First reading
The Lord saw that the wickedness of humanity was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made human beings on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created — people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.”
But Noah found favour in the sight of the Lord. The Lord said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you alone are righteous before me in this generation. Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and its mate; and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and its mate; and seven pairs of the birds of the air also, male and female, to keep their kind alive on the face of all the earth. For in seven days I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights; and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.”
And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him. And after seven days the waters of the flood came on the earth.