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.
A widened diet
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)
Death serving life
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.
One thing kept back
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.
Free grant, later restrictions
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!
Nothing to be refused
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.
Summary
- 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.