Genesis 5:28-9:29
New Catholic Bible
28 Lamech was one hundred eighty-two years old when he had a son. 29 He named him Noah, saying, “This one shall be a consolation for the work and labor that we must endure because the Lord has cursed the soil.” 30 After he had Noah, Lamech lived another five hundred ninety-five years and had other sons and daughters. 31 Lamech lived for seven hundred and seventy-seven years, and then he died. 32 Noah was five hundred years old when he had Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
Death and Resurrection of God’s Work[a]
Chapter 6
Widespread Perversion.[b]1 When men began to multiply upon the earth, and they began to have daughters, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married as many of them as they wanted. 3 The Lord therefore said, “My spirit will not remain in them forever, for they are flesh and the length of their lives will be one hundred and twenty years.”
4 There were giants upon the earth at this time, as well as afterward. They were the children of the sons of God who married the daughters of men. These were the heroes of times past, men of renown.
5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of men upon the earth was great, and that every plan that their hearts conceived was nothing but evil. 6 The Lord regretted that he had made man upon the earth and his heart was grieved. 7 The Lord said, “I will obliterate man, whom I created, from the earth. Together with man I will eliminate all the cattle and reptiles and the birds of the air, for I regret having made them.” 8 But Noah found favor with the Lord.
Salvation through the Righteous.[c] 9 This is the story of Noah. Noah was a just and blameless man at that time and he walked with God. 10 Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. 11 But the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and filled with violence. 12 God saw that the earth was corrupt, for every person on the earth was perverse in what he did.
13 God therefore said to Noah, “I have decided to end everything, for they have filled the earth with their violence. Behold, I will destroy the entire creation. 14 Build an ark[d] of gopher wood and divide the ark into compartments and caulk it with bitumen inside and out. 15 This is how you shall make it: the ark will be three hundred cubits long, fifty wide, and thirty high. 16 Make a roof on the ark one cubit high.[e] Place a door in the side of the ark. Make it with three decks: lower, middle, and higher.
17 “Behold, I will send a flood. The waters shall cover the earth to destroy the life of everything under the skies that has the breath of life in it. Everything on the earth shall perish. 18 But I will establish a covenant with you.
“Go into the ark, you and your sons, your wife, and the wives of your sons. 19 Bring into the ark two of everything that lives, of all flesh. Bring a male and female of each species into the ark to save them. 20 Bring two birds of each species, two animals of each species, and two reptiles of each species with you to save them. 21 As for you, gather every type of food and take it with you. It shall nourish both you and them.”
22 Noah did all of this, exactly as God had commanded him.
Chapter 7
1 The Lord said to Noah, “Enter into the ark with your entire family, for I have seen that you, of all this generation, are just in my sight. 2 You are to take seven pairs of each type of clean animal with you, male and female. You are to take one pair of each type of unclean animal with you, male and female. 3 You are also to take seven pairs of birds of the air, male and female, with you, so that you may save every species of animal upon the earth. 4 In seven days I will make it begin to rain upon the earth, and it will rain for forty days and forty nights. I will destroy from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.”
5 Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him to do.
End of the Sinful World.[f] 6 Noah was six hundred years old when the flood began and the waters covered the earth. 7 Noah went into the ark with his sons, his wife, and the wives of his sons to escape from the waters of the flood. 8 The clean animals and the unclean animals, the birds, and the creatures that creep on the ground[g] 9 entered the ark two by two, male and female, along with Noah, just as the Lord had commanded. 10 After seven days, the waters of the flood covered the earth; 11 this happened in the six hundredth year of the life of Noah, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month. On that very day the springs of the great abyss and the floodgates of the heavens opened.[h] 12 The rains fell upon the earth for forty days and forty nights.
13 That day Noah and his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth entered the ark along with the wife of Noah and the three wives of his sons. 14 They entered along with all living creatures according to their kind, all cattle according to their kind, all creeping creatures according to their kind, and all birds according to their kind. 15 They went into the ark with Noah, two by two, every creature that had breath in it. 16 Those that came, male and female of every type of flesh, entered the ark as God had commanded. The Lord closed the door after them.
17 The flood lasted for forty days. The waters rose and lifted the ark off the earth as they increased. 18 The waters continued to swell and increased greatly on the earth until the ark floated upon the waters. 19 The waters rose more and more on the earth and covered all the highest mountains that are under the heavens. 20 The waters were fifteen cubits over the tops of the mountains that they covered.
21 Every living creature that moves upon the earth, every bird, cattle, wild animal, and creature that crawls upon the earth, and every single person on dry land died. 22 Every creature on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died.
23 This is how every living creature on earth was slain, every human being and every animal, every reptile and every bird of the air. They were blotted out of the earth, and only Noah and those who were with him in the ark survived.[i]
24 The waters covered the earth for one hundred and fifty days.
Chapter 8
The New Creation.[j] 1 God remembered Noah and all the wild and farm animals that were with him in the ark. God made a wind blow upon the earth, and the waters began to recede. 2 The springs of the abyss and the windows of the heavens were closed, and the rains from the heavens ceased. 3 The waters slowly receded from the earth. At the end of one hundred and fifty days they had greatly diminished. 4 In the seventh month, the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on Mount Ararat.[k] 5 The waters continued to recede until the tenth month. In the tenth month, the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains came into view.
6 After forty days had gone by, Noah opened the window that he had made in the ark 7 and released a raven to see if the waters had completely dried up. It flew back and forth until the waters upon the earth dried up. 8 Noah then released a dove, to see if the waters had drained from the surface of the earth, 9 but the dove, not finding any place to land, returned to the ark (for the waters still covered the surface of the earth). He reached out and caught the dove and brought it back into the ark.
10 After waiting another seven days, he once again released the dove from the ark. 11 It returned to him toward the evening. In its beak it had a sprig from an olive tree. Noah understood that the waters had receded from the earth. 12 He waited another seven days and then released the dove. It did not return to him.
13 In the six hundred and first year of Noah’s life, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters dried up upon the earth. Noah removed the covering from the ark and, behold, the surface of the earth was dry. 14 In the second month, the twenty-seventh day of the month, the entire surface of the earth was dry.
15 God commanded Noah, 16 “Leave the ark, you and your wife, your sons and their wives. 17 Take all the animals of every species with you, birds, cattle, all the reptiles that crawl upon the earth, take them all with you. Let them spread out upon the earth. May they be fruitful and multiply upon the earth.”
18 Noah left the ark with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives.
19 All the living creatures and all the wild animals, all the birds and all the reptiles that crawl upon the earth, each according to its kind, all left the ark.
20 Noah built an altar to the Lord, took every kind of clean animal and some of every kind of clean bird, and he offered them as burnt offerings upon the altar.
21 The Lord smelled the pleasant odor and said to himself, “I will never again curse the land because of humankind, for the instinct of every human heart is evil from its youth. I will never again destroy every living creature.
22 “As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
shall not cease.”
Chapter 9
1 God blessed Noah and his sons and told them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. 2 [l]Fear and dread of you will come upon every wild animal and every bird of the air, everything that crawls upon the earth and all the fish of the sea; they will be under your dominion.
3 “Whatever moves and has life will be used for your food. I give you all these things, just as I have already given you every green plant. 4 [m]Only do not eat flesh along with its life, that is, with its blood. 5 For your blood, that is, your life, I will require an accounting. I will require it of every living creature, and I will require it of every human in regard to other humans, each person for his brother.
6 “Whoever spills human blood,
that person’s blood will be shed;
for in the image of God
has God made man.
7 And as for you, be fruitful and multiply; become numerous upon the earth and have dominion over it.”
Covenant of Mercy.[n] 8 God said to Noah and his sons, 9 “As for me, I will establish my covenant with you and your descendants after you, 10 with every living creature along with you—the birds, tame and wild animals, and with all the animals which left the ark. 11 I will establish my covenant with you: never again will all living creatures be cut off by the waters of a flood, nor will the earth be laid waste by a flood again.”
12 God said, “This will be a sign of the covenant that I establish between me and you and every living creature for all generations. 13 I will place my rainbow in the clouds and it will be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 When I gather the clouds over the earth, the rainbow will appear in the clouds. 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and with every living creature of every kind, that water and flood shall never again destroy all flesh. 16 The rainbow will be in the clouds and I will look upon it and remember the eternal covenant between God and every living creature of every kind that is found upon the earth.”
17 God said to Noah, “This is a sign of the covenant that I am establishing between myself and every creature upon the earth.”
A World of Diverse Peoples[o]
18 The Return of Sin.[p] The sons of Noah who left the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of the people of Canaan. 19 These were the three sons of Noah, and from these came all the people on the earth.
20 Now Noah tilled the soil, and he was the first to plant grape vines. 21 He drank some of the wine and he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. 22 Ham, the father of the Canaanites, saw his father lying naked, and he mentioned it to his two brothers who were standing outside.[q] 23 Shem and Japheth took a robe and, holding it in back of them, walked backward toward him and covered their father with it. Having faced backward, they did not see their father naked.
24 When Noah woke up from his drunken slumber, he learned what his youngest son had done to him. 25 Because of this, he said,
“Cursed be Canaan!
A slave of slaves
shall he be to his brothers!”[r]
26 [s]And he continued,
“Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem,
and let Canaan be his slave!
27 May God enlarge Japheth
so that he dwells in the land of Shem;
and let Canaan be his slave!”
28 After the flood, Noah lived for three hundred and fifty years. 29 In all, Noah lived for nine hundred and fifty years, and then he died.
Footnotes
- Genesis 6:1 The entire biblical tradition presents the flood as an historical event (Wis 10:4; Sir 44:17-18; Mt 24:37-39; 1 Pet 3:20; etc.), but apart from popular texts no information was available for describing the material event.
It is from these popular texts that the external elements of the story come: the structure of the ark, the duration and extent of the flood, and so on, which are not part of the historico-religious message of the writer but serve in the composition of a vivid story. As a result, the Yahwist and Elohist traditions could differ in marginal aspects that are more picturesque in the one and more detailed in the other.
Humankind is renewed in the person of Noah. In the Christian tradition he is a figure of Christ, the one true righteous man, who remained untouched by the spread of sin and then, rising unharmed from death, became the source of resurrection for humankind. - Genesis 6:1 The passage is from the Yahwist tradition. The writer seems to be using two fragments of ancient popular traditions (vv. 1-2, 4). The striking element in this chapter is the fact that human beings have gone so far in personal disintegration that they are no longer capable of thinking anything but evil (v. 5), so that any hope of recovery is morally impossible.
The tragic anthropomorphism seen in the divine regret highlights the power of evil, which is capable of destroying the work of the Creator; but the annihilation planned is the decision of the supreme Good, which is always the sole judge of its own plans (see Jer 18:1-12) and cannot allow the definitive victory of evil. - Genesis 6:9 The first part of the following passage (6:9-22) is from the Priestly tradition and links up with the end of chapter 5. First, in three verses (6:11-13), it uses the language of corruption and violence to summarize the entire history of sin and the decree of condemnation, both of which have been described in a more diffuse way in the Yahwist tradition. This is followed by the order to build the ark, which is found only in the Priestly version, and finally the announcement of the flood with the command to enter the ark. This passage from the Priestly tradition is followed by a repetition of the command to enter the ark and of the announcement of the flood from the Yahwist tradition (7:1-5). Note the difference of the two traditions when it comes to the number of animals brought into the ark: the Yahwist account, more popular in character, presupposes that in those very ancient times a distinction was already made between clean and unclean animals, whereas in fact the distinction was of later origin and codified in the Mosaic Law.
The New Testament praises the faith of Noah (Heb 11:7) and speaks of the harm done his contemporaries by their unbelief, because they were unable to accept the impulse to conversion that came from him as he was building the ark (1 Pet 3:20). - Genesis 6:14 Ark, in Hebrew teba, is probably connected with the Egyptian, teb(t), basket, sarcophagus, and perhaps with the Akkadian, tabu, the processional boat of the gods, or with Akkadian, elippu tibitu, a kind of boat. The same word is used in Ex 2:3, 5 for the basket in which Moses was saved.
- Genesis 6:16 A cubit was about 50 cm or one and a half feet. The ark was about 156 meters long, 26 meters wide, and 15 meters high (440 x 72 x 44 feet). It was a floating parallelepiped of about 55,000 or 60,000 cubic meters (82,000 or 90,000 cubic feet).
- Genesis 7:6 In this section the entrance into the ark and the description of the flood are repeated, first in the Yahwist version with inserts from the Priestly tradition (vv. 1-12) and then in the Priestly version with inserts from the Yahwist tradition (vv. 13-20); finally, there is a description of the effects of the flood that draws on both traditions (vv. 21-24). In the Yahwist tradition the flood is simply a torrential rain that continues for forty days (vv. 4, 12; 8:2b), while in the Priestly account, in keeping with the cosmic vision in Genesis 1:1-10, the waters are loosed both from the subterranean ocean and from the heavenly ocean (7:11; 8:2a).
According to the ideas of the ancients, in creating the world God separated the earth from the waters by creating the solid heavenly vault that divided the oceanic mass (the “abyss”) into an upper part beyond the heavens and a lower, earthly part, and by then commanding the lower waters to retreat, allowing the dry land to emerge. At this point, then, the lower, subterranean waters invade the earth anew through springs, while passages (“floodgates”) open in the heavenly vault and allow the upper waters to pour down. Thus God causes some effects of his creative work to cease. The waters that submerge the highest mountains on earth and destroy humankind and the animals effect a return of the universe to its primitive condition; the process is an image of the cosmic dimensions that sin, the rejection of God, has. - Genesis 7:8 This verse, which seems to be the work of the final editor, brings the Yahwist source, which distinguishes between clean and unclean animals, into harmony with the Priestly source, which has the animals in pairs.
- Genesis 7:11 According to the calendar used in the Priestly story of the flood, the year is divided into twelve months of about thirty days each, depending always on the cycle of the moon. The first month, equivalent to Nisan, is the month of the first lunar cycle in the spring (March-April).
- Genesis 7:23 The flood prefigures the final judgment (Mt 24:37-41) and salvation through baptism (1 Pet 3:20-21).
- Genesis 8:1 The first five verses, on the withdrawal of the waters, are from the Priestly tradition with a short Yahwist insert, while the section on the raven and the dove is Yahwist. The sending of a bird to find solid land was a custom of ancient mariners and also occurs in Mesopotamian stories of the flood. The following section, on the departure from the ark, is again Priestly and is in continuity with chapter 9, which is from the same source, whereas 8:21-22 on sacrifice and the divine decision are Yahwist.
God does not allow evil to conquer him but defeats it by preparing a new world. With Noah, the second father of humankind, everything begins again: nature takes up its laws again and human beings rediscover their rights. However, sin had destroyed the harmony that existed in the beginning. Human beings enter into conflict with the animals and with one another. The prohibition of shedding blood and the punishment for murderers are intended to remind all that life belongs to God alone. The Lord concludes a new covenant with human beings but engages only himself; he has decided to be patient and allow freedom to go to its very limits. This ancient story of the covenant defines God’s attitude toward all humankind. The universal covenant that Jesus will seal with his blood bears witness to the astounding greatness of God’s love for human beings (see Jn 3:16). - Genesis 8:4 Ararat (cuneiform texts have Urartu) has been variously identified: the northeast region of Lake Van; the mountains of Kurdistan; the Lubar mountains, near Zagros, close to the Nisir of the Gilgamesh myth.
- Genesis 9:2 All this is simply a popular image for describing the complete happiness God had intended for humankind in the state of innocence. Verse 3 makes clear that the eating of meat is part of God’s general plan for the created world.
- Genesis 9:4 In the popular Semitic view blood is the seat of the vital principle; it is not, however, a product of matter but is infused into it by God. Therefore, the blood belongs in its entirety to God, and in a special way the blood of human beings, made as they are in the image of God, who is their protector and avenger.
- Genesis 9:8 God’s intention as enunciated in the Yahwist tradition (8:21-22) is rethought in this Priestly passage as a covenant between God and Noah, analogous to that which will later be established between God and Abraham (Gen 15; 17) and then between God and the Israelite people (Ex 19–24). The imagery brings out the unqualified steadfastness of the divine intention. The Covenant is freely made on God’s part, that is, it does not depend on the future behavior of human beings, for the Lord does not ask Noah to fulfill any particular requirement.
- Genesis 9:18 God has blessed the new creation, and the earth is repopulated. At the heart of this humankind, which is divided and marked by sin, is the towering figure of Abraham. It is upon him that the Lord has affixed his choice as the forerunner through whom the salvation of human beings will take place.
- Genesis 9:18 The story is from the Yahwist tradition. After the second creation, as after the first, we read the story of a sin, a condemnation, and a prophecy of hope. This last is connected with chapter 12 and the call of Abraham.
- Genesis 9:22 This is not a sexual sin but an abuse of power; the sons make themselves the superiors and judges of their father, who is humiliated and dishonored. To the Hebrews drunkenness is wanton, dishonorable, and humiliating; it provokes ridicule, leads to idolatry, incites violence, causes injustice and poverty, and makes persons subject to their enemies. It is unseemly especially for the leaders of nations. Clothing, then, in addition to being a means of decency, expresses the dignity of the person and his or her social position. When naked (Gen 3:7), Adam and Eve are deprived of glory and grace; the garments of skin with which God clothes them (Gen 3:21) are symbolic of their hope of being clothed again in their lost dignity.
- Genesis 9:25 According to the Semitic mentality, the blessings and curses of the Patriarchs (generally) are regarded as efficacious and able to determine the lot of the tribe represented by each Patriarch. For this reason, popular stories connected events or characteristics of a human group with blessings or curses uttered by an ancestor. In the present story Noah curses Canaan and therefore the Canaanites. The Canaanites were to be supplanted by the Hebrews in the conquest of the Promised Land. The Phoenicians, too, were Canaanites (see Gen 10:15-19; Jdg 1:31).
- Genesis 9:26 A great numerical and territorial expansion is announced for the descendants of Japheth; there is a play on the resemblance in sound between this ancestor’s name and the verb meaning “to open,” “to enlarge.”
