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LXX Genesis

Septuagint

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Chapter 8

1 And God remembered Noah, and all the wild beasts, and all the cattle, and all the birds, and all the reptiles that creep, as many as were with him in the ark, and God brought a wind upon the earth, and the water stayed. 2 And the fountains of the deep were closed up, and the flood-gates of heaven, and the rain from heaven was withheld. 3 And the water subsided, and went off the earth, and after one hundred and fifty days the water was diminished. 4 And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, on the mountains of Ararat. 5 And the water continued to decrease until the tenth month. And in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month, the heads of the mountains were seen.⁠ 6 And it happened after forty days Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made. 7 And he sent forth the raven to see if the water had ceased; and it went forth and did not return until the water was dried from the earth.⁠ 8 And he sent a dove after it to see if the water had ceased from the earth. 9 And the dove not having found rest for her feet, returned to him into the ark, because the water was on all the face of the earth, and he stretched out his hand and took her, and brought her to himself into the ark. 10 And having waited yet seven other days, he again sent forth the dove from the ark. 11 And the dove returned to him in the evening, and had a leaf of olive, a sprig in her mouth; and Noah knew that the water had ceased from the earth. 12 And having waited yet seven other days, he again sent forth the dove, and she did not return to him again any more. 13 And it happened in the six hundred and first year of the life of Noah, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the water subsided from the earth, and Noah opened the covering of the ark which he had made, and he saw that the water had subsided from the face of the earth. 14 And in the second month the earth was dried, on the twenty-seventh day of the month. 15 And the Lord God spoke to Noah, saying, 16 Come out from the ark, you and your wife and your sons, and your sons' wives with you. 17 And all the wild beasts as many as are with you, and all flesh both of birds and beasts, and every reptile moving upon the earth, bring forth with you: and increase and multiply upon the earth. 18 And Noah came forth, and his wife and his sons, and his sons' wives with him. 19 And all the wild beasts and all the cattle and every bird, and every reptile creeping upon the earth after their kind, came forth out of the ark. 20 And Noah built an altar to God, and took of all clean beasts, and of all clean birds, and offered a whole burnt offering upon the altar. 21 And the Lord God smelled a smell of sweetness, and the Lord God having considered, said,⁠ I will not any more curse the earth, because of the works of men, because the imagination of man is intently bent upon evil things from his youth, I will not therefore any more strike all living flesh as I have done. 22 All the days of the earth, seed and harvest, cold and heat, summer and spring, shall not cease by day or night.

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Compare Genesis 8:5 and LXX Genesis 8:5

Hebrew Bible · Septuagint

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Summary

Genesis 8 says that the mountains became visible on the first day of the tenth month as the flood ended. The Greek Septuagint changes this to the eleventh month, possibly to fix what the translator saw as a problem with the timing in the original text.

Passages

Genesis 8:5

Hebrew Bible
3 The waters kept receding steadily from the earth, so that they had gone down by the end of the 150 days. 4 On the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the ark came to rest on one of the mountains of Ararat. 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. 6 At the end of 40 days, Noah opened the window he had made in the ark 7 and sent out a raven; it kept flying back and forth until the waters had dried up on the earth.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Genesis

LXX Genesis 8:5

Septuagint
3 And the water subsided, and went off the earth, and after one hundred and fifty days the water was diminished. 4 And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, on the mountains of Ararat. 5 And the water continued to decrease until the tenth month. And in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month, the heads of the mountains were seen. 6 And it happened after forty days Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made. 7 And he sent forth the raven to see if the water had ceased; and it went forth and did not return until the water was dried from the earth.
300–201 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in LXX Genesis

References

"... Sometimes the changes to the original narrative are 'corrections' based on logical inferences arising from the translator's reading of the text. Such is the case in Genesis 8:5 which describes the scene as the waters of the flood abate ... The LXX translator has interpreted the verse to mean that the level of the water diminished throughout the whole of the tenth month before it reached the tops of the mountains - i.e., at the beginning of the eleventh - despite the fact that the Hebrew specifies that this took place a month earlier ..."
Robert J. V. Hiebert, Translation Technique in the Septuagint of Genesis and its Implications for the NETS Version (International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies, Vol. 33, 2000), 76–93.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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