9 And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, ^(A)“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. ^2 (B)The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. ^3 (C)Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And ^(D)as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. ⁴ But you shall not eat flesh with its ^(E)life, that is, its blood. ⁵ And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: ^(F)from every beast I will require it and ^(G)from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man.

⁷ And you,^[a] be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.”

⁸ Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ⁹ “Behold, ^(J)I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, ¹⁰ and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark; it is for every beast of the earth. ^11 (K)I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” ¹² And God said, ^(L)“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: ¹³ I have set ^(M)my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. ¹⁴ When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, ^15 (N)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. ¹⁶ When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember ^(O)the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” 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 people migrated from the east, they found a plain in ^(A)the land of Shinar and settled there. ³ And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, ^(B)and bitumen for mortar. ⁴ Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower ^(C)with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” ⁵ And ^(D)the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. ⁶ And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. ⁷ Come, ^(E)let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.” ⁸ So ^(F)the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. ⁹ Therefore its name was called ^(G)Babel, because there the Lord confused^[a] the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.