Chapter
8
God remembered Noa, all the animals, and all the livestock that were with her in the ship; and God made a wind to pass over the earth. The waters subsided.
The deep's fountains and the sky's windows were also stopped, and the rain from the sky was restrained.
The waters receded from the earth continually. After the end of one hundred fifty days the waters decreased.
The ship 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 seen.
It happened at the end of forty days, that Noa opened the window of the ship which she had made,
and she sent forth a raven. It went back and forth, until the waters were dried up from the earth.
She sent forth a dove from her, to see if the waters were abated from the surface of the ground,
but the dove found no place to rest his foot, and he returned to her into the ship; for the waters were on the surface of the whole earth. She put forth her hand, and took him, and brought him to her into the ship.
She stayed yet another seven days; and again she sent forth the dove out of the ship.
The dove came back to her at evening, and, behold, in his mouth was an olive leaf plucked off. So Noa knew that the waters were abated from the earth.
She stayed yet another seven days, and sent forth the dove; and he didn't return to her any more.
It happened in the six hundred first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from the earth. Noa removed the covering of the ship, and looked. She saw that the surface of the ground was dried.
In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry.
God spoke to Noa, saying,
"Go out of the ship, you, and your husband, and your daughters, and your daughters' husbands with you.
Bring forth 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."
Noa went forth, with her daughters, her husband, and her daughters' husbands with her.
Every animal, every creeping thing, and every bird, whatever moves on the earth, after their families, went out of the ship.
Noa built an altar to Yahweh, and took of every clean animal, and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.
Yahweh smelled the sweet savor. Yahweh said in her heart, "I will not again curse the ground any more for woman's sake, because the imagination of woman's heart is evil from her youth; neither will I ever again strike everything living, as I have done.
While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."