Genesis 8:9-19

9 The dove could not find a place to land because water still covered the earth, so it came back to the boat. Noah reached out his hand and took the bird and brought it back into the boat.

10 After seven days Noah again sent out the dove from the boat,

11 and that evening it came back to him with a fresh olive leaf in its mouth. Then Noah knew that the ground was almost dry.

12 Seven days later he sent the dove out again, but this time it did not come back.

13 When Noah was six hundred and one years old, in the first day of the first month of that year, the water was dried up from the land. Noah removed the covering of the boat and saw that the land was dry.

14 By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the land was completely dry.

15 Then God said to Noah,

16 "You and your wife, your sons, and their wives should go out of the boat.

17 Bring every animal out of the boat with you -- the birds, animals, and everything that crawls on the earth. Let them have many young ones so that they might grow in number."

18 So Noah went out with his sons, his wife, and his sons' wives.

19 Every animal, everything that crawls on the earth, and every bird went out of the boat by families.

Genesis 8:9-19 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.