From Creation to Revelation the stories of the Old and New Testament are warmly retold for children aged 8 plus in The Discovery Illustrated Family Bible.
Read on to enjoy an extract from the Old Testament story, Noah and the Flood, in which God sets Noah and his family an immense task.
Noah Builds the Ark
When people had been living on the earth for a long time, they forgot the time of paradise in the Garden of Eden. They were so busy working the land to grow food that they forgot God and could no longer hear his voice. Gradually they became more and more wicked, telling lies and fighting one another. Even the animals seemed to copy people and fight with one another. God was saddened by what he saw and regretted that he had ever created human beings.
But there was one family that was good and felt close to God: Noah, his wife, their three sons and their wives. So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the whole earth is filled with violence because of them. Build yourself an ark of cypress wood and coat it with tar.”
Noah wondered what an ark was, but he could not ask because God continued to speak. He listened carefully. “The ark should be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high. Make a roof over it, leaving an opening all around. Put a door in the side of the ark and make a lower, middle and upper deck.”
Noah knew what a cubit was – the length of an arm from fingertip to elbow. Three hundred cubits was enormous… but he did not have long to ponder on this, for God continued, “I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy almost all life under the heavens and almost every creature that breathes.”
Now Noah realised that the ark must be some kind of ship, which would float on the floodwaters.
God said, “I will make a promise to you. You and your family must enter the ark, and you must bring two of all living creatures, a male and a female, and keep them alive with you in the ark. Take every kind of food, and store it for you and all the creatures.”
At last Noah had time to think about everything God had said to him. It would be a great task to prepare for: to explain God’s plan to his family; to cut down many cypress trees to have enough wood to build this enormous ark; to dig for black, sticky tar; to catch a pair of all the animals, especially the wild ones; and to gather up all the kinds of food that they would need.
Noah and his family did as God had commanded them. As they were building the ark, their neighbours came by and laughed at them – why were they building a boat in the middle of dry land? But Noah and his family just steadily kept working.
At last, the ark was built and they coated it with tar. Then they set about catching a pair of all the animals and gathering up all the food they would need. The neighbours now thought that Noah and his family were quite mad – were they going to start an animal market in their strange wooden contraption?
God spoke to Noah again and told him to gather not just one pair, but seven pairs of animals that can be eaten. Then he said, “Go into the ark, you and all your family, because you have been good and obedient. Seven days from now I will send rain on earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe every living creature I have made from the face of the earth.”
Noah did as God asked him. He and his family stored all the food in the ark, and then they entered it. All the animals they had caught followed them inside, from the greatest beasts, like elephants and the giraffes, to the smallest creatures that crept along the ground, like ants and beetles. All the birds took shelter under the roof of the ark. All this took seven days.
Meet the creatives behind this engaging and inspiring Bible, learn about how the The Discovery Illustrated Family Bible came together and find out what makes it distinctive over on our blog post here.
