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.