Genesis
Chapter 8
1 God remembered Noah, all living creatures, and all the animals with him in the ark. God sent a wind over the earth, and the waters went down.
2 The deep springs and the sky’s windows were closed, and the rain from the sky was held back.
3 The water went back from the earth slowly, and after 150 days, the water level went down.
4 The ark stopped on the mountains of Ararat on the seventeenth day of the seventh month.
5 The water went down non-stop until the tenth month; on the first day of that month, mountain peaks appeared.
6 After forty days, Noah opened the window of the ark he had built.
7 He sent out a raven, which kept flying until the water dried up from the earth.
8 He also sent out a dove to see if the water had gone down from the ground.
9 The dove couldn’t find a place to land because the whole earth was covered with water, so she went back to the ark. Then he reached out his hand, took her, and brought her inside the ark.
10 He waited another seven days; then he sent the dove out of the boat again.
11 The dove returned to Noah in the evening with a fresh olive leaf in its mouth, so Noah understood that the floodwaters had gone down.
12 He waited another seven days and sent out the dove, but it did not come back to him again.
13 In the six hundred and first year, on the first day of the first month, the water had dried from the earth. Noah took off the ark’s cover to look, and saw that the ground was dry.
14 In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day, the earth was dry.
15 God spoke to Noah, saying,
16 Leave the ark, you, your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives with you.
17 Take with you every living creature with you, from every kind of animal, birds, livestock, and every ground creature; so they can have many offspring, and increase in number on the earth.
18 Noah, his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives all went out together.
19 Every animal, every crawling creature, and every bird, and everything that crawls on the ground, went out of the ark, each according to its kind.
20 Noah built an altar to God; he took some of every clean animal and every clean bird and gave burnt offerings on the altar.
21 God liked the pleasant smell; and God promised himself, I will not put a curse on the land anymore because of people; people think of evil things from when they are young; I will not destroy all living things again as I have done.
22 As long as the earth exists, there will be planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night will never stop.