Genesis 8:1-19

1 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and livestock with him in the boat. He sent a wind to blow across the earth, and the floodwaters began to recede.

2 The underground waters stopped flowing, and the torrential rains from the sky were stopped.

3 So the floodwaters gradually receded from the earth. After 150 days,

4 exactly five months from the time the flood began, the boat came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.

5 Two and a half months later, as the waters continued to go down, other mountain peaks became visible.

6 After another forty days, Noah opened the window he had made in the boat

7 and released a raven. The bird flew back and forth until the floodwaters on the earth had dried up.

8 He also released a dove to see if the water had receded and it could find dry ground.

9 But the dove could find no place to land because the water still covered the ground. So it returned to the boat, and Noah held out his hand and drew the dove back inside.

10 After waiting another seven days, Noah released the dove again.

11 This time the dove returned to him in the evening with a fresh olive leaf in its beak. Then Noah knew that the floodwaters were almost gone.

12 He waited another seven days and then released the dove again. This time it did not come back.

13 Noah was now 601 years old. On the first day of the new year, ten and a half months after the flood began, the floodwaters had almost dried up from the earth. Noah lifted back the covering of the boat and saw that the surface of the ground was drying.

14 Two more months went by, and at last the earth was dry!

15 Then God said to Noah,

16 “Leave the boat, all of you—you and your wife, and your sons and their wives.

17 Release all the animals—the birds, the livestock, and the small animals that scurry along the ground—so they can be fruitful and multiply throughout the earth.”

18 So Noah, his wife, and his sons and their wives left the boat.

19 And all of the large and small animals and birds came out of the boat, pair by pair.

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

• [a]. Hebrew on the seventeenth day of the seventh month; see 7:11 .
• [b]. Hebrew On the first day of the tenth month; see 7:11 and note on 8:4 .
• [c]. Hebrew On the first day of the first month; see 7:11 .
• [d]. Hebrew The twenty-seventh day of the second month arrived; see note on 8:13 .