Genesis 6 - 7
The Bible tells us that as
men increased
on earth many many years ago, and the LORD said, "My spirit shall not
always strive with man, for that
he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years."
The LORD
saw how great man's
wickedness
on the earth had become, and that every thought of
his heart was only evil all the time.
The
LORD
was very sad that he
had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. And the LORD said, "I
will destroy man whom I have created from the face
of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the
fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them."
But
Noah found favor in the eyes of the
LORD.
Noah was a
righteous
man. That meant that he was right before God among the people of
his time. Noah walked with God.
Noah
had
a wife and three sons: Shem, Ham and
Japheth.
Now
the earth was corrupt in God's
sight and was full of violence.
God
saw
how corrupt the earth had
become,
for all the people on earth had become evil in their ways. And God said unto Noah, "The end of all
flesh is come before me; for
the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will
destroy them with the earth."
So
God told Noah to make an Ark of gopher wood. An Ark is shaped
like a chest. Things that are valuable are placed inside an Ark
to keep them safe. God told Noah to make rooms in this Ark and
coat it with
pitch inside and out. Pitch
(or tar) was used to keep water out. God told Noah how big to
build it: The ark was
to
be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high.
God told Noah to put a window in it and
finish the ark
to
within 18 inches of the top. He was also told to put a door
in the side of the ark and make
it with three decks, a lower, middle and upper deck.
God told Noah that He was going to bring
floodwaters
on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that
had the breath of life in it. Everything on earth would die.
God told Noah that He would establish
a covenant
with Noah.
Noah was to bring
into the ark two
of
all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with him.
Two of every kind
of bird, of every
kind
of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground
would
come to him to be kept alive. He
was
to take all food
that was
to be eaten and store it away as food for all of them."
Noah did everything just as God
commanded
him.
Then the LORD told
Noah to go into the ark with his whole family, because God had found
him
righteous
in this generation. There were eight people in all who went
inside the Ark.
God
told
Noah that in seven
days from then, He would send rain on
the
earth for forty days and forty nights, and He would wipe from the face
of
the earth every living creature He had made."
Just
as God had told Noah, it began to rain seven days later.
Noah was six hundred years old when the
floodwaters
came on the earth.
And
rain fell on the earth for forty days
and
forty nights. This was the first time it had rained.
For
forty
days
the
flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they
lifted
the ark high above the earth. The waters covered even the
mountains.
Covenant
-- An agreement.
