Peter Pett's Commentary on the Bible
Genesis 9:1-7
God's Detailed Instruction to Noah and His Sons (Genesis 9:1)
In this whole passage God is Elohim, the Creator, for He is as it were beginning again, and reinstating man as His representatives on earth. Here God includes Noah's sons in His instructions. This is different from Genesis 8:21 and previously, demonstrating that this is His official dealings with the whole of mankind. So God gives instructions to Noah, and to ‘his sons with him'. These instructions are important. The destruction of man might have been seen as annulling his position as God's representative. Thus God as Creator renews the commission He first gave to man:
1). Man is commanded to be fruitful and repopulate the world (Genesis 9:1 compare Genesis 1:28 a)
2). Man is to have authority over creation (Genesis 9:2 compare Genesis 1:28 b)
3). Man is given the right to eat of the flesh of living creatures and of plants but not of their blood (Genesis 9:3 compare and contrast Genesis 1:29)
4). Man's life is sacred because he is made in the image of God, and to take that life is to merit death (Genesis 9:5)
5). The further command to repopulate the world (the double mention stressing that this is the vital instruction to which the others are secondary).
‘And God (elohim) blessed Noah and his sons with him and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.” '
We note that now the sons of Noah are included in God's words for the first time. This is a step forward and demonstrates that God now sees them as part of what is to be. They share his relationship with, and responsibility before, God. They represent the whole of mankind.
God is here speaking as the Creator (elohim) as in Genesis 1:28, and repeats the words there spoken to man. Again man is ‘blessed'. He again has the seal of God's approval on him. Yet the females are excluded, unlike in Genesis 1. This was, of course, the result of the Fall and the subsequent subjection of the woman. So this is written with an awareness of the material found in Genesis 2-3.
‘And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every animal on the earth and every bird of the air, along with everything with which creeps on the ground, and all the fishes of the sea, all are delivered into your hand. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you, and as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat the flesh with its life, that is, its blood.'
Man's authority over the animals is again stressed and he is now given express permission to eat them as food. This is almost certainly a confirmation of what man has already been doing as we have seen.
But one thing is forbidden, the eating of the blood. That is because the blood is the life. Man must recognise that what he eats, he eats as a gift from God. But he must still recognise God's overlordship. Part therefore is forbidden him, the part that symbolises the life God gave them, the life which He created on top of the initial creation, which belongs to God. The blood replaces the tree of knowing good and evil as the test of man's obedience. He is not to eat the blood, whether it is in order to try to absorb the soul of the animal or its ‘power', to share in its life, or simply through careless disregard. Rather the animal's flesh alone is to be for food.
Here God is stressing that man and animal are distinct. They are not to be intermingled. Man is not like the beast, he is different, for he shares the nature of the heavenly. Thus he should look to Heaven for his ‘power' and for his ‘life'. Properly observed this prohibition against eating the blood would have saved mankind from many diseases.
‘For your lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning, of every creature I will require it, and at the hand of every man, and at the hand of every man's brother I will require it. Whoever sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.'
Man stands on earth as God's representative and shares something of the heavenly, therefore to take man's life is to rebel against the Creator. Whoever therefore takes that life shall have his own life forfeit. Man's life is sacred to God.
The reference to every man's brother has in mind Cain and Abel, and the thought there that every man is his ‘brother's' guardian. This sacredness again stresses the distinction between man and animal on the very grounds that man is made in the image of the heavenly. But the forfeiture of the murderer's life is, under God, in the hands of man. Here then God is stressing again man's sovereignty over the world He has given him. It is man who must carry out this jurisdiction. Man must take responsibility to act as judge under God's instruction. It is an awesome task that He requires of man.
‘And as for you, be fruitful and multiply, bring forth abundantly on the earth and multiply in it.'
This repeats the charge in verse 1 in order to stress its importance. Man has the responsibility and privilege of peopling the earth so that he can carry out his task of controlling and watching over it, and this is his first responsibility.