Here is an extract from the story of Noah, taken from the Bible. The text is from the Contemporary English Version of the Bible (pictured left). To order your copy of this fresh, new version, click here for Amazon UK or US.
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The great flood
The Lord told Noah:
Take your whole family with you into the boat, because you are the only one on this earth who pleases me. Take seven pairs of every kind of animal that can be used for sacrifice and one pair of all others. Also take seven pairs of every kind of bird with you. Do this so there will always be animals and birds on the earth.
Seven days from now I will send rain that will last for forty days and nights, and I will destroy all other living creatures I have made.
Noah was six hundred years old when he went into the boat to escape the flood, and he did everything the Lord had told him to do. His wife, his sons, and his daughters-in-law all went inside with him. He obeyed God and took a male and a female of each kind of animal and bird into the boat with him. Seven days later a flood began to cover the earth.
Noah was six hundred years old when the water under the earth started gushing out everywhere. The sky opened like windows, and rain poured down for forty days and nights. All this began on the seventeenth day of the second month of the year.
On that day Noah and his wife went into the boat with their three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives. They took along every kind of animal, tame and wild, including the birds. Noah took a male and a female of every living creature with him, just as God had told him to do. And when they were all in the boat, God closed the door.
For forty days the rain poured down without stopping. And the water became deeper and deeper, until the boat started floating high above the ground. Finally, the mighty flood was so deep that even the highest mountain peaks were about seven metres below the surface of the water. Not a bird, animal, reptile, or human was left alive anywhere on earth.
The Lord destroyed everything that breathed. Nothing was left alive except Noah and the others in the boat.
A hundred and fifty days later, the water started going down.
The Book of Genesis
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