Genesis 8

1But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided.

2The springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens were closed, and the rain from the heavens was held back.

3The waters receded steadily from the earth, and at the end of 150 days the waters had gone down.

4In the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.

5The waters continued to go down until the tenth month. On the first day of the tenth month, the tops of the mountains appeared.

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

7He sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the waters had dried up from the earth.

8Then he sent out a dove from him to see whether the waters had gone down from the face of the ground.

9But the dove found no place to rest its foot, and it returned to him in the ark, because there was water over the face of the whole earth. So he reached out his hand and took it and brought it back to himself in the ark.

10He waited seven more days, and again he sent out the dove from the ark.

11The dove came back to him in the evening, and there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! So Noah knew that the waters had gone down from the earth.

12He waited seven more days and sent out the dove, and it did not return to him again.

13In the 601st year, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the waters had dried up from the earth. Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and the face of the ground was dry.

14By the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the earth was dry.

15Then God said to Noah,

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

17Bring out with you every living creature that is with you, of all flesh—birds, livestock, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth—so that they may swarm on the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.”

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

19Every living creature, every creeping thing, and every bird—everything that moves on the earth—came out of the ark by their families.

20Then Noah built an altar to Yahweh. He took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

21When Yahweh smelled the pleasing aroma, Yahweh said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of human beings, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth. And I will never again strike down every living thing, as I have done.

22As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will not cease.”