*Sacred Scripture* The Deluge – Danby

This is a painting by F. Danby showing the Great Flood, told of in the Old Testament. Remnants of humanity and animals flee to the earth’s highest points before eventually being overcome by the waters and drowned. Noah’s ark looks faint, off in the distance, floating on the waters. A blood-red sun rises amid black clouds. An angel in the bottom right weeps over a child’s death.

Danby made his name with epic subjects, often on a large scale. This was his last. The subject is from the Old Testament book of Genesis. God sends a flood to punish mankind’s wickedness but allows Noah and his family to be saved. Noah’s ark is in the background, illuminated by a shaft of moonlight. A stormy sea rages round a rocky peak and massive tree branches, to which humans and animals are clinging desperately. A blood-red sun can be seen setting to the left.

Gn 7:6-24

The Great Flood.

6Noah was six hundred years old when the flood came upon the earth.

7Together with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives, Noah went into the ark because of the waters of the flood.^c

8Of the clean animals and the unclean, of the birds, and of everything that crawls on the ground,

9two by two, male and female came to Noah into the ark, just as God had commanded him.^d

10When the seven days were over, the waters of the flood came upon the earth.

11In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month: on that day

All the fountains of the great abyss^* burst forth,

and the floodgates of the sky were opened.

12For forty days and forty nights heavy rain poured down on the earth.

13On the very same day, Noah and his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of Noah’s sons had entered the ark,

14together with every kind of wild animal, every kind of tame animal, every kind of crawling thing that crawls on the earth, and every kind of bird.

15Pairs of all creatures in which there was the breath of life came to Noah into the ark.

16Those that entered were male and female; of all creatures they came, as God had commanded Noah. Then the LORD shut him in.

17The flood continued upon the earth for forty days. As the waters increased, they lifted the ark, so that it rose above the earth.

18The waters swelled and increased greatly on the earth, but the ark floated on the surface of the waters.

19Higher and higher on the earth the waters swelled, until all the highest mountains under the heavens were submerged.

20The waters swelled fifteen cubits higher than the submerged mountains.

21All creatures that moved on earth perished: birds, tame animals, wild animals, and all that teemed on the earth, as well as all humankind.^e

22Everything on dry land with the breath of life in its nostrils died.

23The LORD wiped out every being on earth: human beings and animals, the crawling things and the birds of the air; all were wiped out from the earth. Only Noah and those with him in the ark were left.

24And when the waters had swelled on the earth for one hundred and fifty days,

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/genesis/7