The Great Flood

The waters receded continually until the tenth month. In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were visible.

At the end of forty days, Noah opened the window of the ship which he had made,

and he sent out a raven. It went back and forth, until the waters were dried up from the earth.

He himself sent out a dove to see if the waters were abated from the surface of the ground,

but the dove found no place to rest her foot, and she returned to him into the ship, for the waters were on the surface of the whole earth. He put out his hand, and took her, and brought her to him into the ship.

He waited yet another seven days; and again he sent the dove out of the ship.

The dove came back to him at evening and, behold, in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters were abated from the earth.

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

In the six hundred first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from the earth. Noah removed the covering of the ship, and looked. He saw that the surface of the ground was dried.

In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry.

God spoke to Noah, saying,

“Go out of the ship, you, and your wife, and your sons, and your sons’ wives with you.

Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh, including birds, livestock, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply on the earth.”

Noah went out, with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives with him.

Every animal, every creeping thing, and every bird, whatever moves on the earth, after their families, went out of the ship.

Noah built an altar to the LORD, and took of every clean animal, and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

The LORD smelled the pleasant aroma. The LORD said in his heart, “I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake because the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I ever again strike every living thing, as I have done.

While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night will not cease.”

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

The fear of you and the dread of you will be on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the sky. Everything that moves along the ground, and all the fish of the sea, are delivered into your hand.

Every moving thing that lives will be food for you. As I gave you the green herb, I have given everything to you.

But flesh with its life, that is, its blood, you shall not eat.

I will surely require your blood of your lives; at the hand of every animal I will require it. At the hand of man, even at the hand of every man’s brother, I will require the life of man.

Whoever sheds man’s blood, his blood will be shed by man, for God made man in his own image.

Be fruitful and multiply. Increase abundantly in the earth, and multiply in it.”