10. Their fate was all the same: as death came upon Adam so the flood came upon them.
11. But you left one of them, Noah, with his household, and all the righteous descended from him.
12. “When those who lived on earth began to multiply (and multiply they did—children, peoples, and many nations), they began again to act wickedly, even more so than the previous ones.
13. When they committed iniquity before you, you chose one from among them whose name was Abraham.
14. You loved him and showed him alone the end of times, secretly by night.
15. You made an eternal covenant with him, and you told him that you would never abandon his family line. You gave him Isaac, and you gave Jacob and Esau to Isaac.
16. You set Jacob apart for yourself, but you set Esau aside, and Jacob became a great multitude.
17. When you brought his descendants out of Egypt, you led them to Mount Sinai.
18. You bent down the heavens; you shook the earth; you moved the world; you made the abyss tremble; you made the whole cosmos shudder.
19. Your glory passed through the four gates of fire, earthquake, wind, and ice so that you would give the Law to Jacob’s descendants, the rules to be observed to Israel’s offspring.
20. “But you didn’t take away from them the inclination to do evil so that your Law might bear fruit in them.
21. The first Adam, burdened with this inclination, disobeyed you and was overcome, but so were all those descended from him.