“May Damu, the great enchanter, make his thoughts happy, May the lady who giveth life to the dead, the goddess Gula, heal him by the pressure of her pure hand, And thou, O gracious Merodach, who lovest the revivification of the dead, With thy pure incantation of life, free him from his sin, and May the man, the son of his god, be pure, clean, and bright.” In this passage the phrase in question is (in Akkadian) _gišgallu dumu dingirana_, and (in Assyrian) _amēlu mâr îli-šu_. It is a frequent expression in documents of this class, and always occurs in a similar connection. In some cases, instead of “the man, the son of his god,” the variation “the king, the son of his god” occurs, and is apparently to be paraphrased in the same way, and understood as “the pious king.” May it not be, then, that “the sons of God,” who saw that the daughters of men were fair (lit. good), and took of them as many wives as they wanted, were those who were regarded as the pious men of the time? For who among the angels would at any time have thought of allying himself with an earthly and mortal spouse, and begetting children—offspring who should turn out to be “mighty men which were of old, men of renown,” as verse 4 has it? In this case, the “daughters of men” would be children of common people, not possessing any special piety or other virtue to recommend them, the only thing being that their daughters were fair, and good enough, in the opinion of those “sons of God,” to have as their wives. It is apparently given as the result of these unions between the pious men and the daughters of the people that wickedness became rife in the earth, and man’s imagination continually evil; and this was so to such an extent that the Almighty repented of having created man, and decided to destroy the wicked generation—both man, and beast, and creeping thing, and fowl of the air—dwelling upon the earth—all except Noah, who found favour in the eyes of Yahwah. Having decided to destroy the life of the world by means of a flood, God communicated His intention and the reason thereof to the patriarch, and instructed him to build an ark in which he was to save both himself and his family from the impending destruction. The vessel is to be built of gopher-wood, to have rooms in it, and to be pitched within and without with pitch. The dimensions also are specified. Its length was to be three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. He was to make the ark “with light” (צהר or רהצ), that is, with windows, and their length or height, apparently, was to be a cubit. The vessel was to have a door, and to be built with three stories, lower, second, and third. In accordance with God’s covenant with the patriarch, he, his sons, and his sons’ wives were to be saved, along with every living thing, male and female of each kind. For all this great multitude a sufficiency of food was directed to be provided.