1 But God having remembered Noë, and all the living things, and all the beasts of burden, which were within the ark, moved a wind over the earth and the waters were undefended. 2 And the springs of the abyss were closed. and the portcullis of heaven, and the rains from heaven were held back. 3 And the waters returned away from the earth, going and returning; and they began to diminish after one-hundred fifty days.

4 And the ark rested in the tenth month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, on the mountains of Armenia.

5 And truly the waters went and dwindled after the tenth month; so in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the peaks of the mountains appeared. 6 And when forty days had passed, Noë opening a window of the ark, which he had made, sent a crow; 7 which left and did not return, until the waters of the earth were drained. 8 He sent likewise a dove after it, so it might see if already the waters over the face of the earth were held back. 9 When it did not discover where it could rest its feet, it returned to him in the ark; the waters indeed were over the whole earth; and he extended his hand, and he took it apprehended into the ark.

10 And having waited another seven days, again he sent the dove from the ark. 11 And it came to him in the evening, bearing in its mouth a living branch of an olive tree with leaves. Noë thus understood that the waters had been held back over the earth. 12 And he waited nevertheless another seven days; and sent the dove, which did not return again to him.

13 Consequently, in the six-hundred-and-first year, in the first month on th first day of the month, the waters over the earth were lessened: and Noë opened the roof of the ark, looked and saw that the top of the earth was dried up. 14 In the second month on the twenty-second day of the month the earth was dried up.

15 And God spoke to Noë, saying: 16 Go out from the ark, you and your wife, your sons and the wives of your sons with you. 17 Take out with you all the living things which are in your presence, out of all flesh as in the flying animals as in the beasts and all creeping animals which crawl over the earth and go into the earth: increase and multiply over it.

18 Therefore Noë went out, and his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives with him. 19 But likewise the living things, the beasts of burdens, and the creeping animlas which crawl upon the earth, according to their own kind, went out from the ark.

20 And Noë built an altar to God and taking from all the clean cattle and winged animals, he offered burnt offerings on an altar. 21 And God made fragrant the odor of sweetness, and said: By no means will I curse the earth further for the sake of men; for the inclination and thoughts of man’s heart are inclined to evil from his youth; therefore I will not kill all living things, as I did. 22 In every day of the earth, sowing and harvest times, cold and hot times, summer and winter, night and day, will not stop.

Linguistic notes

The last word of this chapter in Latin is requiescent which may be familiar to English speakers as the first word of the phrase, requiescat in pace—commonly translated rest in peace. I was a bit intrigued about this word, and it’s worth noting that Lewis and Short give two definitions for the verb requiresco, either “to rest one’s self, to rest, to repose” or as a more poetic sense (and then usually in a transitive sense), “to let rest, to stop, to stay to arrest.” 

This is a bit odd. I decided to check the Hebrew and Greek. In the Septuagingt, the corresponding verb is καταπαύω which corresponds to the second sense, ”to make to cease completely“ but also has senses about making to rest. (Wiktionary, which has become my default Greek lexicon, doesn’t actually include καταπαύω, so I had to infer it from κατα- and παύω. I suppose I could have stood up to get my Liddell and Scott.)

The Hebrew word here is יִשְׁבֹּתוּ which is intriguing in that its radical, שבת, might be familiar to those who recognize Hebrew letters and for those who don’t let me give a transliteration: “shabbath”. The proffered definitions from Wiktionary are: “to stop working, to rest” or “to go on strike.”

I have to imagine that Jerome was intentional in his choice of requiesco for the verb here, and I wonder if there’s a deeper theological meaning as well, that there will be no Sabbath for the Earth for the rest of its days.

Theological notes

I find the statement that “the inclination and thoughts of man’s heart are inclined to evil from his youth” to be an intriguing statement about the innateness of sin in human nature, and this combined with the concluding clause of that sentence, “therefore I will not kill all living things, as I did” to be perhaps the central theological fact of the flood narrative. Much as is the case with the story of the fall from grace in Genesis 3, it seems that here rather than viewing this as an historical narrative, the important thing is to look for what it says about humanity and our relationship with God. Here God, is acknowledging our sinful nature and declaring that despite it, He will not punish us with mass extinction (although it seems that humanity is perfectly eager to pursue mass self-extinction without God’s assistance).