Bible Gateway passage: Genesis 8 - New King James Version (2024)

Noah’s Deliverance

8Then God ^(A)remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the animals that were with him in the ark. ^(B)And God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters subsided. ^2(C)The fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven were also ^(D)stopped, and ^(E)the rain from heaven was restrained. ³And the waters receded continually from the earth. At the end ^(F)of the hundred and fifty days the waters decreased. ⁴Then the ark rested in the seventh month, the seventeenth day of the month, on the mountains of Ararat. ⁵And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month. In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen.

⁶So it came to pass, at the end of forty days, that Noah opened ^(G)the window of the ark which he had made. ⁷Then he sent out a raven, which kept going to and fro until the waters had dried up from the earth. ⁸He also sent out from himself a dove, to see if the waters had receded from the face of the ground. ⁹But the dove found no resting place for the sole of her foot, and she returned into the ark to him, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took her, and drew her into the ark to himself. ¹⁰And he waited yet another seven days, and again he sent the dove out from the ark. ¹¹Then the dove came to him in the evening, and behold, a freshly plucked olive leaf was in her mouth; and Noah knew that the waters had receded from the earth. ¹²So he waited yet another seven days and sent out the dove, which did not return again to him anymore.

¹³And it came to pass in the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, that the waters were dried up from the earth; and Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and indeed the surface of the ground was dry. ¹⁴And in the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dried.

¹⁵Then God spoke to Noah, saying, ¹⁶“Go out of the ark, ^(H)you and your wife, and your sons and your sons’ wives with you. ¹⁷Bring out with you every living thing of all flesh that is with you: birds and cattle and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, so that they may abound on the earth, and ^(I)be fruitful and multiply on the earth.” ¹⁸So Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him. ¹⁹Every animal, every creeping thing, every bird, and whatever creeps on the earth, according to their families, went out of the ark.

God’s Covenant with Creation

²⁰Then Noah built an ^(J)altar to the Lord, and took of ^(K)every clean animal and of every clean bird, and offered ^(L)burnt offerings on the altar. ²¹And the Lord smelled ^(M)a soothing aroma. Then the Lord said in His heart, “I will never again ^(N)curse the ground for man’s sake, although the ^(O)imagination^[a] of man’s heart is evil from his youth; ^(P)nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done.

²²“While the earth ^(Q)remains,
Seedtime and harvest,
Cold and heat,
Winter and summer,
And ^(R)day and night
Shall not cease.”