4. “O Lord and Master,” I said, “you, and you alone, spoke the word at the beginning of creation and formed the world. At your command the dust
5. produced the lifeless body of Adam. Then with your hands you shaped it, you breathed into it the breath of life, and he began to live.
6. You brought him into the Garden of Eden, which you yourself had planted before the earth was made.
7. You gave him just one commandment, but he disobeyed it, and you immediately made him and his descendants subject to death.“From Adam were born more nations, tribes, clans, and families than can be counted.
8. All the nations did whatever they wished; they sinned against you and rejected your commands. But you did nothing to stop them.
9. Then again, after a while, you brought on the flood and destroyed the world's population.
10. They all suffered the same fate: as death had come to Adam, so now death came to a whole generation in the flood.
11. But you spared one man, Noah, with his family and all his righteous descendants.
12. “The number of people living on earth began to increase, and the number of families, tribes, and nations grew. They soon fell into sin and were worse than the generations before them.
13. But then you chose Abraham.
14. You loved him, and to him alone in the dead of night you secretly disclosed how the world would end.
15. You made an everlasting covenant with him and promised him that you would never abandon his descendants. You gave him Isaac, and to Isaac you gave Jacob and Esau.
16. You chose Jacob, and his descendants became a great nation, but you rejected Esau.
17. “You rescued the descendants of Jacob from Egypt and led them to Mount Sinai.
18. There you bent down the skies, shook the earth, moved the world, made the water beneath the earth tremble, and brought disorder to the universe.
19. The dazzling light of your presence passed through the four gates of fire, earthquake, wind, and frost, in order to give the Law and its commandments to Jacob's descendants, the people of Israel.
20. Yet you did not remove their evil impulse, but let your Law guide their lives.