Genesis 8:13-19 - It took two months to empty the ark
 13 By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year, 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 month the earth was completely dry.Â
What are the dates in verses 13 and 14 above? I can tell you what you what they’re not. Verse 13 is not the date when the water had dried from the earth… it was the latest date at which the water dried from the earth. And verse 14? That is the latest date by which the earth was completely dry. As I wrote in Genesis 8:13-14 - The Flood was an Eye-Witness Account, the fuzziness of these dates is because they record when Noah made his observations. If Noah first looked outside the ark on the first day of the first month, and noticed the land around him was dry, then verse 13 is true. It is also possible that the earth was completely dry, but Noah could not know that… he was still in the mountains. Sure, the dove he sent out had never returned, but that only told him the waters had receded. Based on the raven, the land might still be wet.
In my opinion, the date in verse 13 is the date Noah left the ark, and the date in verse 14 is when Noah got through the mountains and first saw the lands to the south. The time elapsed was nearly two months.
 15 Then God said to Noah, 16 “Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. 17 Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground—so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number upon it.”Â
 18 So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. 19 All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on the earth—came out of the ark, one kind after another.
I think the reason it took nearly two months from the time Noah left the ark until he left the mountains is because he needed to get the animals from the ark, to outside the mountains. Why did this take so long? After all, it only took seven days to load them in. Well, Noah had help getting them in. Remember, God brought the animals to Noah. All he had to do was get them through the ark door… and I suppose show them to their room. However, God said nothing about helping get the animals back to their land… and the account says nothing of it either. This means Noah and his family had to do it on their own. I can easily see that taking two months.
If you look at verse 19, it might seem every kind of animal in the world was released from the ark. It says “everything that moves on the earth”. However, verse 17 actually confirms our context. “Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you.” There were animals in the world besides those on the ark, but they were not with Noah. God was only talking about those animals that were with Noah. Therefore, verse 19 is constrained by the animals that were with Noah.
But what about those words in verse 19, “everything that moves on the earth.” It says “everything” doesn’t it? Yes, but it also says “the earth”, and in context it is referring to the land God flooded, which you should recall was the land that people had filled with evil (i.e., the land south of the mountains of Ararat) and whatever other land would be impacted by that flood. Far from establishing a global flood, verse 19 is constrained by our established context of a local flood. It is the animals from that land that Noah rescued, and that land to which they were returned.
I wonder how Noah got the animals out of the mountains. Did someone escort each animal, one at a time? A few a time? That’s my guess. I doubt they could have herded them all at once. How far do you suppose the animals were escorted? I think they were escorted or herded all the way out of the mountains. But then why would it take two months to notice the land was completely dry? I think the reason is because Noah was coordinating things from the ark. I think his sons were most likely escorting the animals. Another possibility is that they found a path leading the rest of the way, and for expediency’s sake, they only led the animals that far before going back. Whatever the reason, I believe it was only after that was done that Noah and his family left the mountains of Ararat for good. That is when Noah realized the lands were completely dry.