The Covenant with Noah

9 God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.^{(A) 2} The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth and on every bird of the air, on everything that creeps on the ground and on all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are delivered. ³ Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you, and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.^{(B) 4} Only, you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.^{(C) 5} For your own lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning: from every animal I will require it and from human beings, each one for the blood of another, I will require a reckoning for human life.^(D)

⁷ “And you, be fruitful and multiply, abound on the earth and have dominion over^[a] it.”^(F)

⁸ Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ⁹ “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you^{(G) 10} and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark.^{[b](H) 11} I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”^{(I) 12} God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations:^{(J) 13} I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.^{(K) 14} When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, ¹⁵ I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh, and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.^{(L) 16} When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”^{(M) 17} God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that 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 the same words. ² And as they migrated from the east,^[a] they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.^{(A) 3} And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. 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.”^{(B) 5} The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built.^{(C) 6} And the Lord said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.^{(D) 7} Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.”^{(E) 8} So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.^{(F) 9} Therefore it was called Babel,^[b] 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.^(G)