Genesis 8:1-22

8:1 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and domestic animals that were with him in the ark. God caused a wind to blow over the earth and the waters receded. 8:2 The fountains of the deep and the floodgates of heaven were closed, and the rain stopped falling from the sky. 8:3 The waters kept receding steadily from the earth, so that they had gone down by the end of the 150 days. 8:4 On the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the ark came to rest on one of the mountains of Ararat. 8:5 The waters kept on receding until the tenth month. On the first day of the tenth month, the tops of the mountains became visible.

8:6 At the end of forty days, Noah opened the window he had made in the ark 8:7 and sent out a raven; it kept flying back and forth until the waters had dried up on the earth.

8:8 Then Noah sent out a dove to see if the waters had receded from the surface of the ground. 8:9 The dove could not find a resting place for its feet because water still covered the surface of the entire earth, and so it returned to Noah in the ark. He stretched out his hand, took the dove, and brought it back into the ark. 8:10 He waited seven more days and then sent out the dove again from the ark. 8:11 When the dove returned to him in the evening, there was a freshly plucked olive leaf in its beak! Noah knew that the waters had receded from the earth. 8:12 He waited another seven days and sent the dove out again, but it did not return to him this time.

8:13 In Noah’s six hundred and first year, in the first day of the first month, the waters had dried up from the earth, and Noah removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. 8:14 And by the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was dry.

8:15 Then God spoke to Noah and said, 8:16 “Come out of the ark, you, your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives with you. 8:17 Bring out with you all the living creatures that are with you. Bring out every living thing, including the birds, animals, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. Let them increase and be fruitful and multiply on the earth!”

8:18 Noah went out along with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives. 8:19 Every living creature, every creeping thing, every bird, and everything that moves on the earth went out of the ark in their groups.

8:20 Noah built an altar to the Lord. He then took some of every kind of clean animal and clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. 8:21 And the Lord smelled the soothing aroma and said to himself, “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, even though the inclination of their minds is evil from childhood on. I will never again destroy everything that lives, as I have just done.

8:22 “While the earth continues to exist,

planting time and harvest,

cold and heat,

summer and winter,

and day and night will not cease.”

Genesis 35:1-15

The Return to Bethel

35:1 Then God said to Jacob, “Go up at once to Bethel and live there. Make an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.” 35:2 So Jacob told his household and all who were with him, “Get rid of the foreign gods you have among you. Purify yourselves and change your clothes. 35:3 Let us go up at once to Bethel. Then I will make an altar there to God, who responded to me in my time of distress and has been with me wherever I went.”

35:4 So they gave Jacob all the foreign gods that were in their possession and the rings that were in their ears. Jacob buried them under the oak near Shechem 35:5 and they started on their journey. The surrounding cities were afraid of God, and they did not pursue the sons of Jacob.

35:6 Jacob and all those who were with him arrived at Luz (that is, Bethel) in the land of Canaan. 35:7 He built an altar there and named the place El Bethel because there God had revealed himself to him when he was fleeing from his brother. 35:8 (Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died and was buried under the oak below Bethel; thus it was named Oak of Weeping.)

35:9 God appeared to Jacob again after he returned from Paddan Aram and blessed him. 35:10 God said to him, “Your name is Jacob, but your name will no longer be called Jacob; Israel will be your name.” So God named him Israel. 35:11 Then God said to him, “I am the sovereign God. Be fruitful and multiply! A nation – even a company of nations – will descend from you; kings will be among your descendants! 35:12 The land I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you. To your descendants I will also give this land.” 35:13 Then God went up from the place where he spoke with him. 35:14 So Jacob set up a sacred stone pillar in the place where God spoke with him. He poured out a drink offering on it, and then he poured oil on it. 35:15 Jacob named the place where God spoke with him Bethel.

Genesis 35:2

35:2 So Jacob told his household and all who were with him, “Get rid of the foreign gods you have among you. Purify yourselves and change your clothes.

Genesis 28:17-18

28:17 He was afraid and said, “What an awesome place this is! This is nothing else than the house of God! This is the gate of heaven!”

28:18 Early in the morning Jacob took the stone he had placed near his head and set it up as a sacred stone. Then he poured oil on top of it.

Psalms 137:7

137:7 Remember, O Lord, what the Edomites did

on the day Jerusalem fell.

They said, “Tear it down, tear it down,

right to its very foundation!”

Jeremiah 49:7-22

Judgment Against Edom

49:7 The Lord who rules over all spoke about Edom.

“Is wisdom no longer to be found in Teman?

Can Edom’s counselors not give her any good advice?

Has all of their wisdom turned bad?

49:8 Turn and flee! Take up refuge in remote places,

you people who live in Dedan.

For I will bring disaster on the descendants of Esau.

I have decided it is time for me to punish them.

49:9 If grape pickers came to pick your grapes,

would they not leave a few grapes behind?

If robbers came at night,

would they not pillage only what they needed?

49:10 But I will strip everything away from Esau’s descendants.

I will uncover their hiding places so they cannot hide.

Their children, relatives, and neighbors will all be destroyed.

Not one of them will be left!

49:11 Leave your orphans behind and I will keep them alive.

Your widows too can depend on me.”

49:12 For the Lord says, “If even those who did not deserve to drink from the cup of my wrath must drink from it, do you think you will go unpunished? You will not go unpunished, but must certainly drink from the cup of my wrath. 49:13 For I solemnly swear,” says the Lord, “that Bozrah will become a pile of ruins. It will become an object of horror and ridicule, an example to be used in curses. All the towns around it will lie in ruins forever.”

49:14 I said, “I have heard a message from the Lord.

A messenger has been sent among the nations to say,

‘Gather your armies and march out against her!

Prepare to do battle with her!’”

49:15 The Lord says to Edom,

“I will certainly make you small among nations.

I will make you despised by all humankind.

49:16 The terror you inspire in others

and the arrogance of your heart have deceived you.

You may make your home in the clefts of the rocks;

you may occupy the highest places in the hills.

But even if you made your home where the eagles nest,

I would bring you down from there,”

says the Lord.

49:17 “Edom will become an object of horror.

All who pass by it will be filled with horror;

they will hiss out their scorn

because of all the disasters that have happened to it.

49:18 Edom will be destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah

and the towns that were around them.

No one will live there.

No human being will settle in it,”

says the Lord.

49:19 “A lion coming up from the thick undergrowth along the Jordan

scatters the sheep in the pastureland around it.

So too I will chase the Edomites off their land.

Then I will appoint over it whomever I choose.

For there is no one like me, and there is no one who can call me to account.

There is no ruler who can stand up against me.

49:20 So listen to what I, the Lord, have planned against Edom,

what I intend to do to the people who live in Teman.

Their little ones will be dragged off.

I will completely destroy their land because of what they have done.

49:21 The people of the earth will quake when they hear of their downfall.

Their cries of anguish will be heard all the way to the Gulf of Aqaba.

49:22 Look! Like an eagle with outspread wings,

a nation will soar up and swoop down on Bozrah.

At that time the soldiers of Edom will be as fearful

as a woman in labor.”