The Book of Jasher

Referred to in Joshua and Second Samuel

Faithfully Translated

FROM THE ORIGINAL HEBREW INTO ENGLISH

Chapter 4

The People of the Earth Again Become Corrupt. Noah
is Born

1 And all the days that Enoch lived upon earth, were
three hundred and sixty-five years.

2 And when Enoch had ascended into heaven, all the
kings of the earth rose and took Methuselah his son and anointed him, and they caused
him to reign over them in the place of his father.

3 And Methuselah acted uprightly in the sight of God,
as his father Enoch had taught him, and he likewise during the whole of his life
taught the sons of men wisdom, knowledge and the fear of God, and he did not turn
from the good way either to the right or to the left.

4 But in the latter days of Methuselah, the sons of
men turned from the Lord, they corrupted the earth, they robbed and plundered each
other, and they rebelled against God and they transgressed, and they corrupted their
ways, and would not hearken to the voice of Methuselah, but rebelled against him.

5 And the Lord was exceedingly wroth against them,
and the Lord continued to destroy the seed in those days, so that there was neither
sowing nor reaping in the earth.

6 For when they sowed the ground in order that they
might obtain food for their support, behold, thorns and thistles were produced which
they did not sow.

7 And still the sons of men did not turn from their
evil ways, and their hands were still extended to do evil in the sight of God, and
they provoked the Lord with their evil ways, and the Lord was very wroth, and repented
that he had made man.

8 And he thought to destroy and annihilate them and
he did so.

9 In those days when Lamech the son of Methuselah
was one hundred and sixty years old, Seth the son of Adam died.

10 And all the days that Seth lived, were nine hundred
and twelve years, and he died.

11 And Lamech was one hundred and eighty years old
when he took Ashmua, the daughter of Elishaa the son of Enoch his uncle, and she
conceived.

12 And at that time the sons of men sowed the ground,
and a little food was produced, yet the sons of men did not turn from their evil
ways, and they trespassed and rebelled against God.

13 And the wife of Lamech conceived and bare him a
son at that time, at the revolution of the year.

14 And Methuselah called his name Noah, saying, The
earth was in his days at rest and free from corruption, and Lamech his father called
his name Menachem, saying, This one shall comfort us in our works and miserable
toil in the earth, which God had cursed.

15 And the child grew up and was weaned, and he went
in the ways of his father Methuselah, perfect and upright with God.

16 And all the sons of men departed from the ways
of the Lord in those days as they multiplied upon the face of the earth with sons
and daughters, and they taught one another their evil practices and they continued
sinning against the Lord.

17 And every man made unto himself a god, and they
robbed and plundered every man his neighbor as well as his relative, and they corrupted
the earth, and the earth was filled with violence.

18 And their judges and rulers went to the daughters
of men and took their wives by force from their husbands according to their choice,
and the sons of men in those days took from the cattle of the earth, the beasts
of the field and the fowls of the air, and taught the mixture of animals of one
species with the other, in order therewith to provoke the Lord; and God saw the
whole earth and it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon earth,
all men and all animals.

19 And the Lord said, I will blot out man that I created
from the face of the earth, yea from man to the birds of the air, together with
cattle and beasts that are in the field for I repent that I made them.

20 And all men who walked in the ways of the Lord,
died in those days, before the Lord brought the evil upon man which he had declared,
for this was from the Lord, that they should not see the evil which the Lord spoke
of concerning the sons of men.

21 And Noah found grace in the sight of the Lord,
and the Lord chose him and his children to raise up seed from them upon the face
of the whole earth.