Genesis 8: The waters go down, and Noah leaves the ship

In plain English: God remembered Noah, and all the wild animals and livestock that were with him in the ship. God sent a wind over the earth, and the waters went down.

In plain English: The springs of the deep and the windows of the sky were closed, and the rain from the sky was held back.

In plain English: The waters went steadily down from the earth. At the end of 150 days the waters had gone down.

In plain English: In the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ship came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.

Good to know: The verse says "the mountains of Ararat": a land with mountains, not one single peak. Elsewhere the Bible speaks of "the land of Ararat" (2 Kings 19:37), which the dictionary places in Armenia.

In plain English: The waters kept going down until the tenth month. On the first day of the tenth month, the tops of the mountains could be seen.

In plain English: At the end of forty days, Noah opened the window he had made in the ship,

In plain English: and he sent out a raven. It went back and forth until the waters had dried up from the earth.

In plain English: Then he sent out a dove, to see whether the waters had gone down from the face of the ground,

In plain English: but the dove found no place to rest her foot, and she came back to him in the ship, because water still covered the whole earth. He reached out his hand, took her, and brought her back into the ship.

In plain English: He waited another seven days, and again he sent the dove out of the ship.

In plain English: The dove came back to him in the evening, and there in her beak was a freshly picked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters had gone down from the earth.

In plain English: He waited another seven days and sent out the dove again, and this time she did not come back to him.

In plain English: In the 601st year, on the first day of the first month, the waters had dried up from the earth. Noah removed the covering of the ship and looked, and he saw that the face of the ground was dry.

In plain English: On the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the earth was dry.

Good to know: The flood began on the seventeenth day of the second month, in Noah's 600th year (7:11). The earth is dry on the twenty-seventh day of the second month of the next year: a year and ten days later.

In plain English: God spoke to Noah and said,

In plain English: "Go out of the ship, you and your wife, your sons, and your sons' wives with you.

In plain English: Bring out with you every living thing of all flesh that is with you: birds, livestock, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, so that they may breed in great numbers on the earth, be fruitful, and multiply on the earth."

In plain English: So Noah went out, with his sons, his wife, and his sons' wives.

In plain English: Every animal, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth, went out of the ship, family by family.

In plain English: Noah built an altar to Yahweh. He took some of every clean animal and every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

In plain English: Yahweh smelled the pleasing aroma, and Yahweh said in his heart, "I will never again curse the ground because of man, because (or: even though) the plans of the human heart are evil from youth. I will never again strike down every living thing, as I have done.

Good to know: The small Hebrew word translated "because" (ki) can also mean "even though".

What changes: Read as "even though", Yahweh promises not to curse the ground again in spite of the evil in people's hearts, instead of giving that evil as his reason.

In plain English: As long as the earth lasts, planting time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night will not stop."