4. The Flood and the Rainbow

(Genesis 6-8)

Once when God looked down on the people of the earth, he saw that there was only one good man to be found anywhere. All the rest were disobedient and very wicked. So God planned to save all who would be obedient to him, but to destroy all the disobedient, in order that such great wickedness should not increase over all the earth. God told Noah, the one just and good man, his plan. He told him to build a large ark, half boat and half house. It was to be five hundred feet long, fifty feet high, and eighty-three feet wide—about the size of a big ocean steamer to-day. There were to be three stories, many rooms, and a window on the top. The one door was to be on the side. This great houseboat was not to be for travel, but only to float on the water. In the ark Noah, his wife and sons, and his sons’ wives, and all others who would obey God, were to be saved. For one hundred long years Noah and his sons worked away building this strange ship—hammering, sawing, planing, and laying great beams hundreds of feet long. The people laughed at Noah and mocked him. It was very hard for Noah to be mocked, but he kept right on with his work, telling them of God and his holiness and how their wickedness was grieving God. But they would not listen, nor change their ways, nor believe any flood would come. At last the great ark was finished. Then Noah gathered together two of every kind of birds and animals, and they marched or flew into the ark, and behind them Noah and his family went in, with food for all to last for many months. And God shut the door. So they were safe because they had obeyed God.

Then the rain began to fall. Thunder crashed and echoed from the mountains and the wind dashed the rain against the ark. Torrents of rain came down, until soon the ark began to float. Higher and higher it rose, rocking and tossing, up above the treetops, above the hills, above the mountains. The flood had come, and the wicked people were all drowned. But Noah and his family were safe inside the ark. After forty days the rain stopped, but the water flooded in from the sea. For one hundred and fifty days the waters rose, and then began to go down. But the ark rested on one of the high mountains. Noah opened the window and sent forth a raven, and then a dove. The raven flew away, resting on things floating in the water. The dove came back several times, once bearing an olive-branch in her beak. At last she did not return, by which Noah knew the dove had found land on which to rest, and that the water was gone. Then Noah and all in the ark went out, after being in it more than a year. The first thing Noah did was to thank God for saving him and his family. Then Noah looked up in the clear, blue sky and there was a wonderful rainbow, with every color in it, arching the heavens. This was God’s sign and promise that he would never again destroy the world with water. So every time they saw a rainbow after that, they remembered that God was looking at it too, remembering this promise of his: “During all the days of the earth, sowing and reaping, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease.”