Leaving the Ark
A year and eleven days later the earth is dry, and Noach, his family and all the animals step out onto an empty world to begin again.
«In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry.» From 17 Cheshvan 1656 to 27 Cheshvan 1657 is a year and eleven days — exactly one solar year, since a lunar year falls eleven days short. The commentators note the arithmetic, and it closes the Flood into a full circle of time.
A telling detail: Noach does not leave on his own. The ground is dry, yet he waits until he is told, «Go out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons' wives; bring out every living thing with you, that they may swarm on the earth and be fruitful and multiply.» Only then is the door opened.
The world they step into is empty — eight people and the animals. Noach's first act is to build an altar and offer thanks, and God says in His heart: «I will not again curse the ground because of man, for the inclination of man's heart is evil from his youth.» The very reason the Flood came now becomes an argument for mercy. Then the promise of order: seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall never cease.