~ After the Flood ~

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

Then God said to Noah,
"Come out of the ark,
you and your wife and your sons and their wives.
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."

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

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.
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
from childhood.
And never again will I destroy all living creatures,
as I have done.

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

(Genesis 8:13-22)