Genesis — Chapter 8

God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the ark, and God caused a wind to blow across the earth, and the waters subsided.

The fountains of the deep and the floodgates of the sky were stopped up, and the rain from the sky was held back;

the waters then receded steadily from the earth. At the end of one hundred and fifty days the waters diminished,

so that in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.

The waters went on diminishing until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first of the month, the tops of the mountains became visible.

At the end of forty days, Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made

and sent out the raven; it went to and fro until the waters had dried up from the earth.

Then he sent out the dove to see whether the waters had decreased from the surface of the ground.

But the dove could not find a resting place for its foot, and returned to him to the ark, for there was water over all the earth. So putting out his hand, he took it into the ark with him.

He waited another seven days, and again sent out the dove from the ark.

The dove came back to him toward evening, and there in its bill was a plucked-off olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the waters had decreased on the earth.

He waited still another seven days and sent the dove forth; and it did not return to him anymore.

In the six hundred and first year, in the first month, on the first of the month, the waters began to dry from the earth; and when Noah removed the covering of the ark, he saw that the surface of the ground was drying.

And in the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry.

God spoke to Noah, saying,

“Come out of the ark, together with your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives.

Bring out with you every living thing of all flesh that is with you: birds, animals, and everything that creeps on earth; and let them swarm on the earth and be fertile and increase on earth.”

So Noah came out, together with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives.

Every animal, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that stirs on earth came out of the ark by families.

Then Noah built an altar to GOD and, taking of every pure animal and of every pure bird, he offered burnt offerings on the altar.

GOD smelled the pleasing odor, and GOD resolved: “Never again will I doom the earth because of humankind, since the devisings of the human mind are evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living being, as I have done.

So long as the earth endures,Seedtime and harvest,Cold and heat,Summer and winter,Day and nightShall not cease.”