The Message Prayerful Reading Bible Sampler - Flipbook - Page 29
1 1 G enesis 7
he had Methuselah. Enoch walked steadily
with God. After he had M
ethuselah, he lived
another 300 years, having more sons and
daughters. Enoch lived a total of 365 years.
24 Enoch walked steadily with God. And
then one day he was simply gone: God took
him.
25-27 When M
ethuselah was 187 years old,
he had Lamech. After he had Lamech, he
lived another 782 years. M
ethuselah lived a
total of 969 years. And he died.
28-31 When
La
mech was 182 years old,
he had a son. He named him Noah, saying, “This one will give us a break from the
hard work of farming the ground that God
cursed.” After L
amech had Noah, he lived
another 595 years, having more sons and
daughters. Lamech lived a total of 777 years.
And he died.
32 When Noah was 500 years old, he had
Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
Giants in the Land
1-2 When the human race began to increase, with more and more daughters
being born, the sons of God noticed that
the daughters of men were beautiful. They
looked them over and picked out wives for
themselves.
3 Then God said, “
I’m not going to breathe
life into men and women endlessly. Eventually they’re going to die; from now on they
can expect a life span of 120 years.”
4 This was back in the days (and also later)
when there were giants in the land. The giants came from the union of the sons of God
and the daughters of men. These were the
mighty men of ancient lore, the famous ones.
6
Noah and His Sons
5-7 God saw that human evil was out of control. People thought evil, imagined e vil—evil,
evil, evil from morning to night. God was
sorry that he had made the human race in the
first place; it broke his heart. God said, “I’ll
get rid of my ruined creation, make a clean
sweep: people, animals, snakes and bugs,
birds—the works. I’m sorry I made them.”
8 But Noah was different. God liked what
he saw in Noah.
9-10 This is the story of Noah: Noah was a
good man, a man of integrity in his community. Noah walked with God. Noah had three
sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
11-12 As far as God was concerned, the
Earth had become a sewer; there was vio-
lence everywhere. God took one look and
saw how bad it was, e veryone corrupt and
corrupting—life itself corrupt to the core.
13 God said to Noah,
“It’s all over. It’s
the end of the human race. The violence is
everywhere; I’m making a clean sweep.
14-16 “Build yourself a ship from teakwood.
Make rooms in it. Coat it with pitch inside
and out. Make it 450 feet long, s eventy-five
feet wide, and forty-five feet high. Build a
roof for it and put in a window e ighteen
inches from the top; put in a door on the side
of the ship; and make three decks, lower,
middle, and upper.
17 “I’m going to bring a flood on the Earth
that will destroy
every
thing alive under
Heaven. Total destruction.
18-21 “But I’m going to establish a covenant
with you: You’ll board the ship, and your
sons, your wife and your sons’ wives will
come on board with you. You are also to take
two of each living creature, a male and a
female, on board the ship, to preserve their
lives with you: two of e very species of bird,
mammal, and reptile—two of everything so
as to preserve their lives along with yours.
Also get all the food y
ou’ll need and store it
up for you and them.”
22 Noah did everything God commanded
him to do.
7
1 Next God said to Noah, “Now board
the ship, you and all your family—out of
everyone in this generation, y
ou’re the righteous one.
2-4 “Take on board with you seven pairs of
every clean animal, a male and a female; one
pair of e very unclean animal, a male and a female; and seven pairs of e very kind of bird, a
male and a female, to insure their survival on
Earth. In just seven days I will pour rain on
Earth for forty days and forty nights. I’ll make
a clean sweep of everything that I’ve made.”
5 Noah did everything God commanded
him.
6-10 Noah was 600 years old when the
floodwaters covered the Earth. Noah and his
wife and sons and their wives boarded the
ship to escape the flood. Clean and unclean
animals, birds, and all the crawling creatures
came in pairs to Noah and to the ship, male
and female, just as God had commanded
Noah. In seven days the floodwaters came.
11-12 It was the
six-
hundredth year of
Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month that it happened:
all the underground springs erupted and all
