1 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 the
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 no place to set
its feet 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.

15 Then God said to Noah,

16 "Come out of the ark, you and your
wife and your sons and their wives.

17 Bring out every kind of living creature
that is with you-the birds, the animals,
and all the creatures that move along
the ground-so they can multiply on the
earth and be fruitful and increase in
number upon it."

18 So Noah came out, together with his
sons and his wife and his sons' wives.

19 All the animals and all the creatures
that move along the ground and all the
birds-everything that moves on the
earth-came out of the ark, one kind after
another.

20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord
and, taking some of all the clean
animals and clean birds, he sacrificed
burnt offerings on it.

21 The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma
and said in his heart: "Never again will I
curse the ground because of man, even
though every inclination of his heart is
evil from childhood. And never again will
I destroy all living creatures, as I have
done.

22 "As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter, day and night will
never cease."