Main Story
Yahweh saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and how every urge or thought of the human heart was only evil all the time. Yahweh regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was saddened.
So Yahweh said, "I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created for I regret that I have made them."
But Noah found favor in the eyes of Yahweh.
Yahweh then said to Noah, "Go into the ark, you and your household (not family), because I have found you righteous in this generation. Take with you seven pairs of every kind of pure animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.
Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made".
And Noah did everything Yahweh commanded him.
And after that, seven days of floodwaters came on the earth. And rain fell on the earth for forty days and forty nights. Then Yahweh shut him in.
For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth.
Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark. And the rain stopped falling from the sky. And the water receded steadily from the earth.
After forty days he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark.
He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.
Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry.
**
Prologue
When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then Yahweh said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.
Epilogue
Then Noah built an altar to Yahweh and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it.
Yahweh Yahweh smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done." "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease"
Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father's naked body. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked.
When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him,
he said, "Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers"
He also said, "Praise be to Yahweh, the God of Shem! May Canaan be the slave of Shem.
May God extend Japheth's territory; may Japheth live in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be the slave of Japheth"
