Immerse: Beginnings Full Volume - Flipbook - Page 24
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IMMERSE
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BEGINNINGS
7:19–8:19
above the ground, the boat floated safely on the surface. Finally, the
water covered even the highest mountains on the earth, rising more than
twenty-two feet above the highest peaks. All the living things on earth
died—birds, domestic animals, wild animals, small animals that scurry
along the ground, and all the people. Everything that breathed and lived
on dry land died. God wiped out every living thing on the e arth—people,
livestock, small animals that scurry along the ground, and the birds of
the sky. All were destroyed. The only people who survived were Noah
and those with him in the boat. And the floodwaters covered the earth
for 150 days.
But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and livestock with
him in the boat. He sent a wind to blow across the earth, and the floodwaters began to recede. The underground waters stopped flowing, and the
torrential rains from the sky were stopped. So the floodwaters gradually
receded from the earth. After 150 days, exactly five months from the time
the flood began, the boat came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. Two
and a half months later, as the waters continued to go down, other mountain peaks became visible.
After another forty days, Noah opened the window he had made in the
boat and released a raven. The bird flew back and forth until the floodwaters on the earth had dried up. He also released a dove to see if the
water had receded and it could find dry ground. But the dove could find
no place to land because the water still covered the ground. So it returned
to the boat, and Noah held out his hand and drew the dove back inside.
After waiting another seven days, Noah released the dove again. This time
the dove returned to him in the evening with a fresh olive leaf in its beak.
Then Noah knew that the floodwaters were almost gone. He waited another seven days and then released the dove again. This time it did not
come back.
Noah was now 601 years old. On the first day of the new year, ten and
a half months after the flood began, the floodwaters had almost dried up
from the earth. Noah lifted back the covering of the boat and saw that the
surface of the ground was drying. Two more months went by, and at last
the earth was dry!
Then God said to Noah, “Leave the boat, all of y ou—you and your wife,
and your sons and their wives. Release all the a nimals—the birds, the livestock, and the small animals that scurry along the g round—so they can be
fruitful and multiply throughout the earth.”
So Noah, his wife, and his sons and their wives left the boat. And all of
the large and small animals and birds came out of the boat, pair by pair.
