Genesis 8
8
1 Then God remembered Noah, and all living things, and all the cattle, which were with him in the ark, and he brought a wind across the earth, and the waters were diminished.
2 And the fountains of the abyss and the floodgates of heaven were closed. And the rain from heaven was restrained.
3 And the waters were restored to their coming and going from the earth. And they began to diminish after one hundred and fifty days.
4 And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, upon the mountains of Armenia.
5 Yet in truth, the waters were departing and decreasing until the tenth month. For in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tips of the mountains appeared.
6 And when forty days had passed, Noah, opening the window that he had made in the ark, sent forth a raven,
7 which went forth and did not return, until the waters were dried up across the earth.
8 Likewise, he sent forth a dove after him, in order to see if the waters had now ceased upon the face of the earth.
9 But when she did not find a place where her foot might rest, she returned to him in the ark. For the waters were upon the whole earth. And he extended his hand and caught her, and he brought her into the ark.
10 And then, having waited a further seven days, he again sent forth the dove out of the ark.
11 And she came to him in the evening, carrying in her mouth an olive branch with green leaves. Noah then understood that the waters had ceased upon the earth.
12 And nevertheless, he waited another seven days. And he sent forth the dove, which no longer returned to him.
13 Therefore, in the six hundred and first year, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the waters were diminished upon the earth. And Noah, opening the cover of the ark, gazed out and saw that the surface of the earth had become dry.
14 In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was made dry.
15 Then God spoke to Noah, saying:
16 "Go out of the ark, you and your wife, your sons and the wives of your sons with you.
17 Bring out with you all the living things that are with you, all that is flesh: as with the birds, so also with the wild beasts and all the animals that move upon the earth. And enter upon the land: increase and multiply upon it."
18 And so Noah and his sons went out, and his wife and the wives of his sons with him.
19 Then also all living things, and the cattle, and the animals that move upon the earth, according to their kinds, departed from the ark.
20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord. And, taking from each of the cattle and birds that were clean, he offered holocausts upon the altar.
21 And the Lord smelled the sweet odor and said: "I will no longer curse the earth because of man. For the feelings and thoughts of the heart of man are prone to evil from his youth. Therefore, I will no longer pierce every living soul as I have done.
22 All the days of the earth, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, night and day, will not cease."
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.”
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