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God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark. God sent a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters began to subside. 2 The fountains of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens were closed, and the rain stopped falling from the sky. 3 The water steadily receded from the earth, until by the end of a hundred and fifty days the waters had gone down, 4 and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the 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 he sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the waters had dried up from the earth.
8 Then he sent out a dove to see if the waters had receded from off the surface of the ground, 9 but the dove could find no resting place for her foot. So she returned to him in the ark because water still covered the surface of the whole earth. He reached out his hand, and took the dove and brought her back into the ark to himself.
10 So Noah waited seven more days and sent out the dove from the ark again. 11 When the dove came back to him in the evening, there was a freshly plucked olive leaf in her beak. Then Noah knew that the waters had receded from the earth. 12 Then he waited another seven days and sent out the dove, but she did not return to him again.
13 In the six hundred and first year, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the waters had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering of 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 dry.
15 Then God said to Noah, 16 “Come out of the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons’ wives with you. 17 Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and every creature that crawls along the ground—so they can spread over the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on it.”
18 So Noah came out, along with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. 19 All the animals and all the creatures that crawl along the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on the earth—came out of the ark by their groups.
20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and taking some of every clean kind of animal and every kind of clean bird, he sacrificed burnt offerings on the altar.
21 When the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, He said in His heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, even though the inclination of man’s heart is evil from his youth. And never again will I destroy every living creature as I have done.
22 “As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will not cease.”