CHAPTER EIGHT

And then God remembered Noah and all the animals that were inside
the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth that the waters might subside.
The fountains of the deep were closed and the floodgates of heaven
	locked well,
and the rain from the heavens was withheld and the waters
	steadily fell
until at the end of one hundred and fifty days the ark sat,
in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day, on the mountains
	of Ararat.
And the waters continued receding until the tenth month was here;
and on the first day of the tenth month, the tops of the mountains
	began to appear.
After forty days, Noah released a raven, and it flew
back and forth until the waters dried off the earth. So that he knew
if the waters had abated, he sent a dove, but it found nowhere
to alight, as waters covered the whole earth. Putting forth his hand,
	she lit there,
and he  pulled her safely to him in the ark. In seven days, he sent her
	to seek
again dry land, and she returned at evening with a green olive leaf
	in her beak!
So Noah knew the waters had abated. Then he waited seven more days
and then he sent forth the dove again, but she never came back his way.
Noah removed the covering of the ark and he could see
that the surface of the ground had dried up and the land once more
	was free.
And then God spoke to Noah: "Go out of the ark and with you
take your family and each living thing of flesh you have there, too,
that they may abound on the earth, and be fruitful and  multiply."
And they all went out upon the earth whose surface now was dry.
Then Noah  built an alter to the Lord and offered holocausts 
	up to Him;
of every clean animal and bird he took and offered them.
When the Lord smelled the sweet odor, within His heart, He said:
"I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for his head
and heart are inclined to evil from his youth;  therefore, I
will never again destroy all life as I have done. Thereby,
as long as the earth will last, seed and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter, day and night, shall all continue,
	ne'er to cease."


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