Noah was a righteous and upright man who “walked with God.” While humanity was sinking into anarchy, corruption, and violence, Noah remained faithful to God’s ways. God told Noah that He was going to destroy the earth due to the evil and theft that had become normalized: “I am going to bring a mabbul (flood) upon the earth to destroy all living creatures.” But God also promised Noah that He would establish a covenant (of protection) with him and his family, and He instructed him to build a teba (ark) of wood with compartments for animals and storage for food for all the living creatures aboard.
God instructed Noah to bring into the ark seven pairs of pure (kosher) animals and two pairs of impure animals, male and female. Noah did everything according to what God had commanded. Rain began to fall on the earth, and underground springs opened and overflowed so that water covered everything. Noah, his family, and all living creatures in pairs survived in the ark.
The flood lasted for 40 days, covering even the highest mountains and destroying all forms of life. For the next 150 days, the waters covered the earth. God sent powerful winds, and the waters began to recede, and the land started to dry. Noah sent a raven, which found no place without water to rest and returned. Then he sent a dove, which also returned. Seven days later, the dove returned with an olive leaf in its beak, indicating that the waters had receded and there were already trees—food!—on the earth. After another seven days, the dove did not return, and Noah knew that the land had dried.
God then told Noah, “Leave the ark with your family and all the living creatures with you. Be fruitful and multiply upon the earth.” Noah built an altar to God and offered sacrifices from each pure animal and bird. God was pleased with the sacrifices and promised not to destroy humanity again, recognizing that the inclination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.
God blessed Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, allowing them to eat animal meat but prohibiting them from eating the flesh of an animal that had not yet been slaughtered (eber min hachai, or consuming the flesh of a mutilated animal). He also explicitly prohibited murder. Additionally, He established that the rainbow would be the sign of this eternal covenant between God and the earth.
Noah became a farmer, planted a vineyard, drank wine, became intoxicated, and undressed in his tent. His son Ham saw his nakedness—or perhaps this is a euphemism for something more serious—and told his two brothers. Shem and Japheth respectfully entered the tent and covered their father’s nakedness.
After the flood, Noah lived 350 years, dying at the age of 950. Both he and his sons had many descendants who spread throughout the earth.
All humanity spoke one language and had a unified project: to build a city with a tower—step pyramids or ziggurats—that reached to the sky to make a name for themselves and avoid being scattered across the earth. (Or, to challenge God or survive another possible flood; interpretations of the Tower of Babel’s intention vary.) God said, “Now they have one language, and is this what they intend to do?” God confused their language, making them speak different languages, and scattered them across the earth. Each people, each nation, would from now on be differentiated from the others by their language.
The Torah concludes by listing the descendants of Shem, ending with Terah, the father of Abram, who was married to Sarai but had no children. Terah and his family had left Ur Kasdim, a city in Babylonia (200 km from Baghdad), and had reached Haran, in southern Turkey, on their way to the land of Canaan (Israel).
