The Rainbow · The Tower of Babel

In context

After the flood God blesses Noah and his sons and makes a covenant, a solemn agreement with promises, with them and with “every living creature”: never again will a flood destroy the earth. The rainbow in the cloud is its sign (Genesis 9:8–17). The chapter also tells, briefly, how Noah got drunk and lay uncovered in his tent: his son Ham saw him and told his brothers, Shem and Japheth covered him, and Noah cursed Ham’s son Canaan (Genesis 9:20–27).

Genesis 10 lists the families that came from Noah’s three sons, each “after his language” (Genesis 10:5). Some names are familiar: Mizraim is the Hebrew name for Egypt, and Nimrod’s kingdom began at Babel, and he built Nineveh, the great city of the book of Jonah (Genesis 10:10–11; Jonah 1:2). Chapter 11 tells how the spreading came about. On the plain of Shinar, in what is now Iraq, people built a city and a tower of baked brick, with tar for mortar, until the Lord confused their language (Genesis 11:1–9). In Hebrew, Babel is the same name as Babylon.

The reading ends with Shem’s family line down to Terah and his sons Abram, Nahor and Haran. In English, Haran is also the name of the town where Terah’s family settled on their way from Ur to Canaan (Genesis 11:27–32).