Genesis 8
Flood dries up
1Turning off the water
1
God remembered the boat floating in the water and all the life inside: Noah and all the animals wild and mild. God sent a wind, and the water level began to drop.
2
Underground geysers stopped forcing up their fountains of water. Rainwater stopped falling from the sky.
3
Gradually, floodwater started to drop. One hundred and fifty days after the flood started.
4
Noah’s boat came to a grinding halt somewhere in the Ararat mountain range, five months after the flood started.
5
Floodwater continued to drop until Noah, two and a half months later, could see other mountain peaks.
6
After 40 more days, Noah opened a window he had built into the boat.
7
He released a raven to fly above the flood until the ground dried up.
8
He also released a dove to see if it would find a dry place to nest.
9
It did not. The dove flew back to the boat because the floodwater still covered the ground. Noah ought the dove back into the boat.
10
Noah waited another seven days and then released the dove again.
11
The dove came back to the boat that evening, but this time it carried a fresh olive leaf in its beak. That clued Noah the water was starting to recede.
12
Noah waited another seven days before releasing the dove again. This time the dove did not return.
13
Noah had a birthday during the flood. He turned 601. On that day, ten and a half months after the flood had started, the ground was beginning to dry. So Noah took the covering off the top of the boat, looked outside, and saw the ground was dry.
14
Two months later, the ground was dry enough to walk on.
15
God told Noah,
16
“Leave the boat now. Take your family with you.
17
Release every living thing you ought with you—birds, land animals, and every bug and other life form that creeps and crawls along the dirt. Release them so they will reproduce and fill the world again with critters of every kind.”
18
Noah left the boat, taking with him his wife, his three sons, and their wives.
19
Two by two, all the animals came with him: birds and land critters large and small.
God’s promise: never again
20
Noah built an altar to worship the LORD. He killed one of every kind of animal used in sacrifices and he burned them on the altar as an offering to God.
21
The sweet aroma of barbecue delighted the LORD. He said to himself, “I will never again hurt the earth because of humans. That’s in spite of the fact that these people have a perpetual attraction to bad thoughts and behavior, even when they’re kids. Yet I will never again destroy all life because of them.
22
As long as there’s an earth, there will be crops to harvest. There will be cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night.”
