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.
Berĕshith (Genesis) 8
8
1And Elohim remembered Noaḥ, and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the ark. And Elohim made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters subsided.
2And the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were stopped, and the rain from the heavens was withheld.
3And the waters receded steadily from the earth, and at the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters diminished.
4And in the seventh new moon, the seventeenth day of the new moon, the ark rested on the mountains of Ararat.
5And the waters decreased steadily until the tenth new moon. In the tenth new moon, on the first day of the new moon, the tops of the mountains became visible.
6And it came to be, at the end of forty days, that Noaḥ opened the window of the ark which he had made,
7and he sent out a raven, which kept going out and turning back until the waters had dried up from the earth.
8Then he sent out a dove from him, to see if the waters had receded from the face of the ground.
9But the dove found no resting place for its feet and returned into the ark to him, for the waters were on the face of all the earth. So he put out his hand and took it, and pulled it into the ark to himself.
10And he waited yet another seven days, and again he sent the dove out from the ark.
11And the dove came to him in the evening, and see, a freshly plucked olive leaf was in its mouth. And Noaḥ knew that the waters had receded from the earth.
12And he waited yet another seven days and sent out the dove, which did not return to him again.
13And it came to be in the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the new moon, that the waters were dried up from the earth. And Noaḥ removed the covering of the ark and looked, and saw the surface of the ground was dry.
14And in the second new moon, on the twenty-seventh day of the new moon, the earth was dry.
15And Elohim spoke to Noaḥ, saying,
16“Go out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons’ wives with you.
17“Bring out with you every life form of all flesh that is with you: of birds, of cattle and all creeping creatures – the creeping creatures on the earth. And let them teem on the earth, and bear and increase on the earth.”
18So Noaḥ went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him,
19every beast, every creeping creature, and every bird, whatever creeps on the earth, according to their kinds, went out of the ark.
20And Noaḥ built a slaughter-place to יהוה, and took of every clean beast and of every clean bird, and offered ascending offerings on the slaughter-place.
21And יהוה smelled a soothing fragrance, and יהוה said in His heart, “Never again shall I curse the ground because of man, although the inclination of man’s heart is evil from his youth, and never again strike all living creatures, as I have done,
22as long as the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”
Copyright© 1993 – 2015 by the Institute for Scripture Research (ISR). All rights reserved.