The Flood (Noah) #7

The account of Noah and the Flood, told in Genesis 6 through 9, describes a catastrophic judgment sent by God upon a corrupt and violent world, followed by the preservation of one righteous family and the establishment of a covenant with all living creatures. It is among the most widely known narratives in Genesis and reappears as a moral and theological reference point throughout Scripture.

Judgment Decreed

Genesis describes humanity’s wickedness as pervasive: “God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). This grieved God at his heart, and he resolved to blot out from the earth what he had made — man, beast, and every creeping thing (Genesis 6:6-7). Noah alone “found grace in the eyes of the LORD” (Genesis 6:8); he is described as “a just man and perfect in his generations,” one who “walked with God” (Genesis 6:9). God instructed Noah to build an ark of gopher wood, gave him its dimensions, and told him to bring his family and two of every kind of animal aboard, with stores of food, to preserve life through the coming judgment (Genesis 6:13-21). Noah did all that God commanded him (Genesis 6:22).

The Flood and the Ark

Seven days before the rain began, the LORD told Noah to enter the ark with his household and seven pairs of every clean animal (Genesis 7:1-4). In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, “all the fountains of the great deep” broke open and “the windows of heaven were opened,” and rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights (Genesis 7:11-12). The waters rose until they covered even the highest hills under the whole heaven, prevailing for one hundred and fifty days, and “all flesh died that moved upon the earth” apart from those in the ark (Genesis 7:19-24). Afterward a wind passed over the earth and the waters began to subside; the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat, and in time the tops of the mountains became visible (Genesis 8:1-5). Noah sent out a raven and then a dove to test whether the ground had dried, and when the dove failed to return, he knew the waters were gone (Genesis 8:6-12). At God’s command, Noah, his family, and every animal came out onto dry land (Genesis 8:15-19).

Aftermath and Covenant

Noah’s first act was to build an altar and offer burnt offerings from the clean animals. The LORD “smelled a sweet savour” and resolved never again to curse the ground or destroy every living thing as he had done, even though “the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Genesis 8:20-21), promising that seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night would not cease while the earth remains (Genesis 8:22). God then blessed Noah and his sons and established a covenant with them and with every living creature, promising that “neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth” (Genesis 9:1-11), setting his bow in the clouds as its sign (Genesis 9:12-17) — a covenant treated at greater length in its own entry. New Testament writers later treat the Flood as a pattern of divine judgment and connect the ark’s saving of “few, that is, eight souls… by water” typologically to baptism (1 Peter 3:20-21). Readers differ over whether the flood’s scope was worldwide or local to the region described, and over how the account relates to other ancient Near Eastern flood traditions — questions the text itself does not settle and this site does not adjudicate. What the narrative asserts plainly is God’s judgment on corruption and his preserving faithfulness toward those who walk with him.