Genesis 8:1-9:16

EasyEnglish Bible

The deep water goes away

8 Then God thought of Noah, and all the wild animals and the farm animals that were with him in the ship. He caused a wind to blow over the earth. As a result, the water began to go down. ² Streams of water stopped coming up from below the earth. Rain stopped coming down from the sky. ³ The deep water continued to go down for 150 days. ⁴ On the 17th day of the seventh month, the ship stopped on the ground. It was sitting on the top of Ararat mountains. ⁵ The water continued to go down until the tenth month. On the first day of the tenth month, the tops of the mountains appeared above the water.

⁶ After 40 more days, Noah opened a window in the ship. ⁷ He sent a raven to fly away. The raven flew away from the ship and then it returned. It continued to do this until the earth was dry.

⁸ Then Noah sent out a dove. He wanted to see if the water had gone away from the top of the ground. ⁹ But the dove could not find anywhere to stand. Water still covered all the ground. So it returned to Noah in the ship. Noah put out his hand and took the dove back into the ship. ¹⁰ He waited for seven days. Then he sent the dove out of the ship again. ¹¹ The dove returned to Noah in the evening. It carried a fresh leaf from an olive tree in its mouth. Then Noah knew that the water had gone down. ¹² He waited for seven more days. Then he sent the dove out again. This time, it did not return to Noah.^[a]

¹³ Noah was now 601 years old. On the first day of the first month, the water that had covered the earth was now gone. The ground had become dry. Noah made a hole in the roof of the ship and he looked around. He saw that the top of the ground was dry. ¹⁴ By the 27th day of the second month, the earth had become completely dry.

¹⁵ God said to Noah, ¹⁶ ‘Come out of the ship. Bring your wife, your sons and their wives with you. ¹⁷ Bring every different kind of living animal out of the ship. Bring out the birds, the animals, and the living things that move across the ground. Now they may give birth to young ones again. They can grow in number all over the earth.’

¹⁸ Noah went out of the ship, together with his wife, his sons and their wives. ¹⁹ All the living animals also went out of the ship. The birds and the living things that move across the ground all went out. Every different kind of animal came out of the ship, each of them in its own group.

God makes a promise to Noah

²⁰ Then Noah built an altar to make sacrifices to the Lord. He took one from each kind of clean animal and clean bird. He offered them to the Lord as sacrifices which he burned on the altar.^[b]

²¹ The Lord smelled the sacrifice and it made him happy. The Lord said to himself, ‘I will never curse the ground again because of the bad things that people do. From the time that they are children, they want to do bad things. But I will never again destroy everything that breathes, as I have done this time.

God's covenant with Noah

9 God blessed Noah and his sons. He said to them, ‘Give birth to many children so that you become very many people. Your descendants will live all over the earth. ² All the animals and all the birds will be afraid of you. You have authority over them. You also have authority over all the living things that move across the ground and all the fish in the sea. ³ You may now eat anything that lives and moves. Before, I gave you the green plants to eat. Now I give you everything to eat as your food.

⁴ But you must not eat meat that still has the blood of life in it.

⁵ If any person or animal kills a human, I will certainly punish them. Their punishment will be death.

⁷ But as for you, you should give birth to many children so that you become very many people. There will be many people and they will live all over the earth.’

⁸ God said to Noah and to his sons, ⁹ ‘I promise you that I will obey the covenant that I am making with you.^[e] I promise this to you and to all your descendants. ¹⁰ I also promise this to all the animals and birds that came out of the ship with you. That is everything that lives on the earth. ¹¹ This is the covenant that I promise to keep: I will never cause water to destroy all living things on the earth again. Deep water will never again come again to destroy the earth.’

¹² Then God said, ‘I will show you clearly that I have made this covenant with you, and with every living animal. I will keep this promise for ever, for as long as people live on the earth. ¹³ I have put my rainbow among the clouds in the sky. It will show you clearly that I have made this covenant with everything on the earth. ¹⁴ When I bring clouds over the earth, a rainbow will sometimes appear. ¹⁵ Then I will remember the covenant that I have made with you and with all the different kinds of living things. Never again will the water become so deep that it destroys everything that lives. ¹⁶ When I see the rainbow in the clouds, I will remember my covenant. It is a promise that I have made with every kind of living thing on the earth.’