Book of Jasher, Chapter 4 — The Earth Again Corrupt; Noah Is Born
1And all the days that Enoch lived upon the earth were three hundred and sixty-five years.
2And when Enoch had ascended into heaven, all the kings of the earth rose and took Methuselah his son and anointed him, and they made him reign over them in the place of his father.
3And Methuselah acted uprightly in the sight of God, as his father Enoch had taught him; and he likewise, all his life long, 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.
4But in the latter days of Methuselah, the sons of men turned from the Lord; they corrupted the earth, they robbed and plundered one another, and they rebelled against God, and transgressed, and corrupted their ways, and would not listen to the voice of Methuselah, but rebelled against him.
5And the Lord was exceedingly angry with them; and the Lord continued to destroy the seed in those days, so that there was neither sowing nor reaping in the earth.
6For when they sowed the ground so that they might obtain food for their support, behold, thorns and thistles came up which they had not sown.
7And still the sons of men did not turn from their evil ways, and their hands were still stretched out to do evil in the sight of God; and they provoked the Lord with their evil ways, and the Lord was very angry, and regretted that he had made man.
8And he resolved to destroy and annihilate them, and he did so.
9In those days, when Lamech the son of Methuselah was one hundred and sixty years old, Seth the son of Adam died.
10And all the days that Seth lived were nine hundred and twelve years, and he died.
11And 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.
12And 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.
13And the wife of Lamech conceived and bore him a son at that time, at the turn of the year.
14And Methuselah called his name Noah, saying, The earth was at rest in his days and free from corruption; and Lamech his father called his name Menachem, saying, This one shall comfort us in our works and our miserable toil in the earth, which God has cursed.
15And the child grew up and was weaned, and he walked in the ways of his father Methuselah, perfect and upright with God.
16And all the sons of men departed from the ways of the Lord in those days, as they multiplied on the face of the earth with sons and daughters; and they taught one another their evil practices, and they continued sinning against the Lord.
17And every man made himself a god, and they robbed and plundered every man his neighbor and his relative alike, and they corrupted the earth, and the earth was filled with violence.
18And their judges and rulers went to the daughters of men and took 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 birds of the air, and taught the mixing of animals of one species with another, in order to provoke the Lord by it; and God saw the whole earth, and it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth — all men and all animals.
19And the Lord said, I will blot out man, whom I created, from the face of the earth — from man to the birds of the air, together with the cattle and the beasts of the field — for I regret that I made them.
20And all the men who walked in the ways of the Lord died in those days, before the Lord brought upon man the evil he had declared; for this was from the Lord, so that they would not see the evil the Lord had spoken of concerning the sons of men.
21And Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, and the Lord chose him and his children to raise up seed from them upon the face of the whole earth.