Genesis 8:1-19

1 God remembered Noah, all those alive, and all the animals with him in the ark. God sent a wind over the earth so that the waters receded.
2 The springs of the deep sea and the skies closed up. The skies held back the rain.
3 The waters receded gradually from the earth. After one hundred fifty days, the waters decreased;
4 and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day, the ark came to rest on the Ararat mountains.
5 The waters decreased gradually until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the mountain peaks appeared.
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 seventeenth 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, all the birds, and everything crawling on the ground, came out of the ark by their families.

Genesis 8:1-19 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO GENESIS 8

This chapter gives an account of the going off of the waters from the earth, and of the entire deliverance of Noah, and those with him in the ark, from the flood, when all the rest were destroyed: after an one hundred and fifty days a wind is sent over the earth, the fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven are stopped, the waters go off gradually, and the ark rests on Mount Ararat, Ge 8:1-4 two months and thirteen days after that the tops of the mountains were seen, Ge 8:5 and forty days after the appearance of them, Noah sent forth first a raven, and then a dove, and that a second time, to know more of the abatement of the waters, Ge 8:6-12. When Noah had been in the ark ten months and thirteen days, he uncovered it, and the earth was dry, yet not so dry as to be fit for him to go out upon, until near two months after, Ge 8:13,14 when he had an order from God to go out of the ark, with all that were with him, which was accordingly obeyed, Ge 8:15-19 upon which he offered sacrifice by way of thankfulness for his great deliverance, which was accepted by the Lord; who promised him not to curse the earth any more, nor to drown it, but that it should remain, and as long as it did there would be the constant revolutions of the seasons of the year, and of day and night, Ge 8:20-22.

Footnotes 2

  • [a]. Or the windows of the skies
  • [b]. LXX; MT lacks all the livestock.
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