Noah and the Flood

The rain did not stop. Not for a day. Not for a week. For forty days and forty nights, it fell. And inside a great wooden ship, one family and a world of animals waited, and listened, and trusted.

This story is set long ago, in the early days of the world, generations after Adam and Eve. The Bible describes a world that had gone badly wrong. People had filled the earth, but they had also filled it with violence. Genesis says the Lord saw how great the wickedness of humanity had become, and his heart was deeply troubled. But one man was different. His name was Noah. Genesis says Noah was righteous, blameless among the people of his time, and that he walked faithfully with God.

God spoke to Noah. He told him a flood was coming, and he told him to build an ark. Not a little boat. A huge vessel of cypress wood, coated inside and out with pitch to keep the water out. Three decks. A door in the side. An opening near the roof for light. It was to be three hundred cubits long. That is roughly one hundred and fifty metres. Longer than a football pitch, standing on dry ground. Imagine the neighbours watching. Imagine the sound of hammers, day after day. And God made Noah a promise. “I will establish my covenant with you.” Noah would go into the ark with his wife, his three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, and their wives. And with them, pairs of every kind of living creature, male and female, to keep them alive. Genesis says something simple about Noah. He did everything just as God commanded him.

Then the day came. The animals came in, two by two, and seven pairs of some kinds. Birds and cattle and creeping things. Noah and his family went in. And the Lord shut them in. Seven days later, the springs of the great deep burst open, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. Rain hammered the roof. The water rose. It lifted the ark off the ground, and the ark floated. Higher and higher the waters climbed, until even the high mountains were covered. Everything that breathed on dry land perished. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark. For one hundred and fifty days, the waters ruled the earth.

But God remembered Noah. He remembered every animal in the ark. He sent a wind over the earth, and the waters began to go down. The ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. Weeks passed. Then Noah opened a window and sent out a raven. It flew back and forth. Then he sent out a dove. It found nowhere to land, and came back to his hand. Seven days later, he sent the dove out again. That evening it returned with something in its beak. A freshly plucked olive leaf. Noah knew. Life was growing again. He waited seven more days and sent the dove once more. This time, it did not come back at all.

When the ground was dry, God told Noah to come out. Noah, his family and every animal stepped onto a washed and quiet earth. The first thing Noah did was build an altar and worship. And God made a covenant with Noah, with his descendants, and with every living creature. Never again would a flood destroy all life on the earth. As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease. Then God gave a sign. He set his bow in the clouds. A rainbow, arching across the sky. Whenever it appears, God said, he will remember his promise.

Here is something interesting. Genesis is not the only ancient story of a great flood. In Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, scribes copied flood stories onto clay tablets. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, a man named Utnapishtim survives a flood in a great boat, and he too sends out birds, a dove, a swallow and a raven, to see whether the land is dry. But the stories feel very different. In Gilgamesh, the gods send the flood and are then terrified by what they have done. In Genesis, one God judges with sorrow, saves with care, and binds himself with a promise.

You can read Noah’s story in Genesis, chapters six to nine. The rain was real. The fear was real. But so was the promise. So next time you see a rainbow, here is something to think about. What promise of God do you most need to remember right now?