Genesis 8:21

Plain English Version

God smelled the meat cooking on that stone table, and he was happy. Then God said to himself, “People always just want to do bad things. They do that all their lives, from when they are little kids, right up until the time they die. But I will never again punish them the same way that I did this time. I will never again finish up everything that breathes air, and I will never again curse the earth. While the earth is still here, the seasons will stay the same. There will always be day and night, and every year there will be a hot time and a cold time, a wet season and a dry season. There will always be a right time to plant seeds for food, and a right time to get the food from those plants.”

Cross References

Genesis 3:17

Then God said to the man, “I told you not to eat any fruit from one of the trees in the middle of the garden, but you listened to your wife, and you ate that fruit. So I will curse the ground and make it bad for you. It will never be easy for you to get your food from the plants in the ground any more. The ground will have lots of rubbish plants and prickles in it.

Genesis 4:12

If you try to grow plants in the ground, nothing will grow for you. You will go away from me. And you will walk around in lots of places, but you will not have a home.”

Genesis 5:29

He named his son Noah. That name means help people be happy. Lamek said, “God cursed the ground, so we have to work really hard to dig the ground, but Noah will help us be happy, even though we have to work really hard.”

Genesis 6:13

So God said to Noah, “Look, everyone is doing bad things and hurting each other. I’m going to kill everyone, and I will finish up everything on the earth.”

Genesis 6:17

You see, soon I will bring a lot of flood water, and it will cover the earth, and everything that is on the earth will die. Everything that breathes air will die, wherever they live.

Genesis 6:5

God looked at the people on the earth, and he saw them doing lots of bad things. He knew the way they were thinking. They were thinking bad things all the time. God saw that the people were very bad.

Genesis 6:7

And God said, “These people keep on doing bad things, and that makes me really sad. I’m sorry that I made them. I’m sorry I made everything on the earth. I want to finish up everything. I want to kill all the people I made, and I want to kill all the animals on earth, the big animals, and the little animals, and even the animals that crawl around on the ground, and I want to kill all the birds that fly in the sky.”

John 3:6

You see, everybody is born from a human mother, that’s how our bodies get life. But if people get born again from God’s Holy Spirit, then the Holy Spirit gives new life to their spirits too.

Romans 1:21

The trouble was this. Even though people could work that out about God, they really didn’t want to know him. They didn’t want to say to him, “Thank you, you really are the true God.” They couldn’t think properly about him. They could only think in stupid ways. They didn’t understand anything.

Romans 3:23

We all went the wrong way, and we did bad things. Nobody is properly good, like God wants us to be.

Ephesians 5:2

Always love other people, just like Jesus Christ loves us. He loved us so much that he took our payback, and he died instead of us. You know how people used to kill animals and burn them, to give them to God, for the good smell to make him happy. Well, just like those animals, Jesus died. When Jesus died, he gave himself to God. Jesus did that because he loved you. So you have to love other people too.

Philippians 4:18

But right now I have everything I need, and even more than I need. You are so good to me. You gave lots of money and things to Epafroditus to bring to me. But you didn’t only give them to me. You gave them to God. They are the right sort of gift, a really nice one, so he is very happy.

1 Samuel 26:19

Listen carefully to me. Did God tell you to hate me? If yes, then I have to burn meat to give to him, so he will change his mind. But maybe it was some other men that told you to hate me? They hunted me away from my people, so God has to punish them. They don’t let me live in my country. I’m like a stranger. I have to live in another country now. The people there follow other gods. I can’t live for God properly.