Free Bible Commentary
“Genesis 9:1-7”
Categories: Genesis“And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. The fear of you and the terror of you will be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky; with everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish of the sea, into your hand they are given. Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant. Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. Surely I will require your lifeblood; from every beast I will require it. And from every man, from every man’s brother I will require the life of man. Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man. As for you, be fruitful and multiply; populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it.’”
---End of Scripture verses---
Nahum Sarna submitted an astute introduction to the Flood epilogue (Genesis 9:1-17): “The destruction of the old world calls for the repopulation of the earth and the remedying of the ills that brought on the Flood. Society must henceforth rest on more secure moral foundations. New norms of human behavior must be instituted. At the same time, the haunting specter of a repetition of the cataclysm must be laid to rest, lest it have a paralyzing effect on human activity and impede all progress. The epilogue to the Flood narrative attends to these considerations. It divides clearly into two complementary parts, logically interconnected. Verses 1-7 deal with the renewal of the world, verses 8-17 with divine assurances. A key phrase frames each part: the first, ‘Be fertile and increase’ (vv. 1,7); the second, ‘I establish a covenant’ (vv. 9,17).”
“And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.” (verse 1) This is a repetition of the blessing that God gave to Adam and Eve in Genesis 1:28. The world did not have a population problem, it was destroyed because of pervasive wickedness. Population control is a constraint invented and imposed by humans. God has blessed mankind with a spacious and habitable earth and He wants us to proliferate and flourish upon it. As Adam is the father and Eve is “the mother of all the living” (Genesis 3:21), So Noah and his wife are the progenitors of the entire postdiluvian, human, family tree.
“The fear of you and the terror of you will be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky.” (verse 2) After the Lord told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, he went on to say, “and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” It is obvious that something drastically changed between human and animal interactions after the flood, because God informed Noah that He would not only give people dominion over lower creatures but would instill instinctual fear within the animal kingdom for their human superiors. This probably served as protection for people as they proliferated upon the earth, and also as a good self-defense mechanism for animals would now be hunted as prey for humans and their new omnivorous diet. I would certainly be afraid of anyone or anything that I thought would want to eat me!
“Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant.” (verse 3) The Lord didn’t explain why He allowed men to become meat-eaters after the Flood. Perhaps the nutrients in the vegetation were not as potent after the flood as they were before, or maybe vegetation sufficient for an exclusively vegetarian diet would be scarce in some locations. Whatever God’s reasoning may have been, He did not make eating animal meat a requirement but extended it as an option. He also specified that only the “moving thing” this is “alive” is suitable for food. Since the Lord condemned outright the eating of an animal while its lifeblood remained within it, He must be forbidding the eating of animals that are found dead— perished either by natural or other means.
“Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.” (verse 4) The eating of an animal while it was still alive, or the consuming of its blood, or any form of cruelty toward our furry or feathered friends is strictly forbidden. Nahum Sarna wrote, “This concession to human weakness” to eat animal flesh “is not a license for savagery.” He went on to write, “It might be thought that the eating of blood would be so naturally repulsive as not to require legal proscription, but the history of the subject discredits such a notion. The frequency with which the prohibition is repeated in the Torah legislation testifies to the attractiveness of the practice in ancient times. Its appeal lay in the premise, explicated in Leviticus 17:11,14 and Deuteronomy 12:23, that the blood constituted the life-essence. Consequently, popular thought had it that one could renew or reinforce one’s vitality through its absorption of blood. For this reason blood played an important role in the cults of the dead in the ancient world. In the Torah, however, precisely because blood is the symbol of life, it belongs to God alone, as does life itself. The legislation contained in the present verse…together with Leviticus 17:13 and Deuteronomy 12:24, forms the basis of the Jewish dietary laws governing the koshering of meat, the purpose of which is to ensure the maximum extraction of blood from the flesh before cooking.” (Nahum Sarna)
“Surely I will require your lifeblood; from every beast I will require it. And from every man, from every man’s brother I will require the life of man.” (verse 5) In verses 5-6 we have the Godly ordained, divine institution of capital punishment. If an animal killed a human or a man murdered another man, the Lord “required the life” of that animal or man. Notice God’s wording when He stated “from every man’s brother I will require the life of man.” All people are brothers and sisters in the human race. To kill another human being is to kill a member of the family. As Nahum Sarna astutely observed, “homicide is fratricide”.
“Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed…” (verse 6) “It is a human responsibility. The particle bet in Hebrew ba-’adam is here taken to indicate the instrument of punishment. Human institutions, a judiciary, must be established for the purpose. This requirement seeks to correct the condition of ‘lawlessness’ that existed prior to the Flood (6:11). The blood feud is eliminated, and murder is no longer a private affair between the killer and the family of the victim; it is a crime against society.” (Nahum Sarna)
And the ultimate reason why this is true is because, “in the image of God He made man.” “Murder is the supreme and capital crime because the dignity, sanctity, and inviolability of human life all derive from the fact that every human being bears the stamp of the divine Maker. The murderer may be put to death because his unspeakable act effaces the divine image in his victim and within himself as well, so that his own life forfeits its claim to inviolability.” (Nahum Sarna)
Please read Genesis 9:8-17 for tomorrow.
Have a great day!
- Louie Taylor
