Noah's Ark

When the earth is filled with violence and every imagination of man's heart is only evil, God resolves to blot out what He has made. But Noah finds grace in the eyes of the LORD. Told to build an ark of gopher wood, Noah obeys in everything, gathering his family and two of every kind of living thing into the great vessel, and the LORD Himself shuts him in. Then the fountains of the deep break open, and the rain falls forty days and forty nights, until the waters prevail over all the earth.

At last God remembers Noah, and the waters begin to recede until the ark rests upon the mountains of Ararat. Noah sends out a raven, and then a dove, which returns with an olive leaf in her mouth -- a sign that the waters are abated. Stepping out onto dry ground, Noah builds an altar to the LORD, and God sets His bow in the cloud as the sign of an everlasting covenant: the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.