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The Deluge

The Flood is the second-largest narrative in Genesis — a year aboard a wooden ship while the world was unmade and remade. Here it is as Scripture gives it: the vessel to scale, the waters by the day, and the memory of the flood written into nearly every people on earth.

“And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills… were covered.” — Genesis 7:19

300 cubits
the Ark's length
Genesis 6:15
~370 days
aboard the Ark
Genesis 7:11–8:14
200+
flood legends worldwide

The Account

Genesis 6–9. One righteous man, a warning of judgment, a covenant of rescue — and a door that God Himself shut.

In the days of Noah the earth was “filled with violence,” and God resolved to blot out what He had made — yet Noah “found grace in the eyes of the LORD.” He was given a blueprint: a great vessel of gopher wood, sealed within and without with pitch, three decks, a single door, a window.

Into it came Noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives — eight souls — and the animals, by kinds. Then “the LORD shut him in.” The fountains of the great deep burst open and the windows of heaven were loosed, and the rain fell forty days. When at last the waters drew back, God set a rainbow in the cloud: never again.
Genesis 6:9
“Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.”
Genesis 7:16
“…and the LORD shut him in.”
Genesis 9:13
“I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant.”

The Vessel

“The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.” — Genesis 6:15. A 30 : 5 : 3 hull — the very ratio modern naval architects prize for stability in heavy seas.

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450 ft
long — about one and a half football fields
1.52M ft³
of volume across three decks
~1,400
kinds of land animals needed aboard (AiG estimate) — well under half the space
~450
stock railcars' worth of room — ample for every kind and a year's provisions

The Waters

Genesis records the Flood almost to the day. Follow the tide as it rises over the world and slowly draws back — a year and ten days from the first rain to dry ground. Genesis 7:11–8:14

The Witnesses

If a global flood truly happened, the families that scattered from it would carry the memory — and on every inhabited continent, they do. More than two hundred flood traditions have been catalogued; here are fourteen. Spin the globe, or choose a people, and read their account.

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On the flood traditions and what the shared memory might mean: GotQuestions — hundreds of flood legends? · Answers in Genesis — Worldwide Flood Legends · Gilgamesh & Genesis · Britannica — Flood Myth. Every source is on the Sources & Resources page.

The Evidence in the Rocks

Creationist perspective — how flood geologists read the record

Mainstream geology reads these layers over deep time; flood geologists read the same rocks as the signature of one global catastrophe. The features they point to:

Layers across continents

Single beds of water-laid sedimentary rock stretch for thousands of miles — the Earth's crust is wrapped in stacked layers, often miles deep, laid down by moving water.

Fossil graveyards

Billions of dead things, buried fast in those layers — vast graveyards of creatures preserved whole, the way rapid burial under sediment preserves, not slow exposure.

~95%

Sea life on the peaks

Roughly 95% of all fossils are marine creatures — and they are found atop the highest mountains, as if the oceans once covered the continents.

One year, not one storm

The Ark floated for about a year. No local flood lasts that long, drowns mountains, or needs a year-built ship — the text describes a global event.

Genesis 7:24; 8:3–14
Read the Flood account → See the chronology →

Primary source: Genesis 6–9.
Perspective & evidence: Answers in Genesis · Institute for Creation Research · Creation Ministries International · GotQuestions. Full list on the Sources & Resources page.