Genesis 8

¹ But God had Noah in mind, and al the wild animals and all the cattle that were with him in the ark. Godsent a wind across the earth and the waters began to subside.

² The springs of the deep and the sluices of heaven were stopped up and the heavy rain from heavenwas held back.

³ Little by little, the waters ebbed from the earth. After a hundred and fifty days the waters fel ,

⁴ and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountainsof Ararat.

⁵ The waters gradual y fell until the tenth month when, on the first day of the tenth month, the mountaintops appeared.

⁶ At the end of forty days Noah opened the window he had made in the ark

⁷ and released a raven, which flew back and forth as it waited for the waters to dry up on earth.

⁸ He then released a dove, to see whether the waters were receding from the surface of the earth.

⁹ But the dove, finding nowhere to perch, returned to him in the ark, for there was water over the wholesurface 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, he again released the dove from the ark.

¹¹ In the evening, the dove came back to him and there in its beak was a freshly-picked olive leaf! SoNoah realised that the waters were receding from the earth.

¹² After waiting seven more days, he released 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 waters began drying out on earth. Noah lifted back the hatch of the ark and looked out. The surface ofthe ground was dry!

¹⁴ In the second month, 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, your wife, your sons, and your sons' wives with you.

¹⁷ Bring out all the animals with you, all living things, the birds, the cattle and al the creeping things thatcreep along the ground, for them to swarm on earth, for them to breed and multiply on earth.'

¹⁸ So Noah came out with his sons, his wife, and his sons' wives.

¹⁹ And al the wild animals, al the cattle, al the birds and al the creeping things that creep along theground, came out of the ark, one species after another.

²⁰ Then Noah built an altar to Yahweh and, choosing from al the clean animals and all the clean birds hepresented burnt offerings on the altar.

²¹ Yahweh smelt the pleasing smell and said to himself, 'Never again wil I curse the earth because ofhuman beings, because their heart contrives evil from their infancy. Never again wil I strike down every livingthing as I have done.

²² As long as earth endures: seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and nightwil never cease.'