Noach (Noah) was a righteous and upright man who “walked with God (ה׳).” While humanity sank into anarchy, corruption and violence, Noach stayed faithful to God’s ways.
God told Noach He was going to destroy the earth because evil and theft had become normal: “I am bringing a mabbul (flood) upon the earth to destroy every living creature.” But HaShem also promised Noach that He would make a covenant of protection with him and his family. He commanded him to build a teva (ark) of wood, with compartments for the animals and storerooms of food for every living thing on board. HaShem also told Noach to bring into the ark seven pairs of the pure (kosher) animals and two pairs of the impure animals, male and female.
Noach did everything exactly as God had commanded.
The rain began to fall. The springs of the deep burst open and overflowed, so the water came from every direction. Noach, his family and all the living creatures, in pairs, survived in the ark. The flood lasted forty days. It covered even the highest mountains and wiped out every form of life. For the next hundred and fifty days, the waters covered the earth.
God sent powerful winds. The waters began to recede and the land began to dry. Noach sent out a raven. It found no dry place to land and came back. Then he sent a dove, which also came back. Seven days later the dove returned with an olive leaf in its beak: a sign that the waters had gone down and that there were trees (food!) on the earth again. After another seven days the dove did not return, and Noach knew the land was dry.
Then HaShem said to Noach: “Leave the ark, with your family and every living creature that is with you. Be fruitful and multiply on the earth.”
Noach built an altar to HaShem and offered sacrifices from every pure animal and every pure bird. God was pleased with the offerings and promised never again to destroy humanity, recognizing that the inclination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.
HaShem then blessed Noach and his sons, Shem, Cham and Yafet. He permitted them to eat meat, on one condition: they may not eat flesh torn from a living animal (ever min hachai). He also explicitly forbade murder. And He set the rainbow as the sign of His eternal covenant with the earth.
Noach became a farmer. He planted a vineyard, drank wine, got drunk and lay uncovered in his tent. His son Cham saw his nakedness (or perhaps this is a euphemism for something more serious) and told his two brothers. Shem and Yafet entered the tent respectfully and covered their father.
After the flood, Noach lived 350 years. He died at the age of 950. He and his sons had a great many descendants, who spread across the whole earth.
Humanity spoke a single language and shared a single project: to build a city with a tower, perhaps a stepped pyramid or ziggurat, that would reach the sky. The goal was to make a name for themselves and avoid being scattered across the earth. (Or to defy God, or to survive another flood. Interpretations of the purpose of the Tower of Babel vary.) God confused their language, meaning He made each family speak a different language, and scattered them across the earth. From then on, each people and each nation would be set apart from the others by its language.
The parasha ends with the list of Shem’s descendants down to Terach, the father of Avram. Avram was married to Sarai and they had no children yet. Terach and his family had left Ur Kasdim, a city in Babylonia, and had reached Charan, in southern Turkey, on their way to the land of Canaan (Israel).
