Genesis 8:6-22

Common English Bible

⁶ After forty days, Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made. ⁷ He sent out a raven, and it flew back and forth until the waters over the entire earth had dried up. ⁸ Then he sent out a dove to see if the waters on all of the fertile land had subsided, ⁹ but the dove found no place to set its foot. It returned to him in the ark since waters still covered the entire earth. Noah stretched out his hand, took it, and brought it back into the ark. ¹⁰ He waited seven more days and sent the dove out from the ark again. ¹¹ The dove came back to him in the evening, grasping a torn olive leaf in its beak. Then Noah knew that the waters were subsiding from the earth. ¹² He waited seven more days and sent out the dove, but it didn’t come back to him again. ¹³ In Noah’s six hundred first year, on the first day of the first month, the waters dried up from the earth. Noah removed the ark’s hatch and saw that the surface of the fertile land had dried up. ¹⁴ In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day, the earth was dry.

¹⁵ God spoke to Noah, ¹⁶ “Go out of the ark, you and your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives with you. ¹⁷ Bring out with you all the animals of every kind—birds, livestock, everything crawling on the ground—so that they may populate the earth, be fertile, and multiply on the earth.” ¹⁸ So Noah went out of the ark with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives. ¹⁹ All the animals, all the livestock,^[a] all the birds, and everything crawling on the ground, came out of the ark by their families.

God’s promise for the earth

²⁰ Noah built an altar to the Lord. He took some of the clean large animals and some of the clean birds, and placed entirely burned offerings on the altar. ²¹ The Lord smelled the pleasing scent, and the Lord thought to himself, I will not curse the fertile land anymore because of human beings since the ideas of the human mind are evil from their youth. I will never again destroy every living thing as I have done.