¹ When people began being numerous on earth, and daughters had been born to them,

² the sons of God, looking at the women, saw how beautiful they were and married as many of them as they chose.

³ Yahweh said, 'My spirit cannot be indefinitely responsible for human beings, who are only flesh; let the time allowed each be a hundred and twenty years.'

⁴ The Nephilim were on earth in those days (and even afterwards) when the sons of God resorted to the women, and had children by them. These were the heroes of days gone by, men of renown.

⁵ Yahweh saw that human wickedness was great on earth and that human hearts contrived nothing but wicked schemes all day long.

⁶ Yahweh regretted having made human beings on earth and was grieved at heart.

⁷ And Yahweh said, 'I shall rid the surface of the earth of the human beings whom I created -- human and animal, the creeping things and the birds of heaven -- for I regret having made them.'

⁸ But Noah won Yahweh's favour.

⁹ This is the story of Noah: Noah was a good man, an upright man among his contemporaries, and he walked with God.

¹⁰ Noah fathered three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth.

¹¹ God saw that the earth was corrupt and full of lawlessness.

¹² God looked at the earth: it was corrupt, for corrupt were the ways of all living things on earth.

¹³ God said to Noah, 'I have decided that the end has come for all living things, for the earth is full of lawlessness because of human beings. So I am now about to destroy them and the earth.

¹⁴ Make yourself an ark out of resinous wood. Make it of reeds and caulk it with pitch inside and out.

¹⁵ This is how to make it: the length of the ark is to be three hundred cubits, its breadth fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits.

¹⁶ Make a roof to the ark, building it up to a cubit higher. Put the entrance in the side of the ark, which is to be made with lower, second and third decks.

¹⁷ 'For my part I am going to send the flood, the waters, on earth, to destroy all living things having the breath of life under heaven; everything on earth is to perish.

¹⁸ But with you I shall establish my covenant and you will go aboard the ark, yourself, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives along with you.

¹⁹ From all living creatures, from all living things, you must take two of each kind aboard the ark, to save their lives with yours; they must be a male and a female.

²⁰ Of every species of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that creeps along the ground, two must go with you so that their lives may be saved.

²¹ For your part, provide yourself with eatables of all kinds, and lay in a store of them, to serve as food for yourself and them.'

²² Noah did this; exactly as God commanded him, he did.

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The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) is a Catholic translation of the Bible published in 1985. The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) has become the most widely used Roman Catholic Bible outside of the United States. It has the imprimatur of Cardinal George Basil Hume.

Like its predecessor, the Jerusalem Bible, the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) version is translated "directly from the Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic." The 1973 French translation, the Bible de Jerusalem, is followed only "where the text admits to more than one interpretation." Introductions and notes, with some modifications, are taken from the Bible de Jerusalem.

Source: The Very Reverend Dom (Joseph) Henry Wansbrough, OSB, MA (Oxon), STL (Fribourg), LSS (Rome), a monk of Ampleforth Abbey and a biblical scholar. He was General Editor of the New Jerusalem Bible. "New Jerusalem Bible, Regular Edition", pg. v.

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