Beginnings of Civilization

¹⁷ Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch, and he built a city and named it Enoch after his son Enoch.^(A)

³⁰ and the king said, “Is this not magnificent Babylon, which I have built as a royal capital by my mighty power and for my glorious majesty?”^(A)

⁴ I made great works; I built houses and planted vineyards for myself;^{(A) 5} I made myself gardens and parks and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees.^{(B) 6} I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. ⁷ I bought male and female slaves and had slaves who were born in my house; I also had great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. ⁸ I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and of the provinces; I got singers, both men and women, and delights of the flesh, many concubines.^[a](C)

⁹ So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem; also my wisdom remained with me.^{(D) 10} Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them; I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure from all my toil, and this was my reward from all my toil.^{(E) 11} Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and again, all was vanity and a chasing after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.^(F)

²⁸ Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot, they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building,^{(A) 29} but on the day that Lot left Sodom it rained fire and sulfur from heaven and destroyed all of them;

¹⁸ Now Absalom in his lifetime had taken and set up for himself a pillar that is in the King’s Valley, for he said, “I have no son to keep my name in remembrance.” He called the pillar by his own name; it is called Absalom’s Monument to this day.^(A)

⁴ Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”^(A)

²² Enoch walked with God after the birth of Methuselah three hundred years and had other sons and daughters.

¹⁸ When Jared had lived one hundred sixty-two years he became the father of Enoch.^(A)