9:1–7 Just as God blessed Adam and Eve and the original creation with the command “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (1:28), so now that blessing is repeated for Noah and his family (9:1). In some of ancient Near Eastern flood accounts, such as the Atrahasis epic, human overpopulation and noise pollution were the reasons that the gods sent the flood in the first place. As a result, after the flood the gods imposed barrenness, miscarriages, and singleness on mankind to prevent a recurrence of the problem.149 Utnapishtim, the Noah figure, was rewarded with eternal life and removed from the challenges of everyday survival. Israel’s God, on the other hand, is profoundly pro-life and in favor of human flourishing; he calls the gift of children a blessing to be celebrated, not a nuisance to be avoided (Ps. 127:3–4; cf. Matt. 19:14). Noah’s own sons and grandchildren are a particular blessing since it is through one of them that the promised seed of the woman must come (Gen. 3:15). God also calls his representatives to get their hands dirty in the task of culture building rather than separating themselves in safe ghettos, away from the problems of everyday life.

However, whereas Adam and Eve had been granted uncomplicated dominion over the lower orders of creation (1:28) in a world in which there was not yet any fear, from now on the animals and birds will fear humans (9:2). These creatures will now learn the need to keep their distance from people, which is ironic and sad since they have so recently survived the flood thanks to contact with Noah and his family. However, that same fear will keep Noah and his descendants safer from potential attacks by wild animals. Creation looks forward longingly to the day when that distance will be closed and friendship between humanity and wild animals—even potentially dangerous ones—will finally be restored (cf. Isa. 11:6–9; Mark 1:13).

One reason for that fear among the animals and birds is the fact that from now on animals, birds, and fish will serve as food for humans (Gen. 9:3). Previously, it appears, humans (and perhaps animals) ate a primarily vegetarian diet (cf. 1:29–30), though it should be noted that those verses describe the pre-fall state of the world. Abel’s offering (and indeed the provision of clothing for humanity; 3:21; 4:4) suggests that meat was not entirely off the menu prior to the flood. Nonetheless, here God’s permission for man to eat a broad diet is made explicit (9:3).

One single restriction is applied to potential food sources: humans must not eat “flesh with its life, that is, [the] blood” (v. 4). It is striking that there is no reference here to clean and unclean animals; this distinction awaits the Mosaic covenant, although the principle that only certain animals may be sacrificed is already known to Noah (cf. 7:2; 8:20). Nor is it simply blood that is prohibited as food but “flesh with its life.” This suggests that the symbolic role of blood as representing the vitality of the animal is significant; partaking of that fresh blood is thought of not simply as tasty or nutritious but explicitly as a way of absorbing that life-essence. The consumption of blood formed part of certain religious rituals in the ancient world, which is one reason the consumption of blood is utterly forbidden in the Pentateuch.150 The blood, representing the life, belongs to God alone, since he gave it in the first place, and it is to be returned to God by pouring out the blood either on an altar or on the ground (cf. Lev. 1:5; Deut. 12:16). This principle lies behind accepting the blood of each sacrificial animal as representing its life.

If the life of animals is to be treated with respect by regarding their blood as requiring special treatment, how much more special is the blood of a human being? The shedding of human blood requires an accounting, whether by an animal or by another person (Gen. 9:5). In the case of domestic animals that causes a human death, they are to be put to death (cf. Ex. 21:28); it is plausible that wild animals that killed a person would also have been hunted down, although there is no explicit record of such. Ultimately, whether or not the animal is found and put to death, God himself is the judge who will call that animal to account.

The same principle is true in the case of human murder:151 justice for the dead person requires a commensurate payment with the life of the guilty party. The chiastic structure of the sentence underlines the appropriateness of the judgment: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed” (Gen. 9:6). Murder is an assault on the image of God in man, and therefore a form of sacrilege, as well as being an assault on one’s brother (“fellow man,” 9:5, is in Hb. “his brother,” recalling Cain’s murder of Abel). It is a crime not merely against a fellow human being, or even against society, but against God, which means that God is a plaintiff in every murder case, demanding an accounting from the guilty party. Capital punishment, rightly administered,152 is pro-life, inasmuch as it acknowledges the value of the life that has been taken. Given the explosion of violence immediately prior to the flood and the fact that humanity at its core has not been changed, these verses address a foundational element in a just society. The section is then rounded off with an inclusio that repeats the opening command: “Be fruitful and multiply,” which is the opposite of murdering one’s brother.

9:8–17 God previously established his covenant with Noah in Genesis 6:18 (cf. comment on 6:13–22), though few details were given at that point. The word “covenant” (Hb. berit) occurs seven times in 9:8–17, highlighting its centrality in this passage. God here reestablishes his covenant with Noah and his sons, as well as with the rest of creation, with explicit application for the future. This universal aspect of the covenant with Noah as being a covenant with all creation distinguishes it from subsequent biblical covenants made only “with you and your seed/offspring” (e.g., 17:7). Although different covenants focus on different aspects of life, they are all part of the single eternal covenant (berit ʿolam; 9:16; cf. Heb. 13:20) between God and man.

Ancient Near Eastern covenants were always sovereignly decreed by the suzerain, and God’s covenants are no exception: it is God’s covenant, and he determines with whom he will enter covenant and the terms of that covenant. The human responsibility is simply to submit and accept those terms and conditions or suffer the consequences. In this case, unlike the Sinai covenant, there are no conditions imposed on humanity; God is solemnly and unilaterally binding himself never153 to repeat the judgment of the flood and destroy the earth once more.

It is customary for biblical covenants to have signs attached to them; for example, the Abrahamic covenant has the sign of circumcision (Gen. 17:11). These signs serve as visible and tangible reminders to the parties of the agreement that has been made (cf. Rom. 4:11). In this case the sign is that the Lord has hung his bow (qeshet) in the sky as a symbol that it is no longer drawn and pointed toward humanity in judgment (Gen. 9:12–17). In a similar manner, in the Babylonian creation narrative, after the conflict between the gods, Marduk’s bow was hung in the sky, although in that case as a constellation of stars rather than as a rainbow.154 In Noah’s case the rainbow becomes a perpetual symbol of peace that is all the more relevant because it occurs in the context of storm clouds that remind observers of the power of God’s wrath (cf. Ezek. 1:28). It is not necessary to suppose that the rainbow was a new element in the world after the flood, just as circumcision was not a newly invented ritual when Abraham was instructed to use it as a sign, nor were Israelite sacrifices unknown to their neighbors; God frequently takes up existing elements of human cultures (placed there sovereignly by his own direction) and invests them with new, redemptive significance.155 What is significant is that this is a sign that only God can put in place, unlike signs such as circumcision, baptism, or the Lord’s Supper, highlighting the fact that it is God alone who is bound by this covenant.

The rainbow is thus not merely a comforting reminder to humanity of God’s promise; it is a reminder to the Lord himself (Gen. 9:15). This is not because God could forget something. Rather, it represents God’s commitment to act according to all that he has promised in the covenant. The need for such a memorial is a regular testimony to man that God would be perfectly justified in once again bringing comprehensive judgment upon the world, since human wickedness continues unchecked (8:21), but he tempers his judgment with mercy—for now. The day will come, of course, when he will consume the heavens and the earth in a mighty conflagration that will usher in the fullness of new creation (cf. 2 Pet. 3:7).

9:18–29 The text now shifts in focus from Noah to his sons, preparing the way for the table of nations in Genesis 10, which will define the relationships between the various nations of Israel’s world. Shem, Ham, and Japheth have been named as Noah’s sons several times before (Gen. 5:32; 6:10; 7:13), but here they become individual actors in the story for the first time. They are described as “the sons of Noah who went forth from the ark” (9:18), which highlights their mutual experience of salvation and as the ones from whom the whole earth will be repopulated. Ham is also described as the father of Canaan, preparing for the curse that is to come upon the latter because of Ham’s sin (v. 18; cf. v. 25). As the ancestor of the inhabitants of the land later promised to Abraham, Ham is of special interest to Moses’ original audience. Often in biblical narratives a character’s first actions are of pivotal importance for establishing his nature (e.g., Gen. 25:27), and this is certainly true of Canaan, whose origins are corrupt and cursed.

If Noah is a second Adam in being the father of all the living, he is like Adam in other ways as well, not all good. Like Adam, he works the soil (2:15; 9:20), sins (3:6; 9:21) and is ashamed of his nakedness (3:8; 9:21). This underscores God’s remark in 8:21 regarding the unchanged evil intent of man’s heart. The sin of both bears bitter fruit in the next generations, with Cain killing Abel (4:8) and Ham’s son Canaan being condemned to slavery for his father’s sin (9:27). This is the last notice of Noah’s life, even though he lives for another 350 years (9:28), and it is a sad epitaph for a man who has walked with God for 600 years (7:6).

With the flood behind him, Noah begins to work the soil by planting a vineyard (9:20), just as God planted a garden in Eden (2:8). When he drinks of the wine he has produced, however, he becomes intoxicated and lies exposed in his tent (9:21). There is nothing to suggest that he is the first person ever to engage in viniculture, or that the results of his drinking could not have been predicted. His drunkenness is shameful enough, but it is compounded by his uncovering himself in his tent.

The focus of the narrative is not on Noah’s sin, however, but on that of Ham, who sees the “nakedness of his father” and subsequently tells his brothers about it (v. 22). Attempts have been made to explain Ham’s sin as some form of physical or sexual abuse of Noah, through the observation that in Leviticus 18:7 “to uncover the nakedness of your father” is a euphemism for sexual intercourse with the person’s mother.156 However, this euphemism is used only of heterosexual sins, especially incest, which is not in view here; the book of Genesis tends to use a different euphemism (“to know”) for homosexual rape (Gen. 19:5). Moreover, the obscure phrase in 9:22 is immediately clarified by the following verse, in which Ham’s brothers do the exact opposite of what Ham has done by covering up their father with a garment while deliberately “not seeing” his nakedness by walking backward (9:23). This suggests a more literal understanding of the nature of Ham’s sin. It is enough that, instead of “covering over” his father’s private shame, Ham chooses to publicize it further by announcing it to his brothers (cf. Prov. 20:19 for a warning about “uncovering” secrets). Shem and Japheth, on the other hand, honor their father (Ex. 20:12), even in his dishonorable state, restoring his modesty by covering his nakedness, just as God had done for Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:21).

When Noah awakes from his binge and discovers what has happened, he pronounces a blessing and curse upon his children in response to their actions—a blessing and curse that will have an impact not only on them but on their children and their descendants in a lasting way. Just as Noah’s sons have been blessed because of Noah’s faithfulness, so too Shem and Japheth’s lineage will be blessed by their honoring of their father, while Ham’s sons, especially Canaan, his youngest, will be cursed because of his parental disrespect. Ham is the youngest of Noah’s sons, and often in Genesis the younger son is favored by God, but not in this case. This is not a blanket curse on all Ham’s offspring (although it has sometimes been read tendentiously in that way); it is a specific curse on Canaan, the youngest son of Noah’s youngest son. Because his father, Ham, failed to honor his own father, Noah, Canaan will receive the opposite of long life in the land (cf. Ex. 20:12): a life of servitude under the descendants of Shem and Japheth.157 To modern readers a curse on someone who has not personally participated in a sin may seem unfair, but of course the same is true of blessings: God deals corporately with families, not simply individuals.158 Moreover, God’s curse falls not on an “innocent” victim but on one whose sins would have been well known to the original readers. This judgment is completed when the Israelites conquer the Promised Land in Joshua’s days and has no further aspect yet to be fulfilled.

In contrast to the curse upon Canaan, the blessings upon Shem and Japheth are much more indirect. Indeed, the blessing on Shem is really a blessing of Shem’s God, the Lord (Gen. 9:26), while Japheth’s blessing is that as he increases159 he should dwell in the tents of Shem, sharing fellowship with the brother upon whom the Lord’s primary blessing lies (v. 27). This implies that God will be Shem’s God in a unique way, such that Japheth will find blessing only in identifying with the line of his brother, an idea that will be developed further as the book of Genesis unfolds.

Indeed, the entire mininarrative has a longer perspective. God chooses for blessing whom he will, younger or older son, and no one can argue with his choices. Shem’s and Japheth’s behavior are identical, yet their blessings are different: God has chosen the line of Seth to be the line of promise, so the calling for the descendants of Japheth is to identify with the promised seed of the Sethite line. This is a promise that finds almost no fulfillment in the course of the OT, though it is anticipated in Isaiah 66:19–20. However, it is fulfilled richly in the NT, as the gospel comes to the Japhetite world of the Mediterranean in the book of Acts—and even to the descendants of Ham.160 Yet by the same token God’s election is not arbitrary. The judgment that is coming upon the Canaanites in the days of Joshua is related to their father’s sin of disrespect, a sin that finds full flower in the Canaanite opposition to the descendants of the line of Shem (and Abraham). Those whom God has chosen for blessing come and place their hope in the line of promise that God has provided, whereas those who are reprobate will never come to him—and so face a future of judgment and curse. It is not a case of the “innocent” descendants of Ham being denied the opportunity to repent and believe. There are no innocent descendants of Noah, and the sin of the inhabitants of Canaan is the primary reason for their subjugation and expulsion from the land (Gen. 15:16; 1 Kings 21:26).

The passage closes by completing the genealogy of the line of Seth, interrupted at the end of chapter 5 to include the flood narrative (Gen. 9:28–29). This reminds us that the issue of the two seeds is still with us even after the flood. Not all those who come from Noah will share his faith, and the distribution between believers and unbelievers is not a random distribution. God generally works by calling families, working for the most part through that structure. In this case the line of hope will descend through the line of Shem, whose name means “name” or “renown”; God is the one who gives this renown, not human exploits (6:4).