Genesis 8:1-5
The waters go down
The wind passes over the earth and the account reverses its own opening, water giving way to land a second time.
Places of the Bible
The mountains of Ararat
The first solid ground in a world that had none, and the place where the waiting started.
The ark comes to rest on the mountains of Ararat, and the account is careful to say that resting is not the same as arriving. Months pass between the keel touching rock and the door opening. The tops of other mountains appear, a raven goes out and does not come back, a dove goes out and finds nowhere to land, and only on the third sending does it stay away for good. Ararat is where a year of water turns back into a world.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of The mountains of Ararat
- 01
- 02
Genesis 8:6-12
The raven and the dove
Three sendings and one olive leaf. The most famous image of hope in Scripture is a bird returning with proof of a tree.
- 03
Genesis 8:15-22
Go out
The door opens on an empty world. The first thing built on it is an altar.
Why it matters
Ararat is the hinge between judgment and covenant. Everything that happens on it happens slowly, which is unusual for an account that has just drowned a world in a few verses. The altar built here draws the first response of the new world, and the bow is set in the cloud over it.
3 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
