Noach

📜 The Story

Many years after Adam and Eve, the world was full of people who did bad things. They were cruel to one another, and God was sorry He had made them. But one man was different. His name was Noah. The Torah says Noah was a good and honest man, and he walked with God.

God told Noah that a great flood was coming to cover the whole earth. He told Noah to build an ark, a huge wooden boat. It had to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high, with a roof, a door, and three floors inside. (A cubit is about the length of a grown-up's arm, from elbow to fingertips.)

Noah went into the ark with his wife, his three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, and their wives. That was eight people in all. He also took seven pairs of every kosher animal and one pair of every other animal, so life could start again after the flood. Then the rain came. It rained for forty days and forty nights, until the water covered even the highest mountains.

After many months, the water started to go down, and the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. Noah sent out a raven, and then a dove, to see if the land was dry. The first time, the dove found no place to land and came back. The second time, it came back with a fresh olive leaf in its beak. Now Noah knew the water was going down. At last God told Noah to leave the ark with his family and all the animals.

Noah built an altar and thanked God. God made a promise, called a covenant, that He would never again destroy the whole world with a flood. The sign of that promise is the rainbow. God also gave Noah seven basic rules for all people, called the Seven Noahide Laws. Later, people who all spoke one language tried to build a tower in Babel that would reach the sky. God mixed up their languages so they could not understand each other, and they spread out across the earth. The parsha ends with the birth of Abram, who would later be called Abraham.