The Story of the Flood

Genesis 6:1 - 8:22

"Today in school my teacher read us Jack and the Bean Stalk," Beth said to her mother on one sunny spring afternoon as they sat on the porch peeling apples. "It was about a boy who climbs a bean stalk and finds a giant at the top. It was a good story, but it made me worried because what if the giant came down and tried to get me? My teacher said that giants aren't real so I shouldn't worry. That's true, isn't it, Mother?"
"There aren't any giants any more," said Beth's mother, "But there used to be. Let me tell you a story from the Bible about them."
And this is the story she told:

One day, many years after God made the earth, there were lots of men, and some of those men had daughters. The angels in heaven saw how beautiful the daughters were and decided to put their penises in a whole bunch of them. The children of angels and human women were really big heroes.
There were giants then, too.
God's reaction to this was pretty extreme. He said, "I will not always help men because they are not like the angels. I will only give them 120 years to live."
Then God saw that people were bad and thought nothing but bad thoughts. This made God really depressed. So God said, "I am going to kill all the people, and hyenas, and bugs, and birds, because I am sorry that I made them in the first place."
People had completely ruined the whole world so God decided to get rid of it and start all over from scratch.

Beth remembered hearing about kidnappings, rapes, murders, robberies, molestations, child abandonments, and ozone depletion on the news. "People are still pretty bad," Beth said, looking down at the half-peeled fruit in her hand and wondering if the neighbors minded her mother picking the apples from their tree. Even if the tree did tend to lean over into Beth's family's yard. "Do you think that God going to get upset and get rid of us?"
"Just listen, Dear One, and you will see," said Beth's mother, and she continued the story.

God killed all living things with a flood, except for a man named Noah, his family, and some animals that were floating in a big boat called an "ark."
There was a man named Noah. God liked Noah and used to go on walks with him. Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

"Noah had a son named Ham?" Beth said.
"Yes, Dear One," answered her mother. "Many people had strange names in olden time."
"I guess that's better than Bacon," giggled Beth to herself. Then she kept quiet and let her mother tell the story.

One day, God said to Noah, "I am going to kill every living thing because there's too much violence in the world, and I am going to destroy the whole planet at the same time. You should make an ark -- that's a big boat -- out of gopher wood. Make sure that there's rooms in it and cover it with tar." Then God gave Noah instructions on how to build an ark.
"Although I'm going to kill every living thing with a flood," God continued, after giving Noah his instructions, "I promise that you and your wife, and your sons, and their wives will all get in the ark along with two of every living thing, one male and one female of each. You should find two birds, and cows, and bugs, and other things like that, along with enough food for all of you."
Because he was a good guy, Noah did what he was told.
Then after the ark was finished, God said to Noah, "Get everyone in the ark. Oh, and I've changed my mind about a few things. You should take seven pairs of every animal that's clean (but still just one pair of dirty animals) and seven pairs of every kind of bird, along with one pair of every other kind of animal. Now, in a week I am going to make it rain for forty days so that everything dies."
Noah, who was six hundred years old, got his family and all the animals into the ark, but he only took two of each animal, completely ignoring God's new instructions.
After everyone had been in the ark a week, the flood began. God sent water up from the ground, and opened all the windows in heaven so that the water above heaven fell down onto the ground. It rained for forty days, just like God said it would.
Pretty soon, the water got so high that the ark began to float.
The water got deeper and deeper until it was fifteen feet deep and higher than the hills and mountains.
Soon, it was so high that everything on land died. Only Noah and everyone with him in the ark lived.
After a hundred and fifty days, God remembered Noah. He made a wind blow all the water away, and after seven months and seventeen days the ark landed on top of a mountain called Ararat. The waters kept getting lower until ten months had passed and the tops of other mountains started to peek out. Forty days after that, Noah opened the ark's window and sent a raven out. The raven flew around until all the water was gone. Noah also sent out a dove, but the dove couldn't find anything to land on so it came back to the ark. A week later, Noah sent the dove out again and it came back with an olive branch in its mouth. That was how Noah knew that the water was all gone.
So Noah opened the door in the side of the ark and looked at the ground.
About two months later, God told Noah that it was all right to come out of the ark. So Noah and his family and all the animals came out of the ark. Then God told Noah and the animals that they should have sex so that there would be a bunch more of them later.
Noah was so happy to be alive that he built an altar. Then Noah took one of every clean animal and one of every bird that he had worked so hard to save from the flood and put them on the altar. When they were all on the altar, he set them on fire.
God liked the smell of the animals on fire, and God said to himself, "I promise never again to kill everything in the world because people have bad thoughts." Although he didn't say anything about not destroying the occasional town or village.
After he was done smelling the burning animals, God reminded Noah and his sons to put their penises in their wives so that there would be a bunch more of them later. He also told them that all the animals and birds and everything that moves on the ground and all the birds and fishes would be afraid of them, and that they were allowed to eat anything that was living (although he changed his mind about this later). The only rule he made was that they were not allowed to drink any blood, but they probably wouldn't have done this anyway. God also promised that as long as people didn't drink blood, then people who killed other men would get put to death (although he changed his mind about this later).
Then God reminded everyone again to have sex.
After the flood was over and most everything was dead, God said to Noah and Noah's sons, "I promise you and your children, and the animals from the ark, that I will never use a flood to kill living things or destroy the world again. And as a sign of that promise, I will put a rainbow in the sky."
And he did.

"Now do you see?" Beth's mother asked her. "God might kill some people, but he would never kill everyone again. And as for the giants and children of angels, they were evil and had to be destroyed in the flood."
Beth thought about this for a moment as she put the last of the apples into the basket at her mother's feet. "That's great," she said. "I also learned that God likes the smell of animals and birds on fire and that nobody ever dies in floods any more."
"Actually," said Beth's mother, "God just said that he'd never kill everything with a flood again. He kills people with floods all the time."
"Oh, I get it," said Beth. Then she smiled and hugged her mother. All her questions had been answered.