Genesis 8

8:1 But God remembered¹ Noah and all the wild animals and domestic animals that were with him in the ark. God caused a wind to blow over² the earth and the waters receded. 8:2 The fountains of the deep and the floodgates of heaven were closed,³ and the rain stopped falling from the sky. 8:3 The waters kept receding steadily⁴ from the earth, so that they⁵ had gone down⁶ by the end of the 150 days. 8:4 On the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the ark came to rest on one of the mountains of Ararat.⁷ 8:5 The waters kept on receding⁸ until the tenth month. On the first day of the tenth month, the tops of the mountains became visible.⁹

8:6 At the end of forty days,¹⁰ Noah opened the window he had made in the ark¹¹ 8:7 and sent out a raven; it kept flying¹² back and forth until the waters had dried up on the earth.

8:8 Then Noah¹³ sent out a dove¹⁴ to see if the waters had receded¹⁵ from the surface of the ground. 8:9 The dove could not find a resting place for its feet because water still covered¹⁶ the surface of the entire earth, and so it returned to Noah¹⁷ in the ark. He stretched out his hand, took the dove,¹⁸ and brought it back into the ark.¹⁹ 8:10 He waited seven more days and then sent out the dove again from the ark. 8:11 When²⁰ the dove returned to him in the evening, there was²¹ a freshly plucked olive leaf in its beak! Noah knew that the waters had receded from the earth. 8:12 He waited another seven days and sent the dove out again,²² but it did not return to him this time.²³

8:13 In Noah’s six hundred and first year,²⁴ in the first day of the first month, the waters had dried up from the earth, and Noah removed the covering from the ark and saw that²⁵ the surface of the ground was dry. 8:14 And by the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth²⁶ was dry.

8:15 Then God spoke to Noah and said, 8:16 “Come out of the ark, you, your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives with you. 8:17 Bring out with you all the living creatures that are with you. Bring out²⁷ every living thing, including the birds, animals, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. Let them increase²⁸ and be fruitful and multiply on the earth!”²⁹

8:18 Noah went out along with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives. 8:19 Every living creature, every creeping thing, every bird, and everything that moves on the earth went out of the ark in their groups.

8:20 Noah built an altar to the Lord. He then took some of every kind of clean animal and clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.³⁰ 8:21 And the Lord smelled the soothing aroma³¹ and said³² to himself,³³ “I will never again curse³⁴ the ground because of humankind, even though³⁵ the inclination of their minds³⁶ is evil from childhood on.³⁷ I will never again destroy everything that lives, as I have just done.

8:22 “While the earth continues to exist,³⁸

planting time³⁹ and harvest,

cold and heat,

summer and winter,

and day and night will not cease.”

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