Genesis 8
8
1-3Then God turned his attention to Noah and all the wild animals and farm animals with him on the ship. God caused the wind to blow and the floodwaters began to go down. The underground springs were shut off, the windows of Heaven closed and the rain quit. Inch by inch the water lowered. After 150 days the worst was over.
4-6On the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the ship landed on the Ararat mountain range. The water kept going down until the tenth month. On the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains came into view. After forty days Noah opened the window that he had built into the ship.
7-9He sent out a raven; it flew back and forth waiting for the floodwaters to dry up. Then he sent a dove to check on the flood conditions, but it couldn’t even find a place to perch—water still covered the Earth. Noah reached out and caught it, brought it back into the ship.
10-11He waited seven more days and sent out the dove again. It came back in the evening with a freshly picked olive leaf in its beak. Noah knew that the flood was about finished.
12He waited another seven days and sent the dove out a third time. This time it didn’t come back.
13-14In the six-hundred-first year of Noah’s life, on the first day of the first month, the flood had dried up. Noah opened the hatch of the ship and saw dry ground. By the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the Earth was completely dry.
15-17God spoke to Noah: “Leave the ship, you and your wife and your sons and your sons’ wives. And take all the animals with you, the whole menagerie of birds and mammals and crawling creatures, all that swarming extravagance of life, so they can reproduce and flourish on the Earth.”
18-19Noah disembarked with his sons and wife and his sons’ wives. Then all the animals, crawling creatures, birds—every creature on the face of the Earth—left the ship family by family.
20-21Noah built an altar to God. He selected clean animals and birds from every species and offered them as burnt offerings on the altar. God smelled the sweet fragrance and thought to himself, “I’ll never again curse the ground because of people. I know they have this bent toward evil from an early age, but I’ll never again kill off everything living as I’ve just done.
22For as long as Earth lasts,
planting and harvest, cold and heat,
Summer and winter, day and night
will never stop.”
THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. Used by permission of NavPress. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.
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."