Chapter 8
1 God remembered Noah , all the animals , and all the livestock that were with him in the ship ; and God made a wind to pass over the earth. The waters subsided .
2 The deep ’s fountains and the sky ’s windows were also stopped , and the rain from the sky was restrained .
3 The waters continually receded from the earth. After the end of one hundred and fifty days the waters receded .
4 The ship rested in the seventh month , on the seventeenth day of the month , on Ararat’s mountains .
5 The waters receded continually until the tenth month . In the tenth month , on the first day of the month , the tops of the mountains were visible .
6 At the end of forty days , Noah opened the window of the ship which he had made ,
7 and he sent out a raven . It went back and forth , until the waters were dried up from the earth.
8 He himself sent out a dove to see if the waters were abated from the surface of the ground ,
9 but the dove found no place to rest her foot , and she returned into the ship to him , for the waters were on the surface of the whole earth. He put out his hand , and took her , and brought her to him into the ship .
10 He waited yet another seven days ; and again he sent the dove out of the ship .
11 The dove came back to him at evening and , behold , in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf . So Noah knew that the waters were abated from the earth.
12 He waited yet another seven days , and sent out the dove ; and she didn’t return to him any more .
13 In the six hundred and first year , in the first month , the first day of the month , the waters were dried up from the earth. Noah removed the covering of the ship , and looked . He saw that the surface of the ground was dry .
14 In the second month , on the twenty-seventh day of the month , the earth was dry .
15 God spoke to Noah , saying ,
16 " Go out of the ship , you , your wife, your sons , and your sons ’ wives with you .
17 Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh , including birds , livestock, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful , and multiply on the earth."
18 Noah went out , with his sons , his wife, and his sons ’ wives with him .
19 Every animal , every creeping thing , and every bird , whatever moves on the earth, after their families , went out of the ship .
20 Noah built an altar to the LORD , and took of every clean animal, and of every clean bird , and offered burnt offerings on the altar .
21 The LORD smelled the pleasant aroma . The LORD said in his heart , " I will not again curse the ground any more for man ’s sake because the imagination of man ’s heart is evil from his youth . I will never again strike every living thing , as I have done .
22 While the earth remains , seed time and harvest , and cold and heat , and summer and winter , and day and night will not cease ."