So the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground, breathed life into his lungs, and the man became a living being.

The LORD God planted a garden in Eden, toward the east, where he placed the man whom he had formed.

The LORD God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden in order to have him work it and guard it.

The LORD God commanded the man: "You may freely eat from every tree of the garden,

Later, the LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make the woman to be an authority corresponding to him."

After the LORD God formed from the ground every wild animal and every bird that flies, he brought each of them to the man to see what he would call it. Whatever the man called each living creature became its name.

The man gave names to all the livestock, to the birds that fly, and to each of earth's animals, but there was not found a strength corresponding to him,

so the LORD God caused a deep sleep to overshadow the man.

When the man was asleep, he removed one of the man's ribs and closed up the flesh where it had been. Then the LORD God formed the rib that he had taken from the man into a woman and brought her to the man.

So the man exclaimed, "At last! This is bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh. This one will be called "Woman,' because she was taken from Man."

(Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother and cling to his wife, and they will become one flesh.)

Even though both the man and his wife were naked, they were not ashamed about it.

Whenthey heard the voice of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden during the breeze of the day, the man and his wife concealed themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.

So the LORD God called out to the man, asking him, "Where are you?"

"I heard your voice in the garden," the man answered, "and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid from you."

The man answered, "The woman whom you provided for me gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate some of it."

He told the man, "Because you have listened to what your wife said, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, "You must not eat from it,' cursed is the ground because of you. You'll eat from it through pain-filled labor for the rest of your life.

Later, the LORD God said, "Look! The man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, so he won't reach out, also take from the tree of life, eat, and then live forever "

therefore the LORD God expelled the man from the garden of Eden so he would work the ground from which he had been taken.

After he had expelled the man, the LORD God placed winged angels at the eastern end of the garden of Eden, along with a fiery, turning sword, to prevent access to the tree of life.

Lamech told his wives, "Adah and Zillah, listen to what I have to say: You wives of Lamech, hear what I'm announcing! I've killed a man for wounding me, a young man for bruising me.

These are the family records of Noah: Noah was a righteous man. Blameless during his times, Noah communed with God.

These three were Noah's sons, and from these men the whole earth was repopulated.

Noah, a man of the soil, was the first to plant and farm a vineyard.

So Pharaoh assigned men to Abram, and they escorted him, his wife, and all that he had out of the country.

Now the men of Sodom were particularly evil and sinful in their defiance of the LORD.

When Abram heard that his nephew had been taken prisoner, he gathered together 318 of his trained men, who had been born in his household, and they went out in pursuit as far as Dan.

I will take nothing except what my warriors have eaten. But as for what belongs to the men who were allied with me, including Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre, let them take their share."

He'll be a wild donkey of a man. He'll be against everyone, and everyone will be against him. He will live in conflict with all of his relatives."

The servant born in your house or the one purchased with money is to be circumcised. My covenant is to remain in your flesh as an eternal covenant.

Abraham fell to the ground, laughed, and told himself, "Can a child be born to a 100-year-old man? Can a 90-year-old Sarah give birth?"

Abraham took his son Ishmael and all the servants born in his house or purchased with his money every male among the men of his household and circumcised them that very day, just as God had spoken to him.

Every man born in his household as well as those who had been purchased with money from a foreigner was circumcised with him.

he glanced up and saw three men standing there, not far from him. As soon as he noticed them, Abraham ran from the tent entrance to greet them and bowed low to the ground.

Next, Abraham ran to the herd, found a choice and tender calf, and gave it to the young men, who went off in a hurry to prepare it.

The men asked him, "Where is your wife Sarah?" "There, in the tent," he replied.

After this, the men set out from there and looked out over Sodom. Abraham went with them to send them off.

Then two of the men turned away from there and walked toward Sodom, while Abraham remained standing in the presence of the LORD.

Before they could lie down, all the men of Sodom and its outskirts, both young and old, surrounded the house.

They called out to Lot and asked, "Where are the men who came to visit you tonight? Bring them out to us so we can have sex with them!"

Look here, I have two daughters who are virgins. Let me bring them out to you, and you may do to them whatever you wish, only don't do anything to these men, because they're here under my protection."

But they replied, "Get out of the way! This man came here as a foreigner, and now he's acting like a judge! So we're going to deal more harshly with you than with them." Then they pushed hard against the man (that is, against Lot), intending to break down the door.

and blinded the men who were at the entrance of the house, from the least important to the greatest, so they were unable to find the doorway.

But Lot kept lingering in the city, so the men grabbed his hand and the hands of his wife and two daughters (because of the LORD's compassion for him!), brought them out of the city, and left them outside.

One day the firstborn told the younger one, "Our father is old, and there's no man in the land to have sex with us, as everybody else throughout all the earth does.

But God came to Abimelech in a dream during the night and spoke to him, "Pay attention! You're about to die, because the woman you have taken is a man's wife!"

Now then, return the man's wife. As a matter of fact, he's a prophet and can intercede for you so you'll live. But if you don't return her, be aware that you and all who are yours will certainly die."

So Abimelech got up early the next morning, summoned all his servants, and told them all these things. The men became terrified.

Abraham agreed with Ephron, so he weighed out to Ephron the money to which he had agreed publicly while the Hittites were listening: 400 shekels of silver at the current merchant rate.

The woman was very beautiful, young, and had not had sexual relations with a man. Going down to the spring, she filled her jug and turned for home.

The man stared at her in silence, waiting to see whether or not the LORD had made his journey successful.

When the camels had finished drinking, the man took out a gold nose ring weighing a half shekel and two bracelets for her wrists, weighing 10 shekels and presented them to her.

At this, the man bowed down and worshipped the LORD.

Now Rebekah had a brother named Laban, who ran out to the man and met him at the spring.

And so it was, as soon as he saw the nose ring and bracelets on his sister's wrists, and as soon as he heard what his sister Rebekah was saying about what the man had spoken to her, he went out to the man who was still standing by the camels at the spring!

So the servant went to the house and unbridled the camels. They provided straw and feed for the camels and water for washing his feet and those of the men with him.

He and the men with him ate and drank, and then they spent the night. When they got up the next morning, the servant requested, "Send me off to my master."

So they called Rebekah and asked her, "Do you want to go with this man?" "I will go," she replied.

So they sent off their sister Rebekah, along with her personal assistant, Abraham's servant, and his men.

and asked the servant, "Who is that man coming in the field to meet us?"

As the boys were growing up, Esau became skilled at hunting and was a man of the outdoors, but Jacob was the quiet type who tended to stay indoors.

Later on, the men of that place asked about his wife, so he replied, "She's my sister," because he was afraid to call her "my wife." He kept thinking, ""otherwise, the men around here will kill me on account of Rebekah, since she's very beautiful."

So he issued this order to everyone: "Whoever touches this man or his wife is to be executed."

"But look!" Jacob pointed out to his mother Rebekah, "My brother Esau is a hairy man, but I'm smooth skinned.

"It's better that I give her to you than to another man," Laban replied, "so stay with me."

So Laban gathered all the men who lived in that place and held a wedding festival.

Therefore the man Jacob prospered so much that he had large flocks, female and male servants, as well as camels and donkeys.

He's treating us like foreigners. He sold us and spent all of the money that rightfully belonged to us.

Now as to your gods, if you find someone has them in their possession, he's a dead man. Take our relatives as witnesses, search through our belongings, and take whatever belongs to you that's in my possession." But Jacob didn't know that Rachel had stolen the idols.

But Laban answered Jacob, "These women are my daughters. These children are my children. The flocks are mine. In fact, everything that you see belongs to me. But what would I do today to my daughters and the children they have borne?

Later, the messengers returned to Jacob and reported, "We went to your brother Esau. He's now coming to meet you and he has 400 men with him!"

And so Jacob was left alone, and he struggled with a man until daybreak.

When the man realized that he hadn't yet won the struggle, he injured the socket of Jacob's thigh, dislocating it as he wrestled with him,

Then the man asked him, "What's your name?" "Jacob," he responded

"Your name won't be Jacob anymore," the man replied, "but Israel, because you exerted yourself against both God and men, and you've emerged victorious."

When Jacob looked off in the distance, there was Esau coming toward him, accompanied by 400 men! So Jacob divided Leah's children, Rachel, and the children of the two servants into separate groups.

They told them, "We can't do this. We can't give our sister to a man who isn't circumcised, because that would be insulting to us.

so the young man did not delay the matter any further, since he was delighted with Jacob's daughter.

Now Shechem was the most important person in his father's household. So Hamor and his son Shechem entered the gate of their city and addressed the men of their city.

"These men are at peace with us," they announced. "Therefore, let them live in the land and trade in it. Look! The land is large enough for them. Let's take their daughters as wives for ourselves and let's give our sons to them.

"However," they added, "only on this condition will the men consent to live with us and be united as a single people with us: every male among us will have to be circumcised just as they are.

Then Jacob told Simeon and Levi, "You have certainly stirred up trouble for me! You've made me despised by the Canaanites and the Perizzites who live in this territory. Because I have only a few men with me, they're going to gather themselves together and attack me until I am totally destroyed, along with my entire household!"

When Joseph was seventeen years old, he was helping his brothers tend their flocks. He was a young man at that time, as were the children of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father's wives. But Joseph would come back and tell his father that his brothers were doing bad things. Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his brothers, since he was born to him in his old age, so he had made a richly-embroidered tunic for him.

But then he had another dream, and he proceeded to tell his brothers about that one, too. "I had another dream," he said. "The sun, moon, and eleven of the stars were bowing down before me!"

When Joseph reached Shechem, a man found him wandering around in a field. So the man asked him, "What are you looking for?"

"They've already left," the man answered. "I heard them saying that they were headed to Dothan." So Joseph followed his brothers to Dothan and found them there.

Right about then, Judah left his brothers and went to live with an Adullamite man named Hirah.

There Judah met the daughter of a Canaanite man named Shua. He married her, had sexual relations with her,

He asked the men who lived in that area, "Where's that temple prostitute who was sitting alongside the road at Enaim?" But they replied, "There's been no temple prostitute here."

So he returned to Judah and said, "I haven't found her. Also, the men who are from there said, "There's been no prostitute here.'"

While they were bringing her out, she sent this message to her father-in-law: "I am pregnant by the man to whom these things belong. Furthermore," she added, "tell me to whom this signet ring, cord, and staff belongs."

But the LORD was with Joseph. He became a very prosperous man while in the house of his Egyptian master,

and yelled for her household servants. "Look!" she cried out. "My husband brought in a Hebrew man to humiliate us. He came in here to have sex with me, but I screamed out loud!

The very next morning, he was frustrated about the dream, so he sent word to summon all the magicians and wise men of Egypt. Pharaoh told them what he had dreamed, but no one could interpret them.

There was a Hebrew young man incarcerated with us, who was also working as a servant to the captain of the bodyguard.

"We each related our dreams, and then he interpreted them for us. He provided specific meanings for each of our dreams. And what he interpreted for each of us came true! Pharaoh restored me to my responsibilities, but he executed the other man."

We're all sons of a common father. We're honest men, your majesty. We're not spies!"

If you're honest men, leave one of your brothers here in custody, then the rest of you can leave and take some grain with you to alleviate the famine that's affecting your households.

When he returned, he spoke with them, but then he took Simeon away from them and had him placed under arrest right in front of them. After this, Joseph gave orders to fill up their sacks with grain, to return each man's money to his own sack, and to supply each of them with provisions for their return journey. All of this was done for them.

Later on, one of them opened up his sack to give his donkey some fodder after they had stopped at the place where they intended to lodge for the night. There, in the mouth of his sack, was all of his money!