創世記8:1-14

8:1 上帝記念挪亞和挪亞方舟裡的一切走獸牲畜。上帝叫風吹地，水勢漸落。
8:2 淵源和天上的窗戶都閉塞了，天上的大雨也止住了。
8:3 水從地上漸退。過了一百五十天，水就漸消。
8:4 七月十七日，方舟停在亞拉臘山上。
8:5 水又漸消，到十月初一日，山頂都現出來了。
8:6 過了四十天，挪亞開了方舟的窗戶，
8:7 放出一隻烏鴉去；那烏鴉飛來飛去，直到地上的水都乾了。
8:8 他又放出一隻鴿子去，要看看水從地上退了沒有。
8:9 但遍地上都是水，鴿子找不著落腳之地，就回到方舟挪亞那裡，挪亞伸手把鴿子接進方舟來。
8:10 他又等了七天，再把鴿子從方舟放出去。
8:11 到了晚上，鴿子回到他那裡，嘴裡叼著一個新擰下來的橄欖葉子，挪亞就知道地上的水退了。
8:12 他又等了七天，放出鴿子去，鴿子就不再回來了。
8:13 到挪亞六百零一歲，正月初一日，地上的水都乾了。挪亞撤去方舟的蓋觀看，便見地面上乾了。
8:14 到了二月二十七日，地就都乾了。

But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. ² Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. ³ The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, ⁴ and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. ⁵ The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.

⁶ After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark ⁷ and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. ⁸ Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. ⁹ But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. ¹⁰ He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. ¹¹ When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. ¹² He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.
¹³ By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. ¹⁴ By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry.

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    「鴿子回到他那裡，嘴裡叼著一個新擰下來的橄欖葉子」，這樣的畫面對我們來說是時分熟悉的，因為有許多的賀年遍或卡片，常常會畫一隻鴿子嘴巴叼著一根橄欖葉，尤其是白鴿咬著綠葉，特別有美感。

    然而為何有許多的圖案會如此表現呢？因為這是要向世人宣告一個新天地的開始，因為洪水已退了，過去的一切已經不存在了，要迎接一個新的開始！而這樣的一個新天地的開始，是建立在「上帝記念挪亞和挪亞方舟裡的一切走獸牲畜」的基礎上，表示上帝是多麼的眷顧這些餘種。

    同樣，今日上帝保護守基督徒如同餘種，也要將新天新地的盼望放在這一群人的心中。這群人必定看見「鴿子回到他那裡，嘴裡叼著一個新擰下來的橄欖葉子」，因為上帝透過聖經將自己的心意顯明出來了！