[59] So, too, in the great deluge when all but the whole human race perished, one house, we are told, suffered no harm because the most venerable member and head of the household had committed no deliberate wrong. The manner of his preservation is a story worth recording, both as a marvel and as a means of edification.
[60] Being judged a fit person not only to be exempted from the common fate, but also to be himself the beginner of a second generation of mankind, by God’s commands enjoined by the oracular voice, he built a huge structure of wood, three hundred cubits in length, fifty in breadth and thirty in height. Inside this, he framed a series of rooms, on the ground floor and second, third and fourth stories. Then, having laid up provisions, he introduced a male and female specimen of every kind of living creature both of the land and the air, thus reserving seeds in expectation of the better times that were once more to come. For he knew that the nature of God was gracious,
[61] and that, though the individuals perished, the race would be preserved indestructible because of its likeness to Himself, and that nothing whose being He had willed would ever be brought to nought.