8:20 offered burnt offerings. Noah thus sacrificed what amounted to one-seventh of his flocks and herds of domestic animals, a real act of thanksgiving and faith on his part. The world was far more forbidding in aspect than when they had entered the ark: rugged and desolate, cold and stormy, barren and silent. It had been purged and cleansed of its wicked and violent inhabitants, however, and God had preserved His remnant through the awful cataclysm, so this was a service of both great praise and earnest petition.

8:21 not again curse. The promise of God, given in response to Noah’s sacrificial prayer of thanksgiving and intercession, is tremendous in scope. He would never again “curse the ground” with a worldwide curse as He had done following Adam’s sin. The Edenic curse is still in effect, of course, but there would be no other. Noah had, indeed, brought “comfort” to the world concerning “the ground which the LORD had cursed” (Genesis 5:29).

8:21 every living thing. Neither would God ever again bring a worldwide cataclysm to the earth as He had with the Flood.