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( Noah)
Noah (or Noe, Noach; Hebrew ????? or ????, Standard&_160;Nóa? Tiberian&_160;Noª?&_160;; Nu?&_160;;Arabic ???&_160;; "Rest"[1] ) was, according to the Bible, the tenth and last of the antediluvian Patriarchs. His story is contained in the book of Genesis, chapters 5-9. Noah saves his family and all animals in groups of two or seven from God's Deluge. He receives a covenant from God, and his sons repopulate the earth. While the Deluge and Noah's Ark are the best-known elements of the account of Noah, he is also mentioned as the "first husbandman" and the inventor of wine, as well as in an episode of his drunkenness and the subsequent Curse of Ham. The account of Noah was the subject of much elaboration in the later Abrahamic traditions, and was immensely influential in Western culture. Jewish thinkers have debated the extent of Noah's righteousness, Christians have likened the Christian Church to Noah's ark, and in Islam he is revered as a prophet of God. According to biblical accounts, when Noah was six hundred years old, God, seeing man's wickedness which had become abundant in the earth, was saddened, and decided to send a great deluge to destroy disobedient mankind. But he saw that Noah was a righteous man, and instructed him to build an ark and gather himself and his family with every type of animal, male and female.[2][3] And so the Flood came, and all life was extinguished, except for those who were with Noah, "and the waters prevailed upon the earth for one-hundred and fifty days"[4] until the Ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. There Noah built an altar to God (the first altar mentioned in the Bible) and made an offering. "And when the Lord smelled the pleasing odour, the Lord said in his heart, 'I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the inclination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease'."[5] 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 was forbidden to eat "flesh with its life, that is, its blood." And God forbade murder, and gave a commandment "Be fruitful and multiply, bring forth abundantly 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 which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth."[6]
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