Genesis 8
8
The Flood Ends
1But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and tame animals with him in the boat. God made a wind blow over the earth. And the water went down. 2The underground springs stopped flowing. And the clouds in the sky stopped pouring down rain. 3-4The water that covered the earth began to go down. After 150 days the water had gone down so much that the boat touched land again. It came to rest on one of the mountains of Ararat.# The ancient land of Urartu, an area in Eastern Turkey. This was on the seventeenth day of the seventh month. 5The water continued to go down. By the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains could be seen.
6Forty days later Noah opened the window he had made in the boat. 7He sent out a raven. It flew here and there until the water had dried up from the earth. 8Then Noah sent out a dove. This was to find out if the water had dried up from the ground. 9The dove could not find a place to land because water still covered the earth. So it came back to the boat. Noah reached out his hand and took the bird. And he brought it back into the boat.
10After seven days Noah again sent out the dove from the boat. 11And that evening it came back to him with a fresh olive leaf in its mouth. Then Noah knew that the ground was almost dry. 12Seven days later he sent the dove out again. But this time it did not come back.
13Noah was now 601 years old. It was the first day of the first month of that year. The water was dried up from the land. Noah removed the covering of the boat and saw that the land was dry. 14By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the land was completely dry.
15Then God said to Noah, 16“You and your wife, your sons and their wives should go out of the boat. 17Bring every animal out of the boat with you—the birds, animals and everything that crawls on the earth. Let them have many young ones and let them grow in number.”
18So Noah went out with his sons, his wife and his sons’ wives. 19Every animal, everything that crawls on the earth and every bird went out of the boat. They left by families.
20Then Noah built an altar to the Lord. Noah took some of all the clean birds and animals. And he burned them on the altar as offerings to God. 21The Lord was pleased with these sacrifices. He said to himself, “I will never again curse the ground because of human beings. Their thoughts are evil even when they are young. But I will never again destroy every living thing on the earth as I did this time.
22“As long as the earth continues,
there will be planting and harvest.
Cold and hot,
summer and winter,
day and night
will not stop.”
Copyright © 2015 by Tommy Nelson™, a Division of Thomas Nelson, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Genesis 8
8
The flood water went down
1And then God thought about Noah and the animals with him in that big boat. And he made a strong wind blow on the flood water to help it to go down. 2And God stopped the water from coming up from under the ground, and he stopped the rain falling from the sky.
3The flood water went down slowly, and after 5 months it was a lot lower. 4So 5 months after the start of the flood, the big boat got stuck in the mountains called the Ararat mountains. 5The flood water kept going down for the next 2½ months, and then they saw the tops of the mountains, sticking up out of the water.
Noah let some birds go out of the boat to fly around
6Then, 40 days later, Noah opened a window in the big boat. He wanted to find out if the water went down, and if a bird could find some dry ground. 7So he let a crow go out of the window. The crow didn’t come back to the big boat. It just kept on flying around until the flood waters dried up.
8-9So Noah let a pigeon go out of the window. But the flood water still covered the ground, and the pigeon couldn’t find a place to stop and rest, so it went back to the big boat. Noah held out his hand for the bird, and he helped it back into the boat.
10Noah waited for 7 more days, and then he let the pigeon go out of the boat again. 11This time the pigeon came back just before night time. It had a fresh leaf from an olive tree in its mouth. Then Noah knew the flood water was getting lower, and the trees were growing again. 12Noah waited 7 more days, then he sent the pigeon out again. This time the pigeon didn’t come back to the big boat.
Everyone left the boat
13Noah was 601 years old at that time.
The water was still going down, and on the 1st day of the new year, Noah took off some of the roof from the big boat and looked around. He could see that the ground was getting dry. 14After another 2 months, the earth was dry. 15Then God said to Noah, 16“You can go out of the big boat now. You can all go out, you, and your wife, and your sons, and their wives too. 17And bring all the animals out of the big boat. Bring out all the animals, and the birds, and the animals that crawl around on the ground. They can all come out, so they can live on the earth and have lots of young ones, so that they will go everywhere on the earth.”
18-19So Noah, and his wife, and his sons, and their wives, they all came out of the big boat. And all the animals and all the birds came out of the big boat too. They came out in groups. Each sort of animal was in its family group.
Noah said thank you to God
20Then Noah piled up stones to make a special table with a flat top, and he got one of each sort of animal and bird that are the right sorts to give to God, and he killed them, and he put them on that special table, and he burned them there. He did that to give them to God, to say thank you to God.
21-22God smelled the meat cooking on that stone table, and he was happy. Then God said to himself, “People always just want to do bad things. They do that all their lives, from when they are little kids, right up until the time they die. But I will never again punish them the same way that I did this time. I will never again finish up everything that breathes air, and I will never again curse the earth. While the earth is still here, the seasons will stay the same. There will always be day and night, and every year there will be a hot time and a cold time, a wet season and a dry season. There will always be a right time to plant seeds for food, and a right time to get the food from those plants.”
© 2021, Wycliffe Bible Translators, Inc. All rights reserved.