The Flood Subsides

Genesis 8

But God remembered Noah and all the animals and all the livestock that were with him in the ark; and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters subsided. The fountains of the deep and the floodgates of the sky were also stopped, and the rain from the sky was restrained. The waters continually receded from the earth. After the end of one hundred fifty days the waters receded. The ark 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 ark which he had made, and he sent out a raven. It went back and forth, until the waters were dried up from the earth. 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 into the ark to him, for the waters were on the surface of the whole earth. He put out his hand, and took her, and brought her to him into the ark. He waited seven more days, and he sent the dove out of the ark again. The dove came back to him at evening and in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf! So Noah knew that the waters were abated from the earth. He waited seven more days, and sent out the dove, but she didn’t return to him again.

In the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from the earth. Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and he saw that the surface of the ground was dry. In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry.

God spoke to Noah, saying, “Go out of the ark, you, your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives with you. 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 earth, that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply on the earth.”

Noah went out, with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives with him. Every animal, every creeping thing, and every bird, whatever moves on the earth, after their families, went out of the ark.

Then Noah built an altar to YHWH, and took some of every clean animal and every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. YHWH smelled the pleasant aroma. YHWH said in ʜɪꜱ 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.

While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night will not cease.”