Michael arrives, the vision of history begins

God accepts the repentance of Adam and Eve and tells the assembled angels that the curse will end, in time, in the seed promised to the woman. But the immediate sentence stands: they cannot remain in Eden, because the tree of life now offers a fallen creature only an endless fallen life. He sends the archangel Michael down — gentler, in some ways, than the Son of the judgment, sent now to lead them out and to console.

Eve, hearing what is coming, weeps first for the garden — for the flowers she has tended, for the bower where she and Adam slept. Adam weeps for the place where God walked with him. Michael, before he takes them out, decides Adam needs the larger view. He takes him up onto the highest hill of paradise — the hill from which Satan, in the future, will offer Christ all the kingdoms of the world — and unrolls a vision.

Cain killing Abel is the first vision; Adam sees death for the first time and recoils. The cities of Cain's descendants follow, with their music and their forges and their tents, and Adam is briefly hopeful — until Michael shows him the violence and the wickedness that fill them. The flood comes. Noah and his family alone survive in the ark. The waters cover the earth and recede. The rainbow appears as the sign of the covenant. Adam, watching, asks his questions; Michael answers them; the conversation across these two books is Milton's compressed version of the Old Testament, and one of the strangest sustained pieces of writing in English. The book closes with the rainbow over the wet earth and Michael preparing to take up the story again.