11. This time the dove returned to him in the evening with a fresh olive leaf in its beak. Then Noah knew that the floodwaters were almost gone.
12. He waited another seven days and then released the dove again. This time it did not come back.
13. Noah was now 601 years old. On the first day of the new year, ten and a half months after the flood began, the floodwaters had almost dried up from the earth. Noah lifted back the covering of the boat and saw that the surface of the ground was drying.
14. Two more months went by, and at last the earth was dry!
15. Then God said to Noah,
16. “Leave the boat, all of you—you and your wife, and your sons and their wives.
17. Release all the animals—the birds, the livestock, and the small animals that scurry along the ground—so they can be fruitful and multiply throughout the earth.”
18. So Noah, his wife, and his sons and their wives left the boat.
19. And all of the large and small animals and birds came out of the boat, pair by pair.
20. Then Noah built an altar to the lord, and there he sacrificed as burnt offerings the animals and birds that had been approved for that purpose.
21. And the lord was pleased with the aroma of the sacrifice and said to himself, “I will never again curse the ground because of the human race, even though everything they think or imagine is bent toward evil from childhood. I will never again destroy all living things.
22. As long as the earth remains, there will be planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night.”