Our Father Remembered Noah
Our Father remembers Noah, and the water begins to go down. Noah reads the world through a raven and a dove until an olive leaf comes back. He builds an altar, and our Father resolves never again to strike down every living thing.
8 1But our Father remembered Noah, all the living creatures, and all the livestock with him in the ark, and swept a wind over the earth so the waters began to recede. a a v1 When Scripture says our Father "remembered," it does not mean he had forgotten — it means he acted on his covenant love at the appointed time. 2The springs of the deep and heaven's floodgates closed, and rain from the sky stopped. 3Water kept receding from the earth, and after 150 days it had gone down. 4The ark rested on the mountains of Ararat on the seventeenth day of the seventh month. b b v4 Ararat refers to a mountain region, not necessarily a single peak. 5The waters kept receding until the tenth month; on its first day, the mountaintops appeared.
6After forty days, Noah opened the window he had made in the ark, 7he sent out a raven, and it flew back and forth until the waters dried up from the earth. 8Then he released the dove from him to see if the waters had subsided from the ground's surface. 9But the dove found no resting place for her foot and returned to him in the ark, since water still covered the whole earth's surface. So he reached out his hand, took her, and brought her back into the ark. 10He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. 11The dove returned to him that evening with a freshly plucked olive leaf in her beak, so Noah knew the waters had receded from the earth. 12He waited seven more days, then sent the dove out again; it did not return to him again.
13In Noah's 600 and first year, the first day of the first month, the waters had dried up from the earth. Noah removed the ark's covering, looked out, and saw the ground's surface was dry. 14By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry.
15Then our Father said to Noah,
16"Leave the ark: you and your wife and your sons and your sons' wives with you. 17Bring out with you every living creature—all flesh: birds, animals, everything that crawls on the ground—so they may swarm across the earth, be fruitful, and multiply on the earth."
18So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons' wives. 19Every animal, every crawling thing, every bird—everything that moves on the earth—left the ark by their kinds.
20Noah built an altar to our Father, took some of every clean animal and every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on it.
21Our Father smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart, "I will never again curse the ground because of humanity, though the human heart's inclination is evil from youth, nor will I ever again strike down every living thing as I have done. c c v21 Our Father was not pleased by the smell itself, but by the faithful worship and obedience the offering expressed. 22As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease."
