1   God thought of Noah and all the wild animals and the cattle with him in the ark, and he made a wind pass over the earth, and the waters began to subside. 2   The springs of the abyss were stopped up, and so were the windows of the sky; the downpour from the skies was checked. 3   The water gradually receded from the earth, and by the end of a hundred and fifty days it had disappeared. 4   On the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark grounded on a mountain in Ararat. 5   The water continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains could be seen.

6   After forty days Noah opened the trap-door that he had made in the ark, 7   and released a raven to see whether the water had subsided, ^note but the bird continued flying to and fro until the water on the earth had dried up. 8   Noah waited for seven days, ^note and then he released a dove from the ark to see whether the water on the earth had subsided further. 9   But the dove found no place where she could settle, and so she came back

The flood and the tower of Babel to him in the ark, because there was water over the whole surface of the earth. Noah stretched out his hand, caught her and took her into the ark. 10   He waited another seven days and again released the dove from the ark. 11   She came back to him towards evening with a newly plucked olive leaf in her beak. Then Noah knew for certain that the water on the earth had subsided still further. 12   He waited yet another seven days and released the dove, but she never came back. 13   And so it came about that, on the first day of the first month of his six hundred and first year, the water had dried up on the earth, and Noah removed the hatch and looked out of the ark. The surface of the ground was dry.

14   By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the whole earth was dry. 15    16   And God said to Noah, ‘Come out of the ark, you and your wife, your sons and their wives. 17   Bring out every living creature that is with you, live things of every kind, bird and beast and every reptile that moves on the ground, and let them swarm over the earth and be fruitful and increase there.’ 18   So Noah came out with his sons, his wife, and his sons' wives. 19   Every wild animal, all cattle, every bird, and every reptile that moves on the ground, ^note came out of the ark by families. 20   Then Noah built an altar to the Lord. He took ritually clean beasts and birds of every kind, and offered whole-offerings on the altar. 21   When the Lord smelt the soothing odour, he said within himself, ‘Never again will I curse the ground because of man, however evil his inclinations may be from his youth upwards. I will never again kill every living creature, as I have just done.

   22   While the earth lasts
  seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,
  summer and winter, day and night,
  shall never cease.’

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