The Waters Recede
1But God remembered Noah, and every wild animal and all the livestock that were with him in the ark, and God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters began to subside. 2The springs of the deep and the floodgates of the sky were closed, and the rain from the sky was held back. 3The waters steadily receded from the earth, and by the end of one hundred and fifty days they had gone down. 4On the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 5The waters continued to recede until the tenth month; on the first day of the tenth month, the tops of the mountains became visible. 6After forty days, Noah opened the window he had made in the ark 7and sent out a raven, which kept flying back and forth until the waters had dried up from the earth. 8Then he sent out a dove, to see whether the waters had receded from the surface of the ground. 9But the dove found no place to rest its foot, and it returned to him in the ark, because water still covered the whole earth. So he reached out and took it and brought it back into the ark. 10He waited seven more days and again sent the dove out from the ark. 11The dove came back to him in the evening, and there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters had receded from the earth. 12He waited seven more days and sent out the dove, and this time it did not return to him again. 13In the six hundred and first year, on the first day of the first month, the waters had dried up from the earth. Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and indeed, the surface of the ground was dry. 14By the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the earth was completely dry.
Noah Leaves the Ark
15Then God said to Noah, 16“Come out of the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons’ wives with you. 17Bring out with you every living creature that is with you — birds, livestock, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth — so that they can multiply on the earth, be fruitful, and increase in number on the earth.” 18So Noah came out, together with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives. 19Every wild animal, every creeping thing, and every bird — everything that moves on the earth — came out of the ark, one kind after another. 20Noah built an altar to Yahweh, and taking some of every kind of clean animal and clean bird, he offered burnt offerings on the altar. 21Yahweh smelled the pleasing aroma and said to himself, “Never again will I curse the ground because of humankind, even though the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth. And never again will I destroy every living creature, as I have done. 22As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.”
