God’s Promise to Noah

9 So God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them: ^(A)“Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. ^2 (B)And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth, on every bird of the air, on all that move on the earth, and on all the fish of the sea. They are given into your hand. ^3 (C)Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you ^(D)all things, even as the ^(E)green herbs. ^4 (F)But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. ⁵ Surely for your lifeblood I will demand a reckoning; ^(G)from the hand of every beast I will require it, and ^(H)from the hand of man. From the hand of every ^(I)man’s brother I will require the life of man.

⁸ Then God spoke to Noah and to his sons with him, saying: ⁹ “And as for Me, ^(M)behold, I establish ^(N)My covenant with you and with your ^[a]descendants after you, ^10 (O)and with every living creature that is with you: the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you, of all that go out of the ark, every beast of the earth. ¹¹ Thus ^(P)I establish My covenant with you: Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood; never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

¹² And God said: ^(Q)“This is the sign of the covenant which I make between Me and you, and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: ¹³ I set ^(R)My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between Me and the earth. ¹⁴ It shall be, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the rainbow shall be seen in the cloud; ¹⁵ and ^(S)I will remember My covenant which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. ¹⁶ The rainbow shall be in the cloud, and I will look on it to remember ^(T)the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” ¹⁷ And God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant which I have established between Me and all flesh that is on the earth.”

The Tower of Babel

11 Now the whole earth had one language and one ^[a]speech. ² And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land ^(A)of Shinar, and they dwelt there. ³ Then they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and ^[b]bake them thoroughly.” They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. ⁴ And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower ^(B)whose top is in the heavens; let us make a ^(C)name for ourselves, lest we ^(D)be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”

^5 (E)But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. ⁶ And the Lord said, “Indeed ^(F)the people are one and they all have ^(G)one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they ^(H)propose to do will be withheld from them. ⁷ Come, ^(I)let Us go down and there ^(J)confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” ⁸ So ^(K)the Lord scattered them abroad from there ^(L)over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. ⁹ Therefore its name is called ^[c]Babel, ^(M)because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.