11. It returned in the evening, holding in its beak a green leaf from an olive tree. Noah knew that the water was finally going down.
12. He waited seven more days before sending the dove out again, and this time it did not return.
13. Noah was now six hundred and one years old. And by the first day of that year, almost all the water had gone away. Noah made an opening in the roof of the boat and saw that the ground was getting dry.
14. By the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the earth was completely dry.
15. God said to Noah,
16. “You, your wife, your sons, and your daughters-in-law may now leave the boat.
17. Let out the birds, animals, and reptiles, so they can mate and live all over the earth.”
18. After Noah and his family had gone out of the boat,
19. the living creatures left in groups of their own kind.
20. Noah built an altar where he could offer sacrifices to the Lord. Then he offered on the altar one of each kind of animal and bird that could be used for a sacrifice.
21. The smell of the burning offering pleased God, and he said:Never again will I punish the earth for the sinful things its people do. All of them have evil thoughts from the time they are young, but I will never destroy everything that breathes, as I did this time.
22. As long as the earth remains,there will be plantingand harvest,cold and heat;winter and summer,day and night.