especially on account of thy prayers. But if I shall at any time
send tempests of rain, in an extraordinary manner, be not
affrighted at the largeness of the showers; for the water shall
no more overspread the earth. However, I require you to abstain
from shedding the blood of men, and to keep yourselves pure from
murder; and to punish those that commit any such thing. I permit
you to make use of all the other living creatures at your
pleasure, and as your appetites lead you; for I have made you
lords of them all, both of those that walk on the land, and those
that swim in the waters, and of those that fly in the regions of
the air on high, excepting their blood, for therein is the life.
But I will give you a sign that I have left off my anger by my
bow [whereby is meant the rainbow, for they determined that the
rainbow was the bow of God]. And when God had said and promised
thus, he went away.

9. Now when Noah had lived three hundred and fifty years after
the Flood, and that all that time happily, he died, having lived
the number of nine hundred and fifty years. But let no one, upon
comparing the lives of the ancients with our lives, and with the
few years which we now live, think that what we have said of them
is false; or make the shortness of our lives at present an
argument, that neither did they attain to so long a duration of
life, for those ancients were beloved of God, and [lately] made
by God himself; and because their food was then fitter for the
prolongation of life, might well live so great a number of years:
and besides, God afforded them a longer time of life on account
of their virtue, and the good use they made of it in astronomical
and geometrical discoveries, which would not have afforded the
time of foretelling [the periods of the stars] unless they had