chief of the spirits, Mastema (Satan), came and said, “Lord, Creator, let some of them remain before me, and let them listen to my voice, and do all that I shall say to them; for if some of them are not left to me, I shall not be able to execute the power of my will on the sons of men, for these are for corruption and leading astray before my judgment, for great is the wickedness of the sons of men.”
He said, “Let one-tenth of them remain before him, and let nine-tenths of them descend into the place of condemnation.”
Then God commanded one of the angels to teach Noah all their medicines, for He knew that the Watchers would not walk in uprightness, nor strive in righteousness.
The angels did according to all His words. Then they bound all the malignant evil ones in the place of condemnation and a tenth part of them we left that they might be subject in the presence of Satan on the earth. The angels explained to Noah all the medicines of their diseases, together with their seductions, how he might heal them with herbs of the earth. Noah wrote down all things in a book as they instructed him concerning every kind of medicine. Thus the evil spirits were precluded from hurting the sons of Noah.
But, the sons of Noah began to war with each other, to take captives and kill each other, and to shed the blood of men on the earth, and to eat blood, and to build strong cities, and walls, and towers, and individuals began to exalt themselves above the nation, and to establish kingdoms, and to go to war, people against people, and nation against nation, and city against city, and all began to do evil, and to acquire arms, and to teach their sons war, and they began to capture cities, and to sell male and female slaves.
In the three and thirtieth jubilee, in the first year in the second week, Peleg took to himself a wife, whose name was Lomna the daughter of Sina’ar, and she gave birth to a son for him in the fourth year of this week, and he called his name Reu, for he said, “Look the children of men have become evil because they conceived building a city and a tower in the land of Shinar for an evil purpose.” For they departed from the land of Ararat eastward to Shinar, for in his days they built the city and the tower, saying, “Let us build this now so that we may rise into heaven.”
And in these days King Nimrod reigned securely, and all the earth was under his control, and all the earth was of one tongue and words of union.
And all the princes of Nimrod and his great men took counsel together; Phut, Mitzraim, Cush and Canaan with their families, and they said to each other, “Come let us build ourselves a city and in it a strong tower, and its top reaching heaven, and we will make ourselves famed, so that we may reign upon the whole world, in order that the evil of our enemies may cease from us, that we may reign mightily over them, and that we may not become scattered over the earth on account of their wars.”
And they all went before the king, and they told the king these words, and the king agreed with them in this affair, and he did so.
And all the families assembled consisting of about six hundred thousand men, and they went to seek an extensive piece of ground to build the city and the tower, and they sought in the whole earth and they found none like one valley at the east of the land of Shinar, about two days’ walk, and they journeyed there and they lived there. And they began to make bricks and burn fires to build the city and the tower that they had imagined to complete. And the building of the tower was to them a transgression and a sin, and they began to build it, and whilst they were building against the Lord God of heaven, they imagined in their hearts to war against him and to ascend