3 The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty daysq the water had gone down, 4 and on the seventeenth day of the seventh monthr the ark came to rest on the mountainss of Ararat.t 5 The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.

6 After forty daysu Noah opened a window he had made in the ark 7 and sent out a raven,v and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth.w 8 Then he sent out a dovex to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. 9 But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. 10 He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. 11 When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth.y 12 He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.

13 By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year,z the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. 14 By the twenty-seventh day of the second montha the earth was completely dry.