12. Seven days later he sent the dove out again. But this time it did not come back.
13. Noah was now 601 years old. It was the first day of the first month of that year. The water was dried up from the land. Noah removed the covering of the boat and saw that the land was dry.
14. By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the land was completely dry.
15. Then God said to Noah,
16. “You and your wife, your sons and their wives should go out of the boat.
17. Bring every animal out of the boat with you—the birds, animals and everything that crawls on the earth. Let them have many young ones and let them grow in number.”
18. So Noah went out with his sons, his wife and his sons’ wives.
19. Every animal, everything that crawls on the earth and every bird went out of the boat. They left by families.
20. Then Noah built an altar to the Lord. Noah took some of all the clean birds and animals. And he burned them on the altar as offerings to God.
21. The Lord was pleased with these sacrifices. He said to himself, “I will never again curse the ground because of human beings. Their thoughts are evil even when they are young. But I will never again destroy every living thing on the earth as I did this time.
22. “As long as the earth continues,there will be planting and harvest.Cold and hot,summer and winter,day and nightwill not stop.”