the seven days were over, the waters of the flood came upon the earth.

¹¹ In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month: it was on that day that All the fountains of the great abyss burst forth, and the floodgates of the sky were opened.

¹² For forty days and forty nights heavy rain poured down on the earth.

¹³ On the precise day named, Noah and his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of Noah's sons had entered the ark,

¹⁴ together with every kind of wild beast, every kind of domestic animal, every kind of creeping thing of the earth, and every kind of bird.

¹⁵ Pairs of all creatures in which there was the breath of life entered the ark with Noah.

¹⁶ Those that entered were male and female, and of all species they came, as God had commanded Noah. Then the LORD shut him in.

¹⁷ The flood continued upon the earth for forty days. As the waters increased, they lifted the ark, so that it rose above the earth.

¹⁸ The swelling waters increased greatly, but the ark floated on the surface of the waters.

¹⁹ Higher and higher above the earth rose the waters, until all the highest mountains everywhere were submerged,

²⁰ the crest rising fifteen cubits higher than the submerged mountains.

²¹ All creatures that stirred on earth perished: birds, cattle, wild animals, and all that swarmed on the earth, as well as all mankind.

²² Everything on dry land with the faintest breath of life in its nostrils died out.

²³ The LORD wiped out every living thing on earth: man and cattle, the creeping things and the birds of the air; all were wiped out from the earth. Only Noah and those with him in the ark were left.

²⁴ The waters maintained their crest over the earth for one hundred and fifty days,