Beginning

8 God remembered Noah, as well as all the animals and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. So God caused a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters subsided. ² The fountains of the deep and the floodgates of the sky were also closed, and the rain from the sky was restrained. ³ The waters kept receding from the earth. After the end of one hundred fifty days the waters had decreased. ⁴ In the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. ⁵ The waters receded continuously until the tenth month. In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were visible.

⁶ Then at the end of forty days Noah opened the window he had made in the ark. ⁷ He sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth, until the waters were dried up from the earth. ⁸ Then he sent out a dove to see if the waters had receded from the surface of the ground, ⁹ but the dove found no place to rest its foot, and it returned to him in the ark, because there was water on the surface of the whole earth. Noah reached out his hand, took the dove, and brought it back to him in the ark. ¹⁰ He waited another seven days. Then he sent the dove out of the ark again. ¹¹ The dove came back to him at evening, and there in its mouth was an olive leaf it had just plucked. So Noah knew that the waters had receded from the earth. ¹² He waited another seven days and sent the dove out again. This time it did not return to him anymore.

¹³ And so in the six hundred first year, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from the earth. Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked out. He saw that the surface of the ground was dry. ¹⁴ In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry.

¹⁵ God spoke to Noah. He said, ¹⁶ “Go out of the ark—you, your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives with you. ¹⁷ Bring out with you every living thing of every sort that is with you, all flesh, including birds, livestock, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, so that they may swarm over the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.”

¹⁸ Noah went out with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives along with him. ¹⁹ Every animal, every creeping thing, every bird, and whatever swarms on the earth went out of the ship, species by species.^[a]

²⁰ Noah built an altar to the Lord and took from every clean animal and every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. ²¹ The Lord smelled the pleasant aroma. The Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the soil anymore because of man, for the thoughts he forms in his heart are evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike every living thing, as I have done. ²² While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”

God’s Covenant With the Earth

9 God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. ² Every animal on the earth and every bird in the sky will fear you and dread you. Everything that swarms on the ground and all the fish in the sea are handed over to you. ³ Every living, moving thing will be food for you. I have given everything to you, just as I gave you the green plants. ⁴ But flesh that has the blood (which is its life) still in it, you shall not eat. ⁵ In fact, I will hold each animal and each person responsible for your lifeblood. I will hold each man responsible for the life of his brother. ⁶ Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for God made man in his own image.

⁷ “But you, be fruitful and multiply. Increase abundantly on the earth, and multiply on it.”

⁸ God said to Noah and to his sons, who were with him, ⁹ “Listen, I will now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you ¹⁰ and with everything with you that has the breath of life: with the birds, with the livestock, and with every wild animal that is on the earth with you, with everything that went out of the ark, even with every wild animal on the earth. ¹¹ I will establish my covenant with you: Never again will all living creatures^[b] be cut off by the waters of a flood. Neither will there ever again be a flood to destroy the earth.”

¹² God also said, “This is the sign of the covenant between me and you and every living creature with you that I am giving for all generations to come. ¹³ I have set my rainbow in the cloud, and it will be the sign of a covenant between me and the earth. ¹⁴ Whenever I bring a cloud over the earth and the rainbow is seen in the cloud, ¹⁵ I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of every sort,^[c] and the waters will never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. ¹⁶ The rainbow will be in the cloud. I will look at it so that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of every kind 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 Repopulation of the Earth

¹⁸ The sons of Noah who went out from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) ¹⁹ These three were the sons of Noah, and from these, people spread out over the whole earth.

²⁰ Noah began to be a man of the soil and planted a vineyard. ²¹ He drank some of the wine and got drunk. He lay uncovered inside his tent. ²² Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. ²³ Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it over their shoulders. They went in backwards and covered the nakedness of their father. They faced backwards, and they did not see their father’s nakedness. ²⁴ Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him. ²⁵ He said:

²⁶ Then he said:

²⁸ Noah lived 350 years after the flood. ²⁹ All the days of Noah were 950 years. Then he died.

10 Now this is the account about the development of groups of people who descended from Shem, Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah. Sons^[d] were born to them after the flood.

The Descendants of Japheth

² The sons of Japheth were Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshek, and Tiras.^[e]

³ The sons of Gomer were Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah.

⁴ The sons of Javan were Elishah, Tarshish, the Kittim, and the Dodanim.^[f]

⁵ The islands and coastlands were divided into different lands among these peoples on the basis of their languages, their ethnic groups, and their nations.

The Descendants of Ham

⁶ The sons of Ham were Cush, Mizraim,^[g] Put, and Canaan.

⁷ The sons of Cush were Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Ra’amah, and Sabteca.

The sons of Ra’amah were Sheba and Dedan.

⁸ Cush became the father of Nimrod. He was the first to be a mighty warrior on the earth. ⁹ He was a mighty hunter before the Lord. That is why the saying is “Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord.” ¹⁰ The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Uruk, Akkad, and Calneh in the land of Shinar.^{[h] 11} From that land he went to Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah, ¹² and Resen between Nineveh and Calah, the great city.

¹³ Mizraim^[i] became the father of the Ludim, Anamim, Lehabim, Naphtuhim, ¹⁴ Pathrusim, Casluhim (from whom the Philistines descended), and the Caphtorim.

¹⁵ Canaan became the father of Sidon (his firstborn) and Heth, ¹⁶ as well as the Jebusites, the Amorites, the Girgashites, ¹⁷ the Hivites, the Arkites, the Sinites, ¹⁸ the Arvadites, the Zemarites, and the Hamathites. Afterward the families of the Canaanites spread out. ¹⁹ Then the borders of the Canaanites extended from Sidon, southward toward Gerar, as far as Gaza; from there it extended eastward toward Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, as far as Lasha.

²⁰ These were the sons of Ham, according to their ethnic groups, their languages, their lands, and their nations.

The Descendants of Shem

²¹ Sons were also born to Shem, the older brother of Japheth,^[j] the father of all the descendants of Eber.

²² The sons of Shem were Elam, Asshur, Arphaxad, Lud, and Aram.

²³ The sons of Aram were Uz, Hul, Gether, and Mash.^[k]

²⁴ Arphaxad became the father of Shelah.^[l] Shelah became the father of Eber. ²⁵ To Eber two sons were born. The name of one was Peleg, because in his days the earth was divided.^[m]

Eber’s brother’s name was Joktan. ²⁶ Joktan became the father of Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah, ²⁷ Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, ²⁸ Obal, Abimael, Sheba, ²⁹ Ophir, Havilah, and Jobab. All these were the sons of Joktan. ³⁰ Their dwelling was from Mesha all the way to Sephar, in the hill country of the east.

³¹ These were the descendants of Shem according to their ethnic groups, their languages, their lands, and their nations.

³² These are the families and groups of peoples descended from the sons of Noah, according to their genealogies, by their nations. From these, nations spread out over the earth after the flood.

The Division of the Earth

11 The whole earth had one language and a single vocabulary. ² As people traveled in the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they settled there. ³ They said to one another, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used mud brick instead of stone for building material, and they used tar for mortar. ⁴ They said, “Come, let’s build a city for ourselves and a tower whose top reaches to the sky, and let’s make a name for ourselves, so that we will not be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”

⁵ The Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people were building. ⁶ The Lord said, “If this is the first thing they are doing as one people, who all have one language, then nothing that they intend to do will be too difficult for them. ⁷ Come, let’s go down there and confuse their language, so that they cannot understand one another’s speech.”

⁸ So the Lord scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth, and they stopped building the city. ⁹ It was named Babel,^[n] because there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

The Ancestors of Abraham

¹⁰ This is the account about the development of the family of Shem.

Shem was 100 years old and became the father of Arphaxad two years after the flood. ¹¹ Shem lived 500 years after he became the father of Arphaxad, and he became the father of sons and daughters.

¹² Arphaxad lived 35 years and became the father of Shelah. ¹³ Arphaxad lived 403 years after he became the father of Shelah, and he became the father of sons and daughters.^[o]

¹⁴ Shelah lived 30 years and became the father of Eber. ¹⁵ Shelah lived 403 years after he became the father of Eber, and he became the father of sons and daughters.

¹⁶ Eber lived 34 years and became the father of Peleg. ¹⁷ Eber lived 430 years after he became the father of Peleg, and he became the father of sons and daughters.

¹⁸ Peleg lived 30 years and became the father of Reu. ¹⁹ Peleg lived 209 years after he became the father of Reu, and he became the father of sons and daughters.

²⁰ Reu lived 32 years and became the father of Serug. ²¹ Reu lived 207 years after he became the father of Serug, and he became the father of sons and daughters.

²² Serug lived 30 years and became the father of Nahor. ²³ Serug lived 200 years after he became the father of Nahor, and he became the father of sons and daughters.

²⁴ Nahor lived 29 years and became the father of Terah. ²⁵ Nahor lived 119 years after he became the father of Terah, and he became the father of sons and daughters.

²⁶ Terah lived 70 years and became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran.

The Development of the Family of Terah

²⁷ Now this is the account about the development^[p] of the family of Terah.

Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Haran became the father of Lot. ²⁸ Haran died before his father Terah. He died in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans.

²⁹ Abram and Nahor took wives. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milcah, the daughter of Haran, who was also the father of Iscah. ³⁰ Sarai was barren. She had no child.

³¹ Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot, who was the son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, who was the wife of his son Abram, and they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan. They came to Haran and lived there. ³² The days of Terah were 205 years. Terah died in Haran.