Genesis 8:1-22

God’s heart was moved with compassion as he remembered Noah and all the animals, large and small, that were with him in the ark. And God caused a wind to sweep across the earth again and the waters subsided. He closed the subterranean fountains and the floodgates of heaven and held back the rain. After 150 days, the floodwaters gradually receded from the earth and the waters began to subside. And on the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the ark came to rest on the highest peak in Ararat. The waters continued to recede until the tenth month. And on the first day of the tenth month, all the mountaintops appeared. After forty more days Noah opened the window he had made in the ark and released a raven. It flew back and forth from the ark until the earth was dry. Then he sent out a dove to see if the waters had receded from the surface of the ground. But the dove found no place to rest, so it returned to Noah in the ark because the waters still covered the face of the earth. Noah put out his hand and grasped the dove and put it back into the ark. He waited another seven days and released the dove from the ark again. Before evening, the dove came back to him—and there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! So Noah realized that the waters had finally subsided from the earth. Then he waited another seven days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him in the ark. In Noah’s six hundred and first year, on the first day of the first month, the waters were dried up from the earth. Noah lifted the hatch, looked out, and saw the dry ground. On the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the earth was dry. Then God said to Noah, “Come out of the ark, you and your wife, your sons, and their wives. Release all the animals with you and set them free—birds, animals large and small—every living thing. And they will multiply and abound and flourish on the earth and in the sky.” So Noah and his family left the ark; and every animal large and small, every bird and crawling thing came out of the ark by families. Noah erected an altar dedicated to YAHWEH. Then he selected ritually clean animals and birds of every species and offered them as burnt sacrifices on the altar. And when YAHWEH smelled the sweet fragrance of Noah’s offerings, his heart was stirred, and he said, “Never again will I curse the earth because of people, even though the imagination of their hearts are evil from their childhood; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done. I promise this: “As long as earth exists there will always be seasons of planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night.”