World English Bible · Before the nations
Genesis 9
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and his sons, and said to them, "Be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you will be on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of . Everything that moves along the ground, and all the fish of the sea, are into your hand. Every moving thing that lives will be food for you. As I gave you the green herb, I have given everything to you. But with its life, that is, its , you shall not eat. I will surely require accounting for your life's . At the hand of every animal I will require it. At the hand of man, even at the hand of every man's brother, I will require the life of man. Whoever sheds man's , his will be shed by man, for made man . Be fruitful and multiply. Increase abundantly in the earth, and multiply in it." 8 spoke to and to his sons with him, saying, "As for me, behold, I establish my with you, and with after you, and with every that is with you: the birds, the livestock, and every animal of the earth with you, of all that go out of the ship, even every animal of the earth. I will establish my with you: will not any more by the waters of the flood. There will never again be a flood to destroy the earth." said, "This is the token of which I make between me and you and every that is with you, for perpetual generations: I set my rainbow in the cloud, and it will be a sign of a between me and the earth. 14When I bring a cloud over the earth, that the rainbow will be seen in the cloud, I will remember my , which is between me and you and every of , and the waters will no more become a flood to destroy . The rainbow will be in the cloud. I will look at it, that I may remember the between and every of that is on the earth." 17 said to , "This is the token of which I have established between me and that is on the earth." The sons of who went out from the ship were , , and . is of . These three were the sons of , and from these the whole earth was populated. began to be a farmer, and planted a . He drank of the and got drunk. He was uncovered within his tent. , of , saw the his , and told his two brothers outside. and took a garment, and laid it on both their shoulders, went in backwards, and covered the their . Their faces were backwards, and they didn't see their . 24 awoke from his , and knew what his youngest son had done to him. He said, " is . He will be a servants to his brothers." He said, " be , the of . Let be his servant. May enlarge . Let him in the tents of . Let be his servant." 28 lived three hundred fifty years after the flood. All the days of were nine hundred fifty years, and then he .
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The world at this moment · Before the nations, 2600 BC to 2100 BC ›
The opening chapters, from creation to Babel, told on a scale that covers the whole earth before the story narrows to one family.
- The neighbours' own stories
- Mesopotamia told its own versions of these events. Atrahasis and the eleventh tablet of Gilgamesh tell of a flood, a survivor, an ark, and birds sent out to find land. Enuma Elish tells of a world made from a defeated sea. The resemblances are close enough that scholars have argued about them for a century and a half, and the differences are where the argument gets interesting: Genesis has no quarrel among gods, no accidental humanity, and a flood sent for moral reasons rather than because people were noisy.
- Babel and the ziggurat
- A tower with its top in the heavens, built of brick and bitumen on a plain in Shinar, describes a Mesopotamian ziggurat exactly. Dozens were built, the best known at Ur and Babylon, of mud brick because southern Mesopotamia has no stone. The detail about brick instead of stone is the kind of thing someone writes who has actually seen one.
- The wider world
- If these chapters are placed anywhere in ordinary chronology, the surrounding centuries are the age of the Egyptian pyramids, the Sumerian city-states, the Indus Valley cities, and the first phase of Stonehenge. Writing was a few centuries old and existed in two places on earth.
All of Genesis