Genesis 9:8-9

THE NOAHIC COVENANT

‘And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying, And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you.’

Genesis 9:8

To understand this covenant, consider what thoughts would have been likely to grow up in the minds of Noah’s children after the Flood. Would they not have been something of this kind? ‘God does not love men. He has drowned all but us, and we are men of like passions with the world that perished; may we not expect the like ruin at any moment? Then what use to plough and sow, and build and plant, and work for those who shall come after us? Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.’

I. The covenant God made with Noah was intended to remedy every one of the temptations into which Noah’s children’s children would have been certain to fall, and into which so many of them did fall.—They might have become reckless from fear of a flood at any moment. God promises them, and confirms it with the sign of the rainbow, never again to destroy the earth by water. They would have been likely to take to praying to the rain and thunder, the sun and the stars. God declares in this covenant that it is He alone who sends the rain and thunder, that He brings the clouds over the earth, that He rules the great awful world; that men are to look up and believe in God as a loving and thinking Person, who has a will of His own, and that a faithful and true and loving and merciful will; that their lives and safety depend not on blind chance or the stern necessity of certain laws of nature, but on the covenant of an almighty and all-loving Person.

II. This covenant tells us that we are made in God’s likeness, and therefore that all sin is unworthy of us and unnatural to us.—It tells us that God means us bravely and industriously to subdue the earth and the living things upon it; that we are to be the masters of the pleasant things about us, and not their slaves, as sots and idlers are; that we are stewards or tenants of this world for the great God who made it, to whom we are to look up in confidence for help and protection.

Canon Kingsley.

Illustration

‘This is the first mention in the Bible of a covenant made by God with man. It has been pointed out recently, in an able paper, that we must be careful not to lay too much stress on the human side in the covenants which God is represented as making with man; the predominant idea being rather the divine side, the promises and gifts of God. We need only to peruse Genesis 9:8 to see how remarkably this idea holds good here. The emphasis laid on the personal pronoun I: “I, for my part, establish,” etc., does indeed point back to certain obligations enforced on men, but the account given of the covenant is an account of a promise. “Speaking generally, the word covenant is the standing designation of a friendly relation between God and men, originating in God’s loving kindness.” The animals, domesticated (= cattle) and wild (= beasts of the earth), have shared in man’s overthrow. The covenant, therefore, which is made with man is, through him, made with them (cf. Romans 8:19). The Greek Bible omits “every beast of the earth,” as though there were something unfitting in the inclusion of wild animals in the covenant, but Holy Scripture never fails to represent the whole creation as His care. It is to be remembered that the word rendered ark does not mean a ship but a chest, as, in fact, ark itself does, for it is but our way of spelling the Latin arca, a chest or box. And we must also note that the phrase I will establish My covenant “denotes the perpetuation of a covenant already, at least in idea, existing, rather than the formation of one altogether new.” ’