8
Flood Recedes
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 land. The waters subsided. The deep’s fountains and the sky’s windows were also stopped, and the rain from the sky was restrained. The waters continually receded from the land. After the end of one hundred fifty days the waters decreased. The ship rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on Ararat’s mountains. 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.
At the end of forty days, Noah opened the window of the ship which he had made, and he sent out a raven. It went back and forth, until the waters were dried up from the land. He himself sent out a dove to see if the waters were abated from the surface of the ground, but the dove found no place to rest her foot, and she returned to him into the ship, for the waters were on the surface of the whole land. 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 land. 12 He waited yet another seven days, and sent out the dove; and she didn’t return to him anymore.
13 In the six hundred first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from the land. Noah removed the covering of the ship, and looked. He saw that the surface of the ground was dried. 14 In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the land was dry.
15 God spoke to Noah, saying, 16 “Go out of the ship, you, and your wife, and 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 land, that they may breed abundantly in the land, and be fruitful, and multiply on the land.”
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 land, after their families, went out of the ship.
Noahic Covenant
20 Noah built an altar to Yehowah יהוה, and took of every clean animal, and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. 21 Yehowah יהוה smelled the pleasant aroma.
Yehowah יהוה 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 land remains, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night will not cease.”