Genesis 4:17

⁴I made myself great works. I built myself houses. I planted myself vineyards. ⁵I made myself gardens and parks, and I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruit. ⁶I made myself pools of water, to water the forest where trees were grown. ⁷I bought male servants and female servants, and had servants born in my house. I also had great possessions of herds and flocks, above all who were before me in Jerusalem. ⁸I also gathered silver and gold for myself, and the treasure of kings and of the provinces. I got myself male and female singers, and the delights of the sons of men: musical instruments of all sorts. ⁹So I was great, and increased more than all who were before me in Jerusalem. My wisdom also remained with me. ¹⁰Whatever my eyes desired, I didn’t keep from them. I didn’t withhold my heart from any joy, for my heart rejoiced because of all my labor, and this was my portion from all my labor. ¹¹Then I looked at all the works that my hands had worked, and at the labor that I had labored to do; and behold, all was vanity and a chasing after wind, and there was no profit under the sun.

¹¹Their inward thought is that their houses will endure forever, and their dwelling places to all generations. They name their lands after themselves.

²⁸Likewise, even as it was in the days of Lot: they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; ²⁹but in the day that Lot went out from Sodom, it rained fire and sulfur from the sky and destroyed them all.

³⁰The king spoke and said, “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built for the royal dwelling place by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?”

²²After Methuselah’s birth, Enoch walked with God for three hundred years, and became the father of more sons and daughters.

¹⁸Jared lived one hundred sixty-two years, then became the father of Enoch.

¹⁸Now Absalom in his lifetime had taken and reared up for himself the pillar which is in the king’s valley, for he said, “I have no son to keep my name in memory.” He called the pillar after his own name. It is called Absalom’s monument, to this day.

⁴They said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top reaches to the sky, and let’s make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad on the surface of the whole earth.”