7. and he released a raven. It flew back and forth until the waters dried off from the earth.
8. Then he released a dove, to see if the waters had lessened on the earth.
9. But the dove could find no place to perch, and it returned to him in the ark, for there was water over all the earth. Putting out his hand, he caught the dove and drew it back to him inside the ark.
10. He waited yet seven days more and again released the dove from the ark.
11. In the evening the dove came back to him, and there in its bill was a plucked-off olive leaf! So Noah knew that the waters had diminished on the earth.
12. He waited yet another seven days and then released the dove; but this time it did not come back.
13. In the six hundred and first year, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the water began to dry up on the earth. Noah then removed the covering of the ark and saw that the surface of the ground had dried.
14. In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry.
15. Then God said to Noah:
16. Go out of the ark, together with your wife and your sons and your sons’ wives.
17. Bring out with you every living thing that is with you—all creatures, be they birds or animals or crawling things that crawl on the earth—and let them abound on the earth, and be fertile and multiply on it.
18. So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives;
19. and all the animals, all the birds, and all the crawling creatures that crawl on the earth went out of the ark by families.
20. Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and choosing from every clean animal and every clean bird, he offered burnt offerings on the altar.
21. When the Lord smelled the sweet odor, the Lord said to himself: Never again will I curse the ground because of human beings, since the desires of the human heart are evil from youth; nor will I ever again strike down every living being, as I have done.