Genesis 8
8
The End of the Flood
1God had not forgotten Noah and all the animals with him in the boat; he caused a wind to blow, and the water started going down. 2The outlets of the water beneath the earth and the floodgates of the sky were closed. The rain stopped, 3and the water gradually went down for 150 days. 4On the seventeenth day of the seventh month the boat came to rest on a mountain in the Ararat range. 5The water kept going down, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains appeared.
6After forty days Noah opened a window 7and sent out a raven. It did not come back, but kept flying around until the water was completely gone. 8Meanwhile, Noah sent out a dove to see if the water had gone down, 9but since the water still covered all the land, the dove did not find a place to alight. It flew back to the boat, and Noah reached out and took it in. 10He waited another seven days and sent out the dove again. 11It returned to him in the evening with a fresh olive leaf in its beak. So Noah knew that the water had gone down. 12Then he waited another seven days and sent out the dove once more; this time it did not come back.
13When Noah was 601 years old, on the first day of the first month, the water was gone. Noah removed the covering of the boat, looked round, and saw that the ground was getting dry. 14By the 27th day of the second month the earth was completely dry.
15God said to Noah, 16“Go out of the boat with your wife, your sons, and their wives. 17Take all the birds and animals out with you, so that they may reproduce and spread over all the earth.” 18So Noah went out of the boat with his wife, his sons, and their wives. 19All the animals and birds went out of the boat in groups of their own kind.
Noah Offers a Sacrifice
20Noah built an altar to the LORD; he took one of each kind of ritually clean animal and bird, and burnt them whole as a sacrifice on the altar. 21The odour of the sacrifice pleased the LORD, and he said to himself, “Never again will I put the earth under a curse because of what people do; I know that from the time they are young their thoughts are evil. Never again will I destroy all living beings, as I have done this time. 22As long as the world exists, there will be a time for planting and a time for harvest. There will always be cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night.”
Good News Bible. Scripture taken from the Good News Bible (r) (Today's English Version Second Edition, UK/British Edition). Copyright © 1992 British & Foreign Bible Society. Used by permission.
Genesis 8
8
Chapter 8
The deep water goes away
1Then God thought of Noah, and all the wild animals and the farm animals that were with him in the ship. He caused a wind to blow over the earth. As a result, the water began to go down. 2Streams of water stopped coming up from below the earth. Rain stopped coming down from the sky. 3The deep water continued to go down for 150 days. 4On the 17th day of the seventh month, the ship stopped on the ground. It was sitting on the top of Ararat mountains. 5The water continued to go down until the tenth month. On the first day of the tenth month, the tops of the mountains appeared above the water.
6After 40 more days, Noah opened a window in the ship. 7He sent a raven to fly away. The raven flew away from the ship and then it returned. It continued to do this until the earth was dry.
8Then Noah sent out a dove. He wanted to see if the water had gone away from the top of the ground. 9But the dove could not find anywhere to stand. Water still covered all the ground. So it returned to Noah in the ship. Noah put out his hand and took the dove back into the ship. 10He waited for seven days. Then he sent the dove out of the ship again. 11The dove returned to Noah in the evening. It carried a fresh leaf from an olive tree in its mouth. Then Noah knew that the water had gone down. 12He waited for seven more days. Then he sent the dove out again. This time, it did not return to Noah. #8:12 A raven is a big black bird. A dove is a white or grey bird. Olives are small round fruits that grow on an olive tree.
13Noah was now 601 years old. On the first day of the first month, the water that had covered the earth was now gone. The ground had become dry. Noah made a hole in the roof of the ship and he looked around. He saw that the top of the ground was dry. 14By the 27th day of the second month, the earth had become completely dry.
15God said to Noah, 16‘Come out of the ship. Bring your wife, your sons and their wives with you. 17Bring every different kind of living animal out of the ship. Bring out the birds, the animals, and the living things that move across the ground. Now they may give birth to young ones again. They can grow in number all over the earth.’
18Noah went out of the ship, together with his wife, his sons and their wives. 19All the living animals also went out of the ship. The birds and the living things that move across the ground all went out. Every different kind of animal came out of the ship, each of them in its own group.
God makes a promise to Noah
20Then Noah built an altar to make sacrifices to the Lord. He took one from each kind of clean animal and clean bird. He offered them to the Lord as sacrifices which he burned on the altar. #8:20 When Noah left the ship, he worshipped God. He built an altar to do this. He offered a sacrifice to God on the altar. God had kept them safe and Noah wanted to thank God. He did this before he did anything else.
21The Lord smelled the sacrifice and it made him happy. The Lord said to himself, ‘I will never curse the ground again because of the bad things that people do. From the time that they are children, they want to do bad things. But I will never again destroy everything that breathes, as I have done this time.
22As long as the earth continues to be here,
the time for people to plant seeds will come each year.
The time for harvest will come each year.
Times of cold and heat will always come.
Summer and winter will always come.
Day and night will never stop.’ #8:22 As long as the earth is here, the days and the seasons will continue to happen. God has promised this. He made the universe and he continues to cause it to work properly.
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