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Page 5
THE STORY OF NOAH AND THE ARK
After Abel was slain, and his brother Cain had gone into another land,
again God gave a child to Adam and Eve. This child they named Seth; and
other sons and daughters were given to them; for Adam and Eve lived many
years. But at last they died, as God had said they must die, because
they had eaten of the tree that God had forbidden them to eat.
By the time that Adam died, there were many people on the earth; for the
children of Adam and Eve had many other children; and when these grew up
they had other children; and these had children also. These men and
women and children lived in tents. They owned sheep and cattle, and they
moved about with them, wherever they could find pasture. The children
played around the tent doors, and sat beside the camp-fires in the
evenings, where they all sang together, and the older people told them
stories. And after a time this land where Adam's sons lived began to be
full of people.
It is sad to tell that as time went on more and more of these people
became wicked, and fewer and fewer of them grew up to become good men
and women. All the people lived near together, and few went away to
other lands; so it came to pass that even the children of good men and
women learned to be bad, like the people around them, and no longer did
what was right and good.
And as God looked down on the world that he had made, he saw how wicked
the men in it had become, and that every thought and every act of man
was evil and only evil continually.
But while most of the people in the world were very wicked, there were
some good people also, though they were very few. The best of all the
men who lived at that time was a man whose name was Enoch. He was not
the son of Cain, but another Enoch, who came from the family of Seth,
the son of Adam, who was born after the death of Abel. While so many
around Enoch were doing evil, this man did only what was right. He
walked with God and God walked with him, and talked with him. And at
last, when Enoch was a very old man and weary with life, God took him
away from earth to heaven. He did not die, as all the people have since
Adam disobeyed God, but "he was not, for God took him." This means that
Enoch was taken up from earth without dying.
All the people in the time of Enoch were not shepherds. Some of them had
learned how to make rude bows and arrows and axes and plows. And after a
long time they melted iron, and they made knives and swords and dishes
to use in their homes. They sowed grain in the fields and reaped
harvests, and they planted vines and fruit trees. But God looked down on
the earth and said:
"I will take away all men from the earth that I have made; because the
men of the world are evil, and do evil continually."
But even in those bad times God saw one good man. His name was Noah.
Noah tried to do right in the sight of God. As Enoch had walked with
God, so Noah walked with God, and talked with him. And Noah had three
sons; their names were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth.
God said to Noah, "The time has come when all the men and women on the
earth are to be destroyed. Every one must die, because they are all
wicked. But you and your family shall be saved, because you alone are
trying to do right."
Then God told Noah how he might save his life and the lives of his sons.
He was to build a very large boat, as large as the largest ships that
are made in our time; very long, and very wide and very deep; with a
roof over it; and made like a long, wide house in three stories; but so
built that it would float on the water. Such a ship as this was called
"an ark." God told Noah to build this ark, and to have it ready for the
time when he would need it.
"For," said God to Noah, "I am going to bring a great flood of water on
the earth to cover all the land and to drown all the people on the
earth. And as the animals on the earth will be drowned with the people,
you must make the ark large enough to hold a pair of each kind of
animals and several pairs of some animals that are needed by men, like
sheep and goats and oxen; so that there will be animals as well as men
to live upon the earth after the flood has passed away. And you must
take in the ark food for yourself and your family, and for all the
animals with you; enough food to last for a year, while the flood shall
stay on the earth."
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