On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark.

But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark.

When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth.

“Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives.

So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives.

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.

God’s Covenant With Noah

Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him:

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

Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside.

When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him,

he said, “Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.”

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

Canaan was the father of Sidon his firstborn, and of the Hittites,

Two sons were born to Eber: One was named Peleg, because in his time the earth was divided; his brother was named Joktan.

While his father Terah was still alive, Haran died in Ur of the Chaldeans, in the land of his birth.

Abram and Nahor both married. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milkah; she was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milkah and Iskah.

Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Harran, they settled there.

He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.

From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord.

As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know what a beautiful woman you are.

When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will let you live.

And when Pharaoh’s officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace.

But the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram’s wife Sarai.

So Pharaoh summoned Abram. “What have you done to me?” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife?