According to Genesis, what was Noah’s first recorded action after the Floodwaters receded?

According to Genesis, Noah first removed the Ark’s covering after the Floodwaters receded.

Genesis 8:13 says that in Noah’s six-hundred-and-first year, on the first day of the first month, he removed the covering of the Ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. The verse places this action before the command to leave the Ark. Noah had already sent out the raven and dove earlier, but removing the covering is the first action recorded at this later stage.

The chronology matters because the story describes several stages of discovering that the land was becoming habitable. The Ark rested on the mountains earlier, birds tested conditions, and only afterward did Noah uncover the vessel. Genesis 8:14 then says the earth was dry by the twenty-seventh day of the second month.

Readers sometimes answer “building an altar,” but that happens after Noah exits the Ark. “Releasing the raven” also belongs to an earlier point in the sequence. The precise textual answer is removing the Ark’s covering.