Genesis 8
8
The water goes down
1God did not forget about Noah and the animals with him in the boat. So God made a wind blow, and the water started going down. 2God stopped up the places where the water had been gushing out from under the earth. He also closed up the sky, and the rain stopped. 3For one hundred and fifty days the water slowly went down. 4Then on the seventeenth day of the seventh month of the year, the boat came to rest somewhere in the Ararat mountains. 5The water kept going down, and the mountain tops could be seen on the first day of the tenth month.
6-7Forty days later Noah opened a window to send out a raven, but it kept flying around until the water had dried up. 8Noah wanted to find out if the water had gone down, and he sent out a dove. 9Deep water was still everywhere, and the dove could not find a place to land. So it flew back to the boat. Noah held out his hand and helped it back in.
10Seven days later Noah sent the dove out again. 11It returned in the evening, holding in its beak a green leaf from an olive tree. Noah knew that the water was finally going down. 12He waited seven more days before sending the dove out again, and this time it did not return.
13Noah was now six hundred and one years old. And by the first day of that year, almost all the water had gone away. Noah made an opening in the roof of the boat#8.13 made…boat: One possible meaning for the difficult Hebrew text. and saw that the ground was getting dry. 14By the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the earth was completely dry.
15God said to Noah, 16“You, your wife, your sons, and your daughters-in-law may now leave the boat. 17Let out the birds, animals, and reptiles, so they can mate and live all over the earth.” 18After Noah and his family had gone out of the boat, 19the living creatures left in groups of their own kind.
The LORD's promise for the earth
20Noah built an altar where he could offer sacrifices to the LORD. Then he offered on the altar one of each kind of animal and bird that could be used for a sacrifice.#8.20 animal…sacrifice: See the note at 7.2. 21The smell of the burning offering pleased God, and he said:
Never again will I punish the earth for the sinful things its people do. All of them have evil thoughts from the time they are young, but I will never destroy everything that breathes, as I did this time.
22As long as the earth remains,
there will be planting
and harvest,
cold and heat;
winter and summer,
day and night.
© British and Foreign Bible Society 2012
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.