Genesis 7 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
Primeval history, across a year and ten days of flood
Location
Inside the ark, on water covering the mountains
Audience
Israelites hearing a story of judgment and preservation that shaped how they read every later rescue
Situation
Noah, his family and the animals enter the ark seven days before the rain begins. The waters rise for forty days from both the sky above and the deep below, everything on dry land dies, and the flood prevails for a hundred fifty days.
Key Background
The flood is described as creation running backwards, with the waters above and the waters below, separated on the second day of Genesis 1, allowed to rush back together. The instruction to take seven pairs of clean animals rather than one pair anticipates the sacrifices Noah offers afterwards, since some animals had to be available for offering without wiping out the species. Precise dating by the day and month of Noah's life gives the account the texture of an official record, a style Israelite writers used for events they treated as foundational.
Then said to Noah, "Go into the you and your whole household, because I've seen that you are the one who in this
Take with you seven pairs of every animal — a male and its mate — and one pair of every animal that is not — a male and its mate —
and also seven pairs of every kind of bird of the sky, male and female, to keep their offspring alive on the face of the whole earth.
Because in seven I'm going to send rain on the earth for and and I will out every living thing I've made from the face of the ground."
And Noah did everything exactly as Yahweh had told him.
Noah was six hundred years old when the came over the earth.
Noah went into the ark with his sons, his wife, and his sons' wives to escape the floodwaters.
Of the ritually clean animals and the animals that are not clean, and the birds, and everything that moves along the ground,
pairs of them came to Noah and went into the ark, male and female, just as had commanded Noah.
And after seven days, the floodwaters came over the earth.
In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month — on that day all the of the burst open and the of the were thrown wide open.
And rain fell on the earth for forty days and forty nights.
On that very day, Noah went into the ark — along with his sons and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons —
they and every kind of wild animal, every kind of livestock, every kind of creature that moves along the ground, and every kind of bird — everything with wings.
Pairs of every living creature that has the of in it came to Noah and went into the ark.
The animals that came in went in male and female of every living thing, just as God had commanded Then Yahweh the
The continued for forty days on the earth, and the waters rose high enough to lift the ark off the ground, and it floated above the earth.
The waters surged and rose dramatically on the earth, and the ark drifted on the surface of the water.
The waters rose so incredibly high on the earth that they covered all the tall mountains under the entire sky.
The waters rose more than above the mountains, covering them completely.
Every that on the earth died — birds, livestock, wild animals, every swarming creature that swarms on the earth, and every human being.
Everything on dry land that had the of in its died.
He out every living thing on the face of the ground — from humans to animals to creatures that crawl to birds of the sky — they were all from the earth. Only Noah and those with him in the ark survived.
The waters the earth for a and