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"O sovereign Lord, did you not speak at the beginning when you planted the earth—and that without help—and commanded the dust
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and it gave you Adam, a lifeless body? Yet he was the creation of your hands, and you breathed into him the breath of life, and he was made alive in your presence.
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And you led him into the garden that your right hand had planted before the earth appeared.
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And you laid upon him one commandment of yours; but he transgressed it, and immediately you appointed death for him and for his descendants. From him there sprang nations and tribes, peoples and clans without number.
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And every nation walked after its own will; they did ungodly things in your sight and rejected your commands, and you did not hinder them.
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But again, in its time you brought the flood upon the inhabitants of the world and destroyed them.
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And the same fate befell all of them: just as death came upon Adam, so the flood upon them.
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But you left one of them, Noah with his household, and all the righteous who have descended from him.
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"When those who lived on earth began to multiply, they produced children and peoples and many nations, and again they began to be more ungodly than were their ancestors.
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And when they were committing iniquity in your sight, you chose for yourself one of them, whose name was Abraham;
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you loved him, and to him alone you revealed the end of the times, secretly by night.