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.
Only, the flesh with its life, its blood, ye shall not eat.
God had just given Noah and his sons a new freedom. Every moving creature could now be food. But God kept one thing back. Man must not eat the blood, because the blood is the life.
The gift and the limit come in the same breath. Man gains a wide new freedom at the table, and God marks off one thing as His.
God now gave man every moving thing that lives for food (Gen. 9:3), as freely as He had first given green plants to beast and bird and reptile (Gen. 1:30). But He put a clear limit on the blood. Man was not to eat it (Gen. 9:4). The blood was the life, and God kept it for Himself. Letting man use animals for food made God's claim stand out all the more. Life belonged to God, and woe to those who despise or defy His rights.
The words "flesh with its life, that is, its blood" are packed tight. One writer works through the Hebrew behind them. The verse does not name two separate things, flesh and life. It means flesh while the life is still in it.
From Genesis 9:4 it is clear, I think, that the expression means flesh in its living state; that is what must not be eaten. And that state — of ruined flesh — lies in its blood… The verse comes in to show that the term means flesh with the life in it — flesh in its living state — which is the blood.
Behind the rule lies a question of ownership. Man may kill an animal for food, but the life in it is not his to take.
To eat blood denied the rights of God the Creator. Even though man forfeited his own right by sin, the LORD kept His title over life untouched. God set up human government in the first place to deal with death by deliberate violence. Shed blood is the sign of that death, and it belongs to God alone. Man has no right to take it for himself.
One writer sets the ban against Eden, where God closed the way back to the tree of life. To eat life would be to seize by force what sin had already lost.
To eat the blood would have been a bold taking back of what he had lost through sin — an attempt to win life again by forcing the way that the cherubim's sword guarded. This rule told the sinner that he had lost his right to the tree of life and can never return to it in his own strength. The life has gone back to God. The blood is His. And the gospel comes to tell us how He has used it, even providing with it and through it new, eternal life that cannot fail for the sinner who is dead.
God kept the blood back from man's table because He had His own use for it. One rule teaches man three things about himself, and ends in a gift.
Life belongs to God, so no one of the human race was to eat blood. The sinner has also forfeited his life. He can only live before God on the basis of the death of a sacrifice in his place… So the ban on eating blood reminds us of three important truths. We are creatures, and must remember it. We were sinners by nature, and are to acknowledge it. We owe atonement by blood entirely to God, and are always to own it. The One to whom life belongs has given it to be poured out for our everlasting blessing.
God spoke this word to Noah centuries before Moses, and through him to the whole human family. That timing shapes how the apostles later handled it.
This law pressed on Israel what God had already laid down for Noah after the flood, in Genesis 9:4. So when the apostles and elders gave the same command to Gentile believers in Acts 15:20 and 29, they were not loading them with a mere item of the law of Moses. They were repeating a ban that applies to everyone. We do well to keep it, though we need not copy the extreme carefulness of the Jews, as the instruction of 1 Corinthians 10:25 shows.
- Gift — God handed over every moving creature for food, as freely as He once gave green plants. The limit sits inside a gift.
- Reserve — He keeps back one thing: the blood. The wider the freedom to eat, the clearer His claim.
- Reason — The blood is the life, and life belongs to God. Leaving it alone is how man admits he is a creature, not the owner of life.
- Meaning — Man forfeited his life by sin. To eat life would be to seize back what he lost. The blood goes to God, and God uses it for atonement.
- Reach — God gave this word to Noah for the whole race, long before the law. He pressed it on Israel, and the apostles gave it again to Gentile believers in Acts 15.
And indeed your blood, [the blood] of your lives, will I require at the hand of every animal will I require it, and at the hand of Man, at the hand of each [the blood] of his brother, will I require the life of Man.
After the flood, God sets up a new order for Noah's family. They may eat animals, but not the blood. And God warns that He will call every killer of a human being to account. Two questions follow. Why does God claim the blood? And does a word spoken to one family still hold for everyone?
Permission to eat meat came with one limit: not the blood. That limit sets up the demand here. Giving man more freedom made God's own claim stand out.
Man was not to eat the blood. It was the life, and God kept it for Himself. Letting man use animals for food 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 the state of a fallen world. God is a Preserver, or a Saviour, of all people, as the apostle says — especially of those who believe.
God's claim reaches past human killers. He says He will require the life at the hand of every beast.
The life of a man killed by a beast — "from every beast I will require it." So we see that God keeps His right over life, even a beast's life. They must come and offer the blood to God. Man had no meat to eat until God gave it to him. Many are seeking to do away with capital punishment; but what do they care about God? The whole order of God is broken up now. Even a beast that kills should die.
The wording reaches down to the closest human relationships. Cain's question — was he his brother's keeper — is answered here.
Above all, man's life is sacred. What Cain did is to go unpunished no longer. Man is plainly declared to be his "brother's keeper": he is to require blood for blood, and to do it as the instrument and deputy of God on earth.
That raises a question from the earlier chapters. Why did the first murderer go free?
No government had yet been set up on the earth, so God would allow no one to punish Cain. Once government began in its simplest form, men were to act, as we see in verses 5 and 6 of Genesis 9.
God foresaw that this authority would be abused. Writers read His demand here as a guard set against that abuse.
Man would soon misuse and twist the very governing authority God placed in his hand, following his own will without the fear of God. Rivers of blood would flow — not only through lawless corruption and violence, as before the flood, but through ambitious kings and rulers after it. So God, in His foreseeing wisdom and thoughtful goodness, declares at the very start of the new order, "And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it."
Commentators see this word as the starting point of all lawful government.
The words of Genesis 9:5-6 — "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in His own image" — first laid the primary basis of human government as it is. Life belonged to God, and He passed that principle on to Noah. From then on man was responsible as God's servant to carry out wrath, even to the shedding of blood if blood had been shed; for he must not carry the sword for nothing.
This demand also set a law in place. Writers note how long that law has stood.
Life is what lets a created being enjoy the place the Creator has set it in. Sin has come in, so that life is forfeited, and God claims it in the words of Genesis 9:5. That established capital punishment for murder, and the law has never been cancelled or changed.
- Claim — Life is God's. He reserved the blood for Himself and treats every human death as a debt owed to Him.
- Reach — The claim runs to the beast, to man, and to a man's own brother; no killer is outside God's reckoning.
- Contrast — Cain went free because no government existed yet. Here God puts the sword in man's hand for the first time.
- Restraint — The same word that arms rulers also warns them. God knew authority would be twisted, and rivers of blood would follow.
- Permanence — This word established capital punishment for murder, and writers say that law has never been cancelled or changed.
Whoso sheddeth Man's blood, by Man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God he hath made Man.
After the flood, Noah steps out of the ark into a fresh start. God lays down one rule to guard human life: whoever takes a life forfeits his own. Two questions follow. Where does a government get the right to put a killer to death, and what makes killing a person an offence against God Himself?
Government is not as old as the human race. It began at a fixed point in history.
Notice that nothing like civil government was set up at the beginning. Man did not invent it in all the centuries before the flood. God established it for the first time after that great event... This is why Cain was not punished by man, as responsibility would have required after the sword was committed to Noah. From then on God solemnly required blood for blood.
This rule does more than punish a killer. It also says what a human life is worth.
God attached a value to man's life that He had never declared before. It counted for more still, because now for the first time it fell to government, responsible to God, to defend that life.
The verse does not argue from what society needs. It argues from what man is.
The image of God expresses man's place and responsibility of representing God... It is not His likeness, for man lost this by sin and fathered children in his own likeness. But man keeps His image, even fallen as he is here. So the man who kills another (except by proper authority) is guilty of denying God's right in this respect... The murderer does not just interfere with a man and harm him as badly as possible. He also defaces God's image by killing a man, and God sentences the murderer to die.
The verse uses only one of those two words, and the difference matters.
What is insisted on here is the image, not the likeness. So Genesis 9:6. But in James 3:9 it is "likeness," not "image."... An image "represents"; a likeness is "conformed to."
God handed this right down. It did not grow up from below, so no theory about how societies form can explain it — or cancel it.
Clearly it is God's committal of the sword, the power of life and death, into the hands of man... Such is the true source and basis of civil government. It did not spring from a social contract. It did not grow by degrees out of family relationships. It did not begin in the usurpation of man or of a class. As God's command gave it being, so it can never cease to be clothed with His authority, whether men listen or refuse... It is a right of God, which He has been pleased ever since the flood to entrust to human keeping.
This command targets murder, not accidental death. And it puts the sword in official hands.
The law separated murder from manslaughter. If someone killed a person by accident, that killer could run to a City of Refuge and be protected there. God has given man governmental authority to carry out this universal command. It came long before the law of Moses, and no one has ever repealed or relaxed it. In the New Testament the magistrate does not bear the sword in vain, for he is God's servant for the punishment of evildoers. Romans 13.
One writer takes this verse straight into today's argument over the death penalty.
God had already spoken long before on this case (Genesis 9); no one has revoked it, and no one can... That ground remains, and so does the guilt on a land that does not avenge such blood. Those who today would abolish the death penalty should weigh it: "no atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of the one who shed it."
The same chapter that hands man the sword also shows him drunk. That failure is part of the lesson.
Man fails with government as well as without it — not only the governed, but the governor. Noah — that is, man — proves completely unable to wield the sword in righteousness before God, because whoever governs must first know how to rule himself. But Noah got drunk... Part of God's purpose is to show this, and so to show that the Man of His right hand must come to rule the earth.
- Given — Government starts here, not in Eden. No human court punished Cain, because God had not yet handed man the sword.
- Grounded — The reason is the image of God. Man represents God, so killing a man defaces God's image and denies His right.
- Guarded — The authority is God's, only lent to man. No social contract made it, and no vote can cancel what no man granted.
- Governed — The sword belongs to the magistrate, and it answers murder, not accidental death.
- Given up — The first man trusted with the sword got drunk. Every failed ruler since points to the Man who must come to rule in righteousness.
And ye, be fruitful and multiply swarm on the earth, and multiply on it.
God speaks these words to Noah and his sons on the far side of the flood, in a world just emptied of its inhabitants. God gave the same charge in verse 1. Here it returns — but only after He has spoken about bloodshed. Why repeat a blessing on human increase at that point?
One writer points to what God already knew about the race when He said it.
Despite all He foresaw of rebellion and bloodshed, God repeats in Genesis 9:7 His word to men: "Be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it." They have certainly done this.
But a fuller earth also means more sinners. One writer answers that objection.
God repeats the encouragement of verse 1 to multiply on the earth, and verse 7 puts even more emphasis on it. Multiplying would bring more sinners into the world, but that would not defeat God: by His own pure grace He is able to save sinners. People today try every method of keeping the population of the world down, but God has not told them to do this. He knows how to take care of this problem and will do so in His own way.
The command is not simply to have children. It fixes where those children are to end up.
Notice, God's command to man, as he entered the restored earth, was to refill that earth; not parts of the earth, but the earth. He wanted men spread out across the face of the world, not leaning on their own concentrated strength. We shall see, in Genesis 11, how man neglected all this.
The wording echoes God's words to Adam, but the setting has changed. What man holds now is not what he held in Eden.
Back then God gave dominion to man made in His image, after His likeness — dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the heavens, the cattle, all the earth, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. 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 fall on every beast and bird, with reptile and fish. He delivered the creatures into men's hand. Sin was everywhere, and God took it into account as an existing fact that could not be ignored.
The verses just before this one hand man something new. Writers tie it to the failure that brought the flood.
The Lord's instructions to Noah in verses 3-6 show the start of human government on earth. After Adam sinned, God left man to his conscience. Man broke down completely, and the flood came. So man needed more than conscience, and at this point a new order began: human government. It was necessary to restrain evil and keep order. God, however, gives man only a minimum of law for government — just two laws, covering the rights of God and the rights of mankind.
That trust did not last long in Noah's own hands.
God entrusted government to the hands of men. Sadly, this new trial soon has the same result as before. The government given to Noah loses its honour at once. The earth, relieved by farming care, becomes in its fruit a snare to Noah. He gets drunk, and his own son dishonours him.
Two chapters later, men do the opposite of what this verse commands. They gather instead of spreading.
They were to fill the earth. But scattered in peaceful quietness they would count for nothing, so they would not. They had to get a name for themselves, to be a centre. And God scatters into nations by judgment what would not fill the earth by families in peace.
- Repeated — God gives the charge twice in this chapter. The second time carries more emphasis, and it follows His words about bloodshed. He knew what the race would do and blessed it anyway.
- Answered — More people would mean more sinners. That does not defeat God. By His own grace He is able to save sinners, and He never tells man to hold the numbers down.
- Spread — The target is the whole earth, not parts of it. God wanted men dispersed, not leaning on their own concentrated strength.
- Guarded — A filling earth needed restraint. So God put government in man's hand with only two basic laws: the rights of God and the rights of man. Conscience alone had already collapsed into the flood.
- Enforced — At Babel men refused to scatter and built for a name instead. God then scattered them by judgment. His word in this verse stood either way.