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Giovedi, 28 marzo 2024 - San Castore di Tarso ( Letture di oggi)

Genesis 8


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1and then God remembered Noah and all the animals, wild and tame, that were with him in the ark. So God made a wind sweep over the earth, and the waters began to subside.2The fountains of the abyss and the floodgates of the sky were closed, and the downpour from the sky was held back.3Gradually the waters receded from the earth. At the end of one hundred and fifty days, the waters had so diminished4that, in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.5The waters continued to diminish until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains appeared.6At the end of forty days Noah opened the hatch he had made in the ark,7and he sent out a raven, to see if the waters had lessened on the earth. It flew back and forth until the waters dried off from the earth.8Then he sent out a dove, to see if the waters had lessened on the earth.9But the dove could find no place to alight and perch, and it returned to him in the ark, for there was water all over the earth. Putting out his hand, he caught the dove and drew it back to him inside the ark.10He waited seven days more and again sent the dove out from the ark.11In the evening the dove came back to him, and there in its bill was a plucked-off olive leaf! So Noah knew that the waters had lessened on the earth.12He waited still another seven days and then released the dove once more; and this time it did not come back.13In the six hundred and first year of Noah's life, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the water began to dry up on the earth. Noah then removed the covering of the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was drying up.14In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry.15Then God said to Noah:16"Go out of the ark, together with your wife and your sons and your sons' wives.17Bring out with you every living thing that is with you--all bodily creatures, be they birds or animals or creeping things of the earth-and let them abound on the earth, breeding and multiplying on it."18So Noah came out, together with his wife and his sons and his sons' wives;19and all the animals, wild and tame, all the birds, and all the creeping creatures of the earth left the ark, one kind after another.20Then Noah built an altar to the LORD, and choosing from every clean animal and every clean bird, he offered holocausts on the altar.21When the LORD smelled the sweet odor, he said to himself: "Never again will I doom the earth because of man, since the desires of man's heart are evil from the start; nor will I ever again strike down all living beings, as I have done.22As long as the earth lasts, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, Summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."