Genesis 8

The Flood Ends

1 God did not forget about Noah, his crew, or all the animals on the ark. He sent a wind to blow over the earth, and the floodwaters started going down.

2 The underground springs stopped flowing, and the rain from the sky shut off.

3 The water slowly drained off the earth. After 150 days, it started to go down significantly.

4 On the 17th day of the seventh month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.

5 The water kept going down, and by the first day of the tenth month, the tops of the mountains were visible.

6 Forty days later, Noah opened the window he had built into the ark.

7 He sent out a raven. It kept flying back and forth until the water dried up from the earth.

8 Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had gone down.

9 But the dove could not find a dry spot to land, so it came back to Noah in the ark because the earth was still flooded. He reached out and brought it back in.

10 Noah waited seven more days and sent the dove out again.

11 This time, it came back in the evening with a fresh olive leaf in its beak. Noah knew the water was almost gone.

12 He waited another seven days and sent the dove out again, and this time it did not come back.

13 By the first day of Noah’s 601st year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah removed the ark’s covering and saw the ground was drying.

14 By the 27th day of the second month, the earth was completely dry.

God’s Promise and Noah’s Sacrifice

15 Then God told Noah,

16 ‘Listen, it is time. Bring you, your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives out of the ark.’

17 Let all the animals out too, birds, livestock, and everything that crawls, so they can spread out and multiply on the earth.

18 Noah, his family, and all the animals rolled out of the ark.

19 Every kind of animal, bird, and creature that crawled came out of the ark, each in its group.

20 Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some clean animals and birds and offered them as burnt sacrifices.

21 The smell of the offering pleased God, and He said to Himself, ‘Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though their thoughts are evil from youth. I will not destroy all life like this again.

22 As long as the earth exists, there will be planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night.