And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.
The flood has ended and the ark is empty. God now speaks the first words to a re-started human race: a blessing, and a command to fill the earth again. But the wording is not quite what Adam heard in Eden, and the difference tells us where mankind now stands.
The earth has been cleared by water, and God now sets man in it on fresh terms.
Water has washed the earth clean. That gives a whole new set of conditions for people and animals. God now sets man in a new order of things. He blesses Noah and his sons, promising that they will be fruitful and will multiply to fill the earth, which had lost so many of its people.
That blessing does not come because the survivors were better than those who drowned. God had already said in His heart what man is, and He says the blessing anyway.
The new world, like the old, began its course with blessing from its Creator. "God blessed Noah." But first God gave a solemn witness. Before He spoke the blessing and the commands that came with it, He showed that the survivors of the flood were unchanged. They had the same nature as those whose sin had ruined them (Gen. 8:21). God had declared man completely corrupt before He judged the world by the flood. He says it again as the second father of the human family starts out. But now it was for mercy, not for judgment, that God spoke these words.
The command is to spread out, and the emphasis falls on the whole globe.
Notice God's command to man as he entered the restored earth. It was to refill that earth — not parts of the earth, but the earth. He wanted men spread out across the world. He did not want them clustered together, relying on their own gathered strength. We will see in Gen. 11 how man ignored all this.
Man refused this command outright.
After the flood, His word to Noah and his sons was still, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth." But mankind, though awed by that judgment, had no desire to do His will. They wanted to stay together... their aim was to set themselves up as a universal republic without God.
God said almost the same words to Adam. But He added something for Adam that Noah never got.
"Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth," God had said to Adam. "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth," He also said to Noah and his sons. But to Adam He added what He did not add to Noah — "and subdue it." Was this omission accidental? To subdue the earth was God's original design for man on earth. By the fall he lost that place, and can never regain it. Another Man will do it — the Head of the new creation.
Noah gets more at the table than Adam did. He gets less authority. His standing is different.
He is "blessed," as Adam was in his day, and told to "be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth." (Gen. 1:28; Gen. 9:1) ... God put the earth under Adam, and the creatures of the forest, the field, the sea and the air recognized him as their master... Now the creatures of the earth only stand in dread and fear of Noah... Yet Noah's table was better spread than Adam's had been at first... For Adam's was the food fitting an innocent one, Noah's is the food of a ransomed one.
With the blessing comes a job: Noah is to hold the earth for God, not just enjoy it.
God commands him to fill the earth, as He had commanded Adam at the beginning. He is to order and govern it. He is to carry on his religious service and keep up his testimony to God in it. Government is his, and in company with priesthood too.
The failure comes at once.
The first thing Noah does after God had blessed him is to get drunk.
So the blessing points past Noah to someone who will hold it without failing.
Here we see Christ, the true Noah, Heir of the new earth. Of that earth we read, "no longer will there be anything accursed." All things in it are handed over to Him.
- Mercy first. God gives His verdict on man's heart before the blessing, not after. So the blessing comes from mercy, not because man had improved.
- Blessing given. The new world opens just as the old one did — with the Creator's blessing on fruitfulness and increase.
- Reach commanded. The charge covers the whole earth, not parts of it. In Genesis 11 man refuses to scatter and stays gathered around himself.
- One word withheld. "Subdue it" is absent. Adam lost that place at the fall. One writer points ahead to another Man, the Head of the new creation, who will do it.
- Result foreshadowed. God blesses Noah as a ransomed man and gives him government. Noah fails almost at once. The blessing holds in the true Noah, Heir of a new earth where nothing is accursed.
And let the fear of you and the dread of you be upon every animal of the earth, and upon all fowl of the heavens upon all that moveth [on] the ground; and upon all the fishes of the sea into your hand are they delivered.
Noah steps out of the ark onto a washed but still fallen earth, and God hands the animal world over to him. The terms are new: fear and dread, not the willing subjection Adam knew.
Adam met the animals as their namer. Noah meets them as the man they run from. One writer traces the change to how God acts in each scene.
What a different dominion from Adam's! God there, as Creator, puts all living animals under Adam's power; he names them. Here, God is a preserver, a saviour. But He only places the animals in Noah's power, and fear marks the relationship. Noah is their destroyer, and they fear him… This clearly sets the whole thing on a new system and footing.
The world God now speaks to is not the world of Eden. He deals with it as it is.
Now it was a fallen world. God blessed these men and charged them to fill the earth, and the fear and the dread of them were to be upon every beast and bird, with reptile and fish. God delivered the creatures into men's hand. Sin was everywhere, and God took it into account as a fact that could not be ignored.
This fear is not only a loss. Set against the strength of animals, it is a protection.
This is a great mercy. Beasts are stronger than man, and if they had no fear of him, they could all but wipe out the human race. So God has planted that fear in them. They no longer have a nature that submits to man of its own accord, as they did in the garden of Eden.
Noah does not receive this gift where Adam stood. One writer contrasts the two men and the ground each of them stood on.
God created Adam alone, and in "His own image," and made him the responsible head over an unfallen creation. But "Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord." God led him into the ark, through it, and out of it on the other side of death and judgment, as a redeemed man. He was to begin a new history in another world, under God's promises and covenanted blessings… It is on this new ground that God gave the world out afresh to him.
Something lost is handed back here. Notice what the gift includes.
Then their authority over the lower creatures is restored. The fear and dread of man is to be upon every beast of the earth, and upon all that moves, and God delivers them into his hand. All things are his, and even death itself is now to furnish him with food. This fact carries the deepest meaning. It is death serving life, and God would keep us always mindful of that principle.
Noah on a renewed earth points beyond himself. Commentators see in him a picture of Christ ruling the world to come.
If Adam is a picture of Christ as the Head over all things, and as the Head of the Church, then Noah, stepping onto a renewed earth, is a picture of the Lord Jesus as the Governor of the world to come… This is very similar to what God says of man in Psalm 8. It shows that Noah, as well as Adam, pointed forward to the coming Son of Man, with all things put under Him.
That kingdom will be settled and at rest. A sacrifice stands behind it.
All this was very significant, telling us of the character of that kingdom which is to arise in the last days, when the true Noah takes the dominion. Then the earth and its creatures will be established in the covenant of lasting rest and certainty… And then the Lord God will rest in His full delight in it all. It will all stand in the sweet savour of the sacrifice which the Son of His love has offered.
- Cause. Adam named the animals; Noah is given their fear. Sin made the difference, and God deals with the world as it is.
- Gift. Noah receives it as a redeemed man, brought through death and judgment on the ground of an accepted sacrifice.
- Mercy. Animals are stronger than we are. The fear God plants in them guards the human race.
- Reach. The gift covers beasts, birds, creeping things and fish. Even death now feeds life.
- Result. Noah on a renewed earth pictures the true Noah, the Son of Man. Under Him the earth will rest in lasting peace.
Every moving thing that liveth shall be food for you as the green herb I give you everything.
After the flood God blesses Noah and sets the terms for a new world. One of those terms is a wider table, which raises three questions: why God widened it, what it now costs, and what He kept back.
Before the flood, man and beast lived on plants. Commentators read this as a real enlargement, given with no restrictions attached:
Besides this, mankind was no longer limited to a vegetarian diet (v.2). God allowed him animals, birds and fish as food, just as fully as herbs and fruits. There were no restrictions like the ones God later gave Israel under law (Lev. 11), and then set aside after the death of the Lord Jesus (Acts 10:11-16; 1 Tim. 4:4-5). Of course, if someone finds that a food gives him physical trouble, it is only wise to avoid it. But God does not forbid the use of any.
Did animals eat one another before this? Commentators differ. One writer holds that every beast, bird and creeping thing first fed on green plants, "and they may not have become carnivorous until after the flood, when flesh was given to man to eat." He allows the other view too: that sin had already changed them, and God held them in check in the ark. (Morrish Bible Dictionary)
This gift works through death. Man's food now comes from creatures that die for him, and one writer finds deep meaning in that:
All things are his, and now even death itself supplies him with food. This fact carries the deepest significance. It is death serving life, and God would keep that principle constantly before us. Almost every meal testifies to us of the very basis of all real gospel, which the Lord's supper declares in full and formal terms.
The very next verse forbids eating flesh with its blood. One writer shows why that single limit matters so much:
God now gave every moving thing that lives to be food for man (Gen. 9:3), as freely as He had first given green plants to beast and bird and reptile (Gen. 1:30). But He placed a clear restriction on the blood. Man was not to eat it (Gen. 9:4). The blood was the life, and God reserved it for Himself. Giving man the freedom to eat animals made God's claim stand out all the more. Life belonged to God, and it will go badly for those who despise or defy His rights... This is no longer the dominion given by the Creator. Now He gives permission, and He forbids.
One writer adds that Christians are given more than Noah was:
Only after we know deliverance, and in the new place with God, can this be rightly understood. We now go farther than the type and past the restriction imposed here: we drink the blood also. What is God's alone as atonement is ours to sustain and cheer us, as atonement now made.
Later God told Israel which animals they could and could not eat. One writer asks why, and finds the answer in standing, not diet:
After the flood, God gave man a grant of every moving living creature for food (Gen. 9:3). Here, under the law, He brings in restrictions... But why these restrictions? Because the law puts man at a distance from God and makes him feel it. It is also meant to teach him the great difference between standing on the ground of keeping the law and standing on the ground of grace... How free was the grant to Noah and his sons! How strict the restrictions placed on Israel!
Some would make holiness a matter of avoiding certain foods. One writer names where that idea comes from, and answers it from this grant:
Demons play on man's sense of defilement. As the cure they suggest staying away from certain foods and from marriage — the very things God has provided for His creature's good. So they make God out to be the author of man's lack of piety... Nothing that God has provided for His creature defiles. Every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving, because the word of God and prayer sanctify it — that is, God's grant to Noah (Gen. 9:3-4) and the thanksgiving of the one who receives it.
That leaves our part. God has spoken; the thanks are ours:
In Genesis 9:3, we find how the word of God put an ample supply of food at man's disposal. It is sad if Christian households do not complete this sanctification by prayer as they use the food He has so mercifully provided.
- Granted — after the flood man is no longer limited to plants. Animals, birds and fish are food now, as fully as herbs and fruit, with no forbidden list.
- Purchased — food now comes by death. Nearly every meal says the same thing: life kept alive by another's death.
- Reserved — God kept back the blood, because the blood is the life. The wider the freedom, the clearer His claim.
- Contrasted — Israel's food laws taught distance under law. Noah's free grant shows what grace looks like.
- Received — nothing God provides defiles. Rules that ban His food attack the Giver, and thanksgiving at our table completes the grant.