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
The Flood Recedes
1God remembered Noah,#Gn 19:29; Ex 2:24; 1Sm 1:19; Ps 105:42 as well as all the wildlife and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. God caused a wind to pass over the earth,#Ex 14:21; 15:10; Jb 12:15; Ps 29:10; Is 44:27; Nah 1:4 and the water began to subside. 2The sources of the watery depths and the floodgates of the sky were closed, and the rain from the sky stopped.#Gn 7:11 3The water steadily receded from the earth, and by the end of 150 days the water had decreased significantly.#Gn 7:24 4The ark came to rest in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the mountains of Ararat.#2Kg 19:37; Is 37:38; Jr 51:27
5The water continued to recede until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were visible. 6After forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made, 7and he sent out a raven. It went back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. 8Then he sent out a dove to see whether the water on the earth’s surface had gone down, 9but the dove found no resting place for its foot. It returned to him in the ark because water covered the surface of the whole earth. He reached out and brought it into the ark to himself. 10So Noah waited seven more days and sent out the dove from the ark again. 11When the dove came to him at evening, there was a plucked olive leaf in its beak. So Noah knew that the water on the earth’s surface had gone down. 12After he had waited another seven days, he sent out the dove, but it did not return to him again. 13In the six hundred first year,#8:13 = of Noah’s life in the first month, on the first day of the month, the water that had covered the earth was dried up. Then Noah removed the ark’s cover and saw that the surface of the ground was drying. 14By the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the earth was dry.
The Lord’s Promise
15Then God spoke to Noah, 16“Come out of the ark, you, your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives with you. 17Bring out all the living creatures that are with you — birds, livestock, those that crawl on the earth — and they will spread over the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.”#Gn 1:22,28; 9:1 18So Noah, along with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives, came out. 19All the animals, all the creatures that crawl, and all the flying creatures — everything that moves on the earth — came out of the ark by their families.
20Then Noah built an altar to the Lord. He took some of every kind of clean animal and every kind of clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. 21When the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma,#Ex 29:18; Lv 1:9; Ezk 16:19; 20:41; 2Co 2:15; Eph 5:2; Php 4:18 he said to himself, “I will never again curse the ground#Gn 3:17; 5:29; 6:7; Is 54:9 because of human beings, even though the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth onward.#Gn 6:5; Ps 51:5; Jr 17:9; Rm 1:21; 3:23; Eph 2:1–3 And I will never again strike down every living thing as I have done.#Gn 9:11,15
22As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter, and day and night
will not cease.”#Jr 33:20,25
© 2017 Holman Bible Publishers