Cain gets angry. God tries to calm him down. It doesn't work. Cain kills Abel.
God asks Cain if he's seen Abel around. Cain answers “I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?”
God, knowing what Cain has done, curses him with Reduced Farming Ability, and to forever be a wanderer with no home.
Cain worries that everyone will hate him and try to kill him. God assures him otherwise:
“Not so! If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.” And the Lord put a mark on Cain, lest any who found him should attack him.'
Cain wanders off with his unnamed wife. Presumably she is also Cain's sister, but we have not been told about her birth. This is the first and last time she is mentioned. Unnamed wives are a recurring thing, and it would get irritating if I pointed it out each time. I probably won't point it out again.
Adam and Eve have another son, Seth, to replace Abel. End of chapter 4.
Chapter 5 traces the lineage of Adam and Seth to Noah and his children.
Chapter 6 tells us that after humans began multiplying, the 'sons of God' saw that the women were attractive, and mated with them to create the Nephilim, a race of giants.
God sees that man is now very wicked, and regrets having made man in the first place.
“I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” Says God.
Noah was a righteous blameless man who walked with God. Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.
God tells Noah that he is determined to end all flesh because the earth is full of violence, and gives him detailed instructions to build an ark made of 'gopher wood' (an unknown type of wood) to survive a big flood.
"Everything that is on the earth shall die. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you. And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female. Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground, according to its kind, two of every sort shall come in to you to keep them alive. Also take with you every sort of food that is eaten, and store it up. It shall serve as food for you and for them.”
Noah does all this. End of chapter 6.
At the start of chapter 7, God changes his mind. He tells Noah:
“Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation. Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate, and seven pairs of the birds of the heavens also, male and female, to keep their offspring alive on the face of all the earth. For in seven days I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.”
Seven days is a bit short notice to get an extra 12 of each clean animal, and an extra 12 of each bird, but Noah gets it done. He's a trooper.
The flood came on the 17th day of the 7th month in the year that Noah was 600 years old.
I'm going to write this date as 17/7/00 so I can keep track of the dates given later, and present this summary in chronological order. The Bible tells the story achronologically.
The fountains of the deep burst forth, the windows of heaven open.
The flood continued for 40 days. All of the ground, all of the mountains, were covered by water.
'Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. They were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark.'
After those 40 days, Noah sends out a Raven to look for dry land. It finds nothing. Then Noah sends out a dove. It finds nothing.
Seven days later, Noah tries again with the dove. It brings back a freshly picked olive leaf, so Noah now knows that there is dry land somewhere, and that an olive tree has grown really quickly.
Seven days later, Noah tries again with the dove. It does not return.
17/7/00: Seven months after the start of the flood, the ark comes to rest on the mountains of Ararat, which are still submerged.
1/10/00: After ten months, the tops of mountains start to appear.
1/1/01: Noah is in his 601st year. He removes the covering of the ark and sees dry land.
27/2/01: The earth is dry. God tells Noah to get everything out of the ark, and get busy repopulating the Earth.
Noah builds an altar to God, and burns a piece of each clean animal. God smells the offering and says, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”
God then authorizes the use of animals as food, and the use of the death penalty, saying to Noah & Co.:
“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man.
Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.
And you, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.”
God makes a covenant with Noah. God says he will never again use a flood to wipe out all life. God puts a rainbow in the sky as a sign of this covenant, and says:
"When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth,”
Noah becomes a farmer, and plants a vineyard. He gets really drunk and passes out naked. Ham sees him and tells his two brothers, Shem and Japheth, who take a garment to Noah, while walking backwards so they do not see his nudity, and cover him up.
When Noah wakes and sees what has been done to him he curses Canaan, the son of Ham, so that all his descendants will forever be servants of the descendants of Shem and Japheth.
That brings us to the end of chapter 9.
Chapters 10 and 11 would work better being swapped around. Chapter 10 describes the descendants of Noah's sons: where they spread, what nations they founded, each with their own language. Chapter 11 begins the Tower of Babel story, which occurs when the 'whole earth had one language and the same words':
The people settle in the land of Shinar and decide to build a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens.
God visits the city and the tower, and says:
“Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.”
So God does just that: he confuses their language, and disperses them over the earth.
The rest of the chapter traces the lineage to Abram.
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