Genesis 8
Big idea: The turn comes in three words: God remembered Noah. Not that he had forgotten — in Scripture remembering is God acting on a commitment — and what follows is creation replayed forward. A wind passes over the waters, as the Spirit once hovered; the deep is stopped; land appears; birds are sent out; the ground dries. Noah does not disembark until told, then builds an altar, and God, smelling the offering, says in his heart what amounts to the world's new lease: never again, while the earth remains, will seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night cease.
Chapter 8 ends with God's inward resolve never again to curse the ground for man's sake; chapter 9 turns that resolve outward into a spoken covenant with a visible sign — the bow in the cloud.
8:1–5 — God remembered Noah
God remembers Noah and every animal with him, and makes a wind pass over the earth so the waters subside. The fountains and the sky's windows are stopped, the rain restrained. After a hundred and fifty days the water recedes, the ark rests on the mountains of Ararat, and by the tenth month the mountaintops are visible.
1 God remembered Noah, all the animals, and all the livestock that were with him in the ship; and God made a wind to pass over the earth. The waters subsided. 2 The deep’s fountains and the sky’s windows were also stopped, and the rain from the sky was restrained. 3 The waters continually receded from the earth. After the end of one hundred fifty days the waters receded. 4 The ship rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on Ararat’s mountains. 5 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.
8:6–12 — A raven and three doves
Noah opens the window and begins to test the world outside. A raven goes back and forth. A dove finds no rest for her foot and returns to his hand. Seven days later she comes back at evening with a freshly plucked olive leaf. Seven days more, and she does not return at all.
6 At the end of forty days, Noah opened the window of the ship which he had made, 7 and he sent out a raven. It went back and forth, until the waters were dried up from the earth. 8 He himself sent out a dove to see if the waters were abated from the surface of the ground, 9 but the dove found no place to rest her foot, and she returned into the ship to him, 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. 10 He waited yet another seven days; and again he sent the dove out of the ship. 11 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. 12 He waited yet another seven days, and sent out the dove; and she didn’t return to him any more.
8:13–19 — Dry ground — and the word to go out
Noah removes the covering and sees that the surface of the ground is dry; by the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth is fully dried. Yet he waits. Only when God speaks — go out, you and your household, and bring every living thing with you — does he leave, and the creatures swarm out by families.
13 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 dry. 14 In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry. 15 God spoke to Noah, saying, 16 “Go out of the ship, you, your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives with you. 17 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 on the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply on the earth.” 18 Noah went out, with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives with him. 19 Every animal, every creeping thing, and every bird, whatever moves on the earth, after their families, went out of the ship.
8:20–22 — The altar and the never again
Noah's first recorded act on the new earth is an altar, and burnt offerings of every clean animal and bird. God smells the pleasant aroma and says in his heart: I will not again curse the ground for man's sake, though the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I strike every living thing again. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will not cease.
20 Noah built an altar to Yahweh, and took of every clean animal, and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. 21 Yahweh smelled the pleasant aroma. Yahweh 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. I will never again strike every living thing, as I have done. 22 While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night will not cease.”
Scripture text: World English Bible (public domain).