The NIV Study Bible

genesis chapter viii

8:1 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded.

8:2 Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the rain had stopped falling from the sky.

8:3 The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down,

8:4 and on the seventeenth day the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.

8:5 The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.

8:6 After forty days Noah opened the window he had made in the ark

8:7 and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth.

8:8 Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground.

8:9 But the dove could find no place to set its feet because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so, it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark.

8:10 He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark.

8:11 When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth.

8:12 He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.

8:13 By the first day of the first month of Noah's six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry.

8:14 By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry.

8:15 Then God said to Noah,

8:16 "Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives.

8:17 Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you — the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground — so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number upon it."

8:18 So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons' wives.

8:19 All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds — everything that moves on the earth — came out of the ark, one kind after another.

8:20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it.

8:21 The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in His heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil form childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

8:22 "As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease."

Other Notes

verse 1 — God remembered Noah. Though He had not been mentioned since 7:16 or heard from 150 days (see 7:24), God had not forgotten Noah and his family. To "remember" in the Bible is often not merely to recall people to mind but to express concern for them, to act with loving care for them.

verse 4 — Ararat. The name is related to Assyrian Urartu, which became an extensive mountainous kingdom (see Jer 51:27) including much of the territory north of Mesopotamia and east of modern Turkey.

verse 11 — dove returned... in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf. Olives do not grow at high elevations, and the fresh leaf was a sign to Noah that the water had receded from the earth. The modern symbol of peace represented by a dove carrying an olive branch in its beak has its origin in this story.

verse 13 — first day of the first month of Noah's six hundred and first year. The date formula signals humankind's new beginning after the flood.

verse 14 — twenty-seventh day of the second month. More than a year after the flood began (see 7:11)

verse 21 — smelled the pleasing aroma. A figurative way of saying that the Lord took delight in Noah's offering.

cures the ground. Although the Hebrew here has a different word for "curse," the reference appears to be to the curse of 3:17. It may be that the Lord here pledged never to add curse upon curse as He had in regard to Cain (4:12)

even though every inclination of his heart is evil. Because of humanity's extreme wickedness, God had destroyed them by means of a flood. Although righteous Noah and his family had been saved, he and his offspring were descendants of Adam and carried in their heart the inheritance of sin. God graciously promises never again to deal with in by sending such a devastating deluge.

from childhood. The phrase replaces "all the time" in 6:5 and emphasizes the truth that sin infects a person's life from conception and birth (see Ps 51:5; 58:3).

verse 22 — Times and seasons, created by God in the beginning (see 1:14), will never cease till the end of history