⁶ After forty days^(A) Noah opened a window he had made in the ark ⁷ and sent out a raven,^(B) and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth.^{(C) 8} Then he sent out a dove^(D) 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.^{(E) 12} He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.