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Genesis

About this book

The Flood

Chapter 7

1 The Lord said to Noah, “Come into the ark,⁠ you and all your household, for I consider you godly among this generation.⁠ 2 You must take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, the male and its mate, two of every kind of unclean animal, the male and its mate,⁠ 3 and also seven pairs of every kind of bird in the sky, male and female, to preserve their offspring on the face of the entire earth.⁠ 4 For in seven days I will cause it to rain on the earth for 40 days and 40 nights, and I will wipe from the face of the ground every living thing that I have made.”⁠ 5 And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him. 6 Noah was 600 years old when the floodwaters engulfed the earth. 7 Noah entered the ark along with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives because of the floodwaters. 8 Pairs of clean animals, of unclean animals, of birds, and of everything that creeps along the ground,⁠ 9 male and female, came into the ark to Noah, just as God had commanded him. 10 And after seven days the floodwaters engulfed the earth.⁠ 11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month—on⁠ that day all the fountains of the great deep burst open and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.⁠ 12 And the rain fell on the earth 40 days and 40 nights. 13 On that very day Noah entered the ark, accompanied by his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, along with his wife and his sons’ three wives.⁠ 14 They entered, along with every living creature after its kind, every animal after its kind, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth after its kind, and every bird after its kind, everything with wings. 15 Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life came into the ark to Noah. 16 Those that entered were male and female, just as God commanded him. Then the Lord shut him in.⁠ 17 The flood engulfed the earth for 40 days.⁠ As the waters increased, they lifted the ark and raised it above the earth. 18 The waters completely overwhelmed the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the waters.⁠ 19 The waters completely inundated the earth so that even all the high mountains under the entire sky were covered.⁠ 20 The waters rose more than 20 feet above the mountains. 21 And all living things that moved on the earth died, including the birds, domestic animals, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all humankind. 22 Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. 23 So the Lord destroyed every living thing that was on the surface of the ground, including people, animals, creatures that creep along the ground, and birds of the sky. They were wiped off the earth. Only Noah and those who were with him in the ark survived.⁠ 24 The waters prevailed over the earth for 150 days.

Texts in conversation

Compare Eridu Genesis VI and Genesis 7:3

Ancient Near East, Sumerian · Hebrew Bible

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Summary

In Eridu Genesis, Ziugiddu is honored as the preserver of humankind, while in Genesis Noah brings people and animals into the ark to preserve life through the flood.

Passages

Eridu Genesis VI

Ancient Near East, Sumerian · The Sumerian Deluge
6 Ziugiddu, the king, bowed down in front of Anu and Enlil. 7 Anu and Enlil showed kindness to Ziugiddu. 8 They granted him life like a god’s, 9 They gave him breath that would last forever, like a god’s. 10 At that time Ziugiddu, the king, 11 The name of the [...] Preserver of the seed of humankind [...] 12 They settled him on a [...] mountain, the mountain-land of Dilmun, where the sun rises.
1600 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Eridu Genesis

Genesis 7:3

Hebrew Bible
1 The Lord said to Noah, “Come into the ark, you and all your household, for I consider you godly among this generation. 2 You must take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, the male and its mate, two of every kind of unclean animal, the male and its mate, 3 and also seven pairs of every kind of bird in the sky, male and female, to preserve their offspring on the face of the entire earth. 4 For in seven days I will cause it to rain on the earth for 40 days and 40 nights, and I will wipe from the face of the ground every living thing that I have made.” 5 And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Genesis

References

"... This whole biblical description of a world-destroying flood represents a foreign element in Israelite tradition. The Levantine highlands in which Israel was situated are relatively arid and do not experience sustained, overwhelming floods. Rather, such floods are more typical of the river plains in Mesopotamia, especially in the wake of snowmelts in the mountain headlands of the Tigris and Euphrates in Turkey and Iran. It was in this Mesopotamian context, during the gradual collapse of the UR III order, that we see the development of several Mesopotamian narratives about the flood and the increasingly frequent use of the flood as the narrative backdrop for cosmological etiologies of Mesopotamian civilization. The three main Mesopotamian literary texts with narratives about the flood are the Atrahasis epic, the Sumerian Flood narrative (aka “Eridu Genesis,”), and the adaptation of a version of Atrahasis in the eleventh tablet of the standard edition of the Gilgamesh epic ... These stories, especially the versions of the Atrahasis flood story (including the Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh), share an overall framework. The non-P flood narrative features a number of connections to these Mesopotamian flood stories, even as it diverges in crucial respects as well. To be sure, the non-P flood story is no longer a drama of interaction between gods, and there is no evidence that it ever featured several significant features of the Mesopotamian tradition, such as the address to the elders, convening of the people to construct the ark, or a correlate to the goddess memorializing the days of the flood. Nevertheless, the non-P flood story does follow a similar trajectory of movement in the Mesopotamian flood narratives ..."
David M. Carr, The Formation of Genesis 1–11: Biblical and Other Precursors (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), 153–154.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Eridu Genesis VI and Genesis 7:3

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