So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so.

And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so.

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground,

but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground.

So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh.

That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”

And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”

Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.

He named him Noah and said, “He will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the Lord has cursed.”

The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.

The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.

Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit high all around. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks.

I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish.

Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate,

Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground,

They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered.

The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.

and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth.

By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry.

The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it.”

When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent.

The first centers of his kingdom were Babylon, Uruk, Akkad and Kalneh, in Shinar.