Genesis 8

¹ But God had Noah in mind, and all the wild beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the ark. God sent a wind across the earth and the waters subsided.

² The springs of the deep and the sluices of heaven were stopped.

³ Rain ceased to fall from heaven; the waters gradually ebbed from the earth.

⁴ After a hundred and fifty days the waters fell, and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of that month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.

⁵ The waters gradually fell until the tenth month when, on the first day of the tenth month, the mountain peaks appeared.

⁶ At the end of forty days Noah opened the porthole he had made in the ark and he sent out the raven.

⁷ This went off, and flew back and forth until the waters dried up from the earth.

⁸ Then he sent out the dove, to see whether the waters were receding from the surface of the earth.

⁹ The dove, finding nowhere to perch, returned to him in the ark, for there was water over the whole surface of the earth; putting out his hand he took hold of it and brought it back into the ark with him.

¹⁰ After waiting seven more days, again he sent out the dove from the ark.

¹¹ In the evening, the dove came back to him and there it was with a new olive-branch in its beak. So Noah realised that the waters were receding from the earth.

¹² After waiting seven more days he sent out the dove, and now it returned to him no more.

¹³ It was in the six hundred and first year of Noah’s life, in the first month and on the first of the month, that the water dried up from the earth. Noah lifted back the hatch of the ark and looked out. The surface of the ground was dry!

¹⁴ In the second month and on the twenty-seventh day of the month the earth was dry.

¹⁵ Then God said to Noah,

¹⁶ ‘Come out of the ark, you yourself, your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives with you.

¹⁷ As for all the animals with you, all things of flesh, whether birds or animals or reptiles that crawl on the earth, bring them out with you. Let them swarm on the earth; let them be fruitful and multiply on the earth.’

¹⁸ So Noah went out with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives.

¹⁹ And all the wild beasts, all the cattle, all the birds and all the reptiles that crawl on the earth went out from the ark, one kind after another.

²⁰ Noah built an altar for Yahweh, and choosing from all the clean animals and all the clean birds he offered burnt offerings on the altar. Yahweh smelt the appeasing fragrance and said to himself,

²¹ ‘Never again will I curse the earth because of man, because his heart contrives evil from his infancy. Never again will I strike down every living thing as I have done.

²² ‘As long as earth lasts, sowing and reaping, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall cease no more.’