12. For how long at least did God show self-restraint in bringing the deluge, and what did the deluge destroy?

¹² That global deluge was a punishment from Jehovah God. He had patiently held back from inflicting that punishment for at least 120 years. (Gen. 6:1-3) The apostle Peter especially pointed up this self-restraint on God’s part, when he wrote: “He did not hold back from punishing an ancient world, but kept Noah, a preacher of righteousness, safe with seven others when he brought a deluge upon a world of ungodly people.” That this meant a world destruction, the apostle Peter emphasizes again when he adds: “And by those means the world of that time suffered destruction when it was deluged with water.”​—2 Pet. 2:5; 3:6.

13. How do the “ancient world” and the present “world,” or human society, compare when God’s long-suffering is taken into account?

¹³ Thus the “ancient world,” the first society of mankind, lasted for about 1,656 years after man’s creation. As for this present “world,” or human society, God’s patience with it has lasted much longer, for about forty-two centuries or since the “act of God” in confusing the language of the builders of the tower of Babel. (Gen. 10:8-10; 11:1-9) The “ancient world” of Noah’s day was buried in a watery grave because it was “ungodly.” It had filled the earth with violence. It was ruining the earth and not subduing it to a paradisaic beauty. “The badness of man was abundant in the earth.” (Gen. 6:5-9, 12, 13) It deserved to be destroyed.

14. Why were Noah and his family counted worthy to survive the deluge?

¹⁴ Why, then, were Noah and his family counted worthy to be spared through the deluge and to enter the post-deluge period? It was because Noah led his family in ‘walking with the true God,’ not with the ungodly world. God found Noah to be righteous, “faultless among his contemporaries.” He was a “preacher of righteousness.” He had exemplary faith in God. That was why he obediently built the ark for the preserving of his household alive.​—Gen. 6:9 through 7:1; Heb. 11:7.

17, 18. Why did the “ancient world” not take heed to God’s warning by means of Noah, and when was divine judgment revealed?

¹⁷ Back there in the year 2370 B.C.E., the ungodly people did not believe the evidence that was before their eyes that the end of their “ancient world” was at hand. To them it seemed improbable, most unlikely, impossible! That man Noah was warning them of a natural phenomenon that was too colossal for them to believe. So why worry?

¹⁸ Life till then had continued on just normally for them, with eating, drinking, and marrying so as to produce the next generation. They did not take into account any day of reckoning at God’s hand for all their badness, the violence with which they were filling the earth, the manner in which they were ruining the earth, and their selfish way upon the earth. Noah’s completing of the ark and his bringing of the basic bird and animal kinds into the ark lent no weight to Noah’s warning for them. They showed a complete lack of faith. So they stood out condemned in God’s sight, in contrast with Noah’s course of faith backed up by works. Finally, the seventeenth day of the second lunar month (likely Bul, which means “Rain”) of the year 2370 B.C.E. arrived. Then the destructive judgment of Noah’s God was revealed to that “world of ungodly people.”​—Gen. 7:11-17; 2 Pet. 2:5.