Noah



Noah (from the Hebrew meaning Rest), son of Lamech, was the tenth and last of the antediluvian Patriarchs and father of Ham, Shem, and Japheth. Noah is probably best known for the Genesis Flood which came in his time. His story is contained in the book of Genesis, chapters 5 thru 9.

While the Flood and Noah's Ark are the best-known elements of the story of Noah, he is also mentioned as the "first husbandman" and the inventor of wine, as well as in connection with the somewhat mysterious episode of his drunkenness and the subsequent Curse of Ham.

Noah died 350 years after the Flood, at the age of 950 according to Genesis 9:28-29.

God's covenant with Noah
After the flood, Noah built an altar to God (the first altar mentioned in the Bible) and made an offering. "And when the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma, the LORD said in his heart, '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.'" Genesis 8:21-22 (ESV)

Then God made a covenant: Noah and his descendants would henceforth be free to eat meat ("Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything"), and the animals would fear man; and in return, man would be forbidden to eat "flesh with its life, that is, its blood." And God forbade murder, and gave a commandment: "Be fruitful and multiply, teem on the earth and multiply in it." And as a sign of His covenant, He set the rainbow in the sky, "the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth." Genesis 9:1-17 (ESV)