Genesis
Chapter 7
The Lord said to Noah:
“Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I see that you are just in this generation.
Of all the clean animals, you are to take with you seven of each kind, male and female, and a pair of unclean animals, a male and a female.
In the same way for the birds of the air, take seven and seven, male and female, to keep their kind alive over all the earth,
for in seven days I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights. I will blot out from the face of the earth all the living creatures I have created.”
Noah did everything that the Lord had commanded.
Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters covered the earth.
So Noah went into the ark with his children, his wife, and his sons’ wives to escape the waters of the flood.
Clean animals and also unclean, birds, and all that crawls on the earth went into the ark with Noah;
they went two and two, male and female, as God had commanded Noah.
And after seven days, the waters of the flood were over the earth.
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month and on the seventeenth day of the month, all the fountains of the great deep burst forth,
and there was a downpour on the earth lasting forty days and forty nights.
On that same day, Noah, along with his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, entered the ark, as did his wife and daughters-in-law.
All the animals, according to their kind, also entered the ark: all the cattle, all the creeping things that crawl on the earth, and all the birds according to their kind; all that fly and everything with wings.
They came to Noah in the ark, two by two, all creatures that had the breath of life in them.
And those that went in were male and female, just as God had commanded. Then the Lord closed the door on Noah.
The flood lasted for forty days on the earth, and the waters rose, lifting the ark above the surface of the earth.
The waters rose significantly on the earth, and the ark floated on their surface.
The waters rose higher and higher above the earth, and all the tall mountains under the heavens were submerged.
The waters had risen and covered the mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet.
Every living creature that moved on the earth perished: birds, cattle, animals, everything that swarmed on the earth—and all humankind.
All living beings on the face of the earth that had the breath of life in their nostrils perished.
Every creature on the earth, including humans, animals, and the birds of the air, was wiped out. Only Noah and those with him in the ark remained.
The waters flooded the earth for one hundred fifty days.
Commentaries
The Flood: God, Noah, and his Family.
The punishment targets the descendants of Seth, the brother of Abel, who is supposedly the “good” branch of the human family. This narrative is based on an ancient Mesopotamian myth. The biblical account appears very ancient; scholars trace the current text to the editorial efforts of three of the four primary sources of the Pentateuch: the Yahwist (J), the Elohist (E), and the Priestly (P). The latter provided it with its definitive form and is, therefore, the one whose influence is most strongly felt.
In the dynamics of the first eleven chapters of Genesis, the narration of the flood serves as a self-criticism of Israel, which has failed, “shipwrecked”, in its vocation to the service of justice and life. Israel, too, as a chosen people, allowed itself to be dominated by the hoarding and selfish tendencies of human beings and ultimately ended up sinking into failure. From this perspective, questioning the historical veracity of the flood or the actual existence of Noah and his ark is of no benefit to faith. What matters is the message that the sacred author conveys: the abandonment of justice and commitment to life leads to real catastrophes. Faith must grow at the same pace as our commitment to life and justice.