Genesis 7-8

Common English Bible

7 The Lord said to Noah, “Go into the ark with your whole household, because among this generation I’ve seen that you are a moral man. ² From every clean animal, take seven pairs, a male and his mate; and from every unclean animal, take one pair, a male and his mate; ³ and from the birds in the sky as well, take seven pairs, male and female, so that their offspring will survive throughout the earth. ⁴ In seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights. I will wipe off from the fertile land every living thing that I have made.”

⁵ Noah did everything the Lord commanded him.

⁶ Noah was 600 years old when the floodwaters arrived on earth. ⁷ Noah, his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives with him entered the ark to escape the floodwaters. ⁸ From the clean and unclean animals, from the birds and everything crawling on the ground, ⁹ two of each, male and female, went into the ark with Noah, just as God commanded Noah. ¹⁰ After seven days, the floodwaters arrived on the earth. ¹¹ In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day—on that day all the springs of the deep sea erupted, and the windows in the skies opened. ¹² It rained on the earth forty days and forty nights. ¹³ That same day Noah, with his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, Noah’s wife, and his sons’ three wives, went into the ark. ¹⁴ They and every kind of animal—every kind of livestock, every kind that crawls on the ground, every kind of bird^[a]— ¹⁵ they came to Noah and entered the ark, two of every creature that breathes. ¹⁶ Male and female of every creature went in, just as God had commanded him. Then the Lord closed the door behind them.^[b]

¹⁷ The flood remained on the earth for forty days. The waters rose, lifted the ark, and it rode high above the earth. ¹⁸ The waters rose and spread out over the earth. The ark floated on the surface of the waters. ¹⁹ The waters rose even higher over the earth; they covered all of the highest mountains under the sky. ²⁰ The waters rose twenty-three feet high, covering the mountains. ²¹ Every creature took its last breath: the things crawling on the ground, birds, livestock, wild animals, everything swarming on the ground, and every human being. ²² Everything on dry land with life’s breath in its nostrils died. ²³ God wiped away every living thing that was on the fertile land—from human beings to livestock to crawling things to birds in the sky. They were wiped off the earth. Only Noah and those with him in the ark were left. ²⁴ The waters rose over the earth for one hundred fifty days.

8 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^[c] 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 twenty-seventh 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,^[d] all the birds, and everything crawling on the ground, came out of the ark by their families.

God’s promise for the earth

²⁰ Noah built an altar to the Lord. He took some of the clean large animals and some of the clean birds, and placed entirely burned offerings on the altar. ²¹ The Lord smelled the pleasing scent, and the Lord thought to himself, I will not curse the fertile land anymore because of human beings since the ideas of the human mind are evil from their youth. I will never again destroy every living thing as I have done.