1But 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. 2Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. 3The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, 4and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 5The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.
6After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark 7and sent out a raven, and it kept flying to and fro until the water had dried up from the earth. 8Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. 9But the dove could find nowhere to perch 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. 10He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. 11When 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. 12He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.
13By 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. 14By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry.
15Then God said to Noah, 16‘Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. 17Bring 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 on it.’
18So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. 19All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds – everything that moves on land – came out of the ark, one kind after another.
20Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. 21The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: ‘Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though8:21 Or humans, for every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.
22‘As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.’
8
1船の中のノアとすべての生き物を、神は心にかけていました。やがて神が風を吹きつけると、しだいに水は減り始めました。 2地下水も止まり、滝のように降っていた大雨も収まってきたようです。 3-4降り始めてから百五十日目に水は少しずつ引いていき、とうとう船はアララテ山の頂に止まりました。 5日に日に水位は下がり、三か月後にはほかの山々も姿を現し始めました。
6水が引き始めてから四十日目、ノアは天窓を開いて、 7からすを放しました。からすは、地面が乾くまであちこちを飛び回っていました。 8しばらくしてノアは、今度は鳩を放し、乾いた土地を捜させました。 9けれども鳩は下り立つ所が見つからず、ノアのもとへ帰って来ました。水がまだ全地を覆っていたからです。ノアは腕を伸ばし、鳩を船の中に入れました。
10それから七日後、ノアはまた鳩を飛ばしてみました。 11夕方ごろ戻った鳩を見ると、オリーブの若葉をくわえています。それで、水がかなり引いたことがわかりました。 12さらに一週間後にもう一度放してみると、鳩はそれきり戻りませんでした。
13そのあと、さらに三十日ほどたちました。ノアが船の屋根を取って外を見渡してみると、もう水は引いています。 14しんぼう強く、さらに八週間待つうちに、とうとう地面はすっかり乾きました。 15-16神はノアに言いました。「さあ、家族といっしょに外に出なさい。 17動物も鳥も地をはうものもみな出してやりなさい。それぞれ繁殖して、どんどん増えるようにするのだ。」 18-19それを待っていたように、ノアと妻と息子夫婦、それに動物たちはみな、その種類ごとに船から出ました。
20ノアはそこに主への祭壇を築き、神から指定された動物や鳥をささげ物としてささげました。 21神はそれを喜び、こう心に誓われました。「もう二度とこのようなことはしない。人間は子どもの時から悪い性質を持っていて、悪い考えを抱くものだ。わたしはもう、大地をのろって生き物を滅ぼすようなことは絶対にしない。 22大地がある限り、春の種まきと秋の収穫、暑さと寒さ、冬と夏、昼と夜とが、年ごとにくり返されるだろう。」
