The Great Flood

The water kept going down until the tenth month; on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains were seen.

After forty days Noach opened the window of the ark which he had built;

and he sent out a raven, which flew back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth.

Then he sent out a dove, to see if the water had gone from the surface of the ground.

But the dove found no place for her feet to rest, so she returned to him in the ark, because the water still covered the whole earth. He put out his hand, took her and brought her in to him in the ark.

He waited another seven days and again sent the dove out from the ark.

The dove came in to him in the evening, and there in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf, so Noach knew that the water had cleared from the earth.

He waited yet another seven days and sent out the dove, and she didn’t return to him any more.

By the first day of the first month of the 601st year the water had dried up from off the earth; so Noach removed the covering of the ark and looked; and, yes, the surface of the ground was dry.

It was on the twenty-seventh day of the second month that the earth was dry.

God said to Noach,

“Go out from the ark, you, your wife, your sons and your son’s wives with you.

Bring out with you every living thing you have with you — birds, livestock and every animal that creeps on the earth — so that they can swarm on the earth, be fruitful and multiply on the earth.”

So Noach went out with his sons, his wife and his sons’ wives;

every animal, every creeping thing and every bird, whatever moves on the earth, according to their families, went out of the ark.

Noach built an altar to Adonai. Then he took from every clean animal and every clean bird, and he offered burnt offerings on the altar.

Adonai smelled the sweet aroma, and Adonai said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, since the imaginings of a person’s heart are evil from his youth; nor will I ever again destroy all living things, as I have done.

So long as the earth exists, sowing time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night will not cease.”

God blessed Noach and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth.

The fear and dread of you will be upon every wild animal, every bird in the air, every creature populating the ground, and all the fish in the sea; they have been handed over to you.

Every moving thing that lives will be food for you; just as I gave you green plants before, so now I give you everything —

only flesh with its life, which is its blood, you are not to eat.

I will certainly demand an accounting for the blood of your lives: I will demand it from every animal and from every human being. I will demand from every human being an accounting for the life of his fellow human being.

Whoever sheds human blood, by a human being will his own blood be shed; for God made human beings in his image.

And you people, be fruitful, multiply, swarm on the earth and multiply on it.”