8:1 But God remembered1 Noah and all the living creatures and animals that were with him in the ark. God2 caused a wind3 to pass over the earth and the waters receded. 8:2 The fountains of the deep and the floodgates of heaven had been closed4 and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. 8:3 And the waters kept receding steadily5 from off the earth, so that they6 had gone down7 by the end of the hundred and fifty days. 8:4 So on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest8 on the mountains of Ararat. 8:5 The waters9 kept on receding10 until the tenth month; and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains could be seen.11
8:6 At the end of forty days,12 Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made,13 8:7 and sent out a raven; it kept flying14 back and forth until the waters had dried up on the earth.
8:8 Then he sent out a dove15 to see if the waters had abated16 from the surface of the ground. 8:9 But the dove could not find a resting place17 for its feet, because water still covered18 the surface of the entire earth, and so it returned to Noah19 in the ark. He stretched out his hand and took the dove20 and brought it in to himself into the ark. 8:10 He waited seven more days and then sent out the dove again21 from the ark. 8:11 When22 the dove returned to him in the evening, there was23 a freshly plucked olive leaf in its beak! And so Noah knew that the waters had abated from the earth. 8:12 He waited24 seven more days and sent the dove out again,25 but it did not return to him again26 anymore.
8:13 In the six hundred and first year in the first day of the first month27 the waters had dried up from on the earth, and Noah removed the covering from the ark and saw that28 the surface of the ground was dry. 8:14 And by the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth29 was dry.
8:15 Then God spoke to Noah, saying, 8:16 “Go out from the ark, you and your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives with you. 8:17 Bring out with you every kind of living creature that is with you—all flesh, birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth—that they may increase30 in the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.”
8:18 So Noah went out together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. 8:19 Every living creature, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth, went out of the ark in their groups.31
8:20 Noah built32 an altar to the LORD. He then took some of all the clean animals and some of all the clean birds and offered burnt offerings on the altar.33 8:21 And the LORD smelled the soothing aroma,34 and said35 in his heart, “I will never again curse36 the ground because of mankind, for37 the inclination of their hearts38 is evil from their39 childhood; and I will never again destroy everything that lives as I have done.