The Flood

Genesis 6–9 records that as humanity multiplied after the fall the earth grew so violent and corrupt that "the LORD regretted that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him to His heart" (Gen 6:6). God revealed to Noah, a righteous man in his generation, that He would destroy the earth by water, and gave him precise instructions for a great wooden ark — three hundred cubits long, fifty wide, thirty high — to preserve his family and pairs of every kind of land animal. Noah obeyed; for some time — the New Testament adds that he was a herald of righteousness (2 Pet 2:5) — he warned his contemporaries while the ark was being built. In the six-hundredth year of Noah’s life "all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened" (Gen 7:11). The waters rose for forty days, prevailed for 150, and only after a year did the ark come to rest on the mountains of Ararat. God then made the rainbow covenant: never again will He destroy the earth by flood (Gen 9:13). Jesus treats the Flood as a historical event and as a pattern of the final judgement (Matt 24:37–39); 1 Peter 3:20–21 reads the ark as a type of Christian baptism. Flood traditions are preserved across nearly every ancient culture.