Wednesday AM Bible Study; October 1, 2025 – Genesis 9:1-17
Theme: God renewed the creation mandate with the family of Noah—and sealed the mandate with a covenant of promise.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
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The story of the flood is the story of the most devastating event to have occurred on planet Earth up to the present time. It was a once-for-all-time event in which—over a period of a year and ten days—God almost completely obliterated all life on the planet that breathed air. Only the eight people and various forms of animal life that were on the ark survived to repopulate the earth. At the end of that horrific event—brought about because of the irreparably corrupt condition of humanity up to that time—Noah and his family gratefully emerged from the ark, nd Noah presented burnt offerings to God. God responded to Noah’s offerings with this promise:
“I will never again curse the ground for man’s sake, although the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done.
And now, we come to the first 17 verses of Genesis 9; which basically give us a detailed expansion of that gracious promise. In reading Genesis 9:1-17, we find that—even after having justly brought dreadful judgment upon the earth for the profound wickedness of mankind—God still loved and valued the human family, and fully intended to keep His promise to provide a Redeemer for mankind Who was born as ‘the Seed of the woman’ (Genesis 3:15). We see God’s love expressed to post-flood humanity through two main declarations. First, we find that God renewed His original mandate that people be fruitful and multiply on the earth (vv. 1-7); and second, we find that God declared a merciful covenant to never again destroy the earth with a flood (vv. 8-17).“While the earth remains, Seedtime and harvest, Cold and heat, Winter and summer, And day and night Shall not cease” (Genesis 8:20-21).
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Now, there are many crucial truths taught to us in these two declarations—truths that define God’s will for humanity even today. Moreover, these two declarations show us how different life is in this post-flood world from what it was in the pre-flood world. Notice, first, how … 1. GOD’S MANDATE TO HUMANKIND WAS RENEWED (vv. 1-7). It’s truly hard to imagine what it must have been like for Noah and his family to have emerged from the ark into a world that had been transformed by the worldwide flood. Whereas before the earth had been teeming with human beings and living creatures, there were now only the eight human beings and the various living creatures that came out of the ark. The world looked vacant—and, except for them, was vacant! The closest comparison to the experience would have been the days when Adam and Eve walked in the Garden of Eden—except now, the earth was not newly created, but was recovering from the cataclysmic events of the past 370 days. How much time might have passed between Noah and his family leaving the ark, and the burnt offerings that Noah made in worship of God, isn’t told to us. But it seems that soon after—perhaps as soon as God had smelled the soothing aroma of the offerings and made His declaration in response to Noah’s offerings—we’re told this in 9:1;So God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth” (Genesis 9:1).The words “So God blessed …” present us with the fifth time in the Bible that God is said to have ‘blessed’ something. He blessed the marine life and the birds of the air after He created them and told them to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ (1:22); and He then blessed Adam and Eve after He created them and told them likewise to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ (1:28). We’re told that He blessed the seventh day at the end of His creative work (2:3); and then the Bible repeats to us the fact that He blessed Adam and his wife on the day of their creation (5:2). So; this ‘blessing’ as Noah and his family emerged from the ark is important to notice. Even though Mankind had fallen, and even though mankind’s sin was so great as to have necessitated almost complete destruction before a holy God, God still loved mankind and desired to bless the people He had made. We might be inclined to think that, after all the terrible judgment of the flood, God would have considered humanity to be completely unworthy of His love and His blessings. And indeed it is unworthy! But God displayed His grace in that He still blessed mankind. And it may even be that the ‘blessing’ was specifically connected to the promise made in Genesis 3:15; that God would provide a Redeemer as ‘the Seed of the woman’. It would now be through Noah and his offspring (specifically through the family of Shem) that the Redeemer would come; and so, Noah and his family truly are ‘blessed’. And now, at this moment in history when the world must once again be filled with life, God repeated not only this blessing, but also the mandate to multiply and fill the earth—not as a completely new mandate; but rather as the old mandate ‘renewed’ in a completely new set of circumstances. Because of the necessity of this mandate being acted upon quickly in this crucial moment of world history, God even repeated it to Noah and his family in verse 7;
“And as for you, be fruitful and multiply; Bring forth abundantly in the earth And multiply in it” (9:7).But even though this post-flood declaration was essentially the old blessing and the old mandate renewed, there were still some remarkable changes that distinguished the post-flood situation from the pre-flood mandate. For one thing, there would now be a different kind of relationship that post-flood humanity would have with the rest of living things. God told Noah and his family in verses 2-3,
“And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth, on every bird of the air, on all that move on the earth, and on all the fish of the sea. They are given into your hand. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you all things, even as the green herbs” (vv. 2-3).It may have been that, before this time, humanity’s relationship with animal life involved no fear of mankind. And after this time, there was still the same relationship of ‘dominion’ that humankind had over the other creatures (see Genesis 1:28). But now—perhaps to underscore the unique place Noah’s offspring was to hold over all other living things that came out of the ark—every other living thing would have a built-in, inherent fear and dread of humankind. And what’s more, in the days before the flood, the diet of human beings and of all other creatures was restricted to only “every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed” (1:29). This may have been violated at times; but from the beginning, God only gave the green herbs and fruit of the trees for food. But now “every moving thing that lives” was given as food to Noah and his offspring. It may be that mankind needed this provision at this particular time in order to survive after the flood. It may also have been a provision to protect mankind from being overwhelmed by the rapidly growing animal population. But more likely, God wanted to show the great superiority of human life over that of the animals. People today are, of course, free to refrain from eating meat if they wish (see Romans 14:2-3, for example); and this freedom must be respected by all. What’s more, humane treatment of animals—even as a source of food—is always to be maintained. But because of God’s enduring provision to Noah in verse 3, the eating of meat cannot be forbidden to anyone out of a misguided ethic that equates animal life with human life in value. There was, however, an important limitation. In verse 4, God told Noah and his family,
“But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood” (v. 4).Later, in the laws that God gave to the people of Israel through Moses, the flesh of certain animals would be forbidden as unclean (see Leviticus 11). And even this prohibition would later be removed in Acts 10; where—in the new covenant era brought about through the sacrifice of Jesus—all foods were declared ‘clean’. But here, the only prohibition that has been given with regard to food concerned the consumption of the blood of the animal. That blood must be drained, because it represents life—and particularly the life that provided an atoning substitute for sin. In Leviticus 17:10-11, God gave the Jewish people this warning:
“And whatever man of the house of Israel, or of the strangers who dwell among you, who eats any blood, I will set My face against that person who eats blood, and will cut him off from among his people. For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul” (Leviticus 17:10-11).This Old Testament command would be later urged upon Gentiles who believed on Jesus as a way of showing gracious respect to their Jewish fellow Christians (see Acts 15:19-21, 28-29). But more importantly, it would be the basis of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Himself for us on the cross. As it says in Ephesians 1:7, “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.” Therefore, in this new era of God’s grace after the flood, ‘blood’ was declared to be treated as sacred—as that which represents life. Not only was the blood of an animal to be considered sacred because the life was in its blood, but the shedding of the blood of human life was to be treated even more sacredly. God told Noah and his family in verse 5,
“Surely for your lifeblood I will demand a reckoning; from the hand of every beast I will require it, and from the hand of man. From the hand of every man’s brother I will require the life of man” (v. 5).Human beings may slay an animal at any time that it is needful to do so—for food or for sacrifice. And whenever someone does so, the animal’s blood must be poured out and must not be eaten. But the shedding of human blood is not to be treated as an equal thing with the shedding of animal blood. Should an animal shed the blood of a human being, God would “require” it from the “hand of every beast” (which implies that the animal was to be put to death; see Exodus 21:28). This underscores the uniqueness and sacredness of human life. But more, there was to be—in no case—the taking of an innocent human life by another human being. As God said in verse 6,
“Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed; For in the image of God He made man” (v. 6).Most students of the Bible recognize this as God’s establishment of human government as a gracious provision from God to stem the tide of human evil. The right of legitimate civil authorities to execute a murderer would also imply the right to make laws that may be necessary to protect human life from such loss. Murder was already a sad part of the human story before the flood. The first murder occurred when Cain slew his brother Abel. The last to be mentioned before the flood was when the evil man Lamech slew a young man for wounding him. But capital punishment for murder doesn’t appear to have necessarily been administered in all cases. Cain, for example, was not executed before the flood; nor does it appear that Lamech was for his. And afterward, God did not appear to require the execution of Moses for his act of murder; nor King David for his. Human courts can take all things into account and—when legitimately justifiable—decide to act on the side of mercy. But because human government is a merciful provision from God, and because it is based on the timeless principle of God’s image in Man (found in both Genesis 1:26 and 9:6), capital punishment as a part of civil justice cannot—in and of itself—be forbidden as an evil today. Rulers who make ‘just and ‘equitable’ use the sword as “ministers of God” in genuine cases of murder do so legitimately (see Romans 13:1-7)—and thus reflect the inherent value of human beings as truly ‘made in God’s image’. So then; that’s the first of the two declarations made by God in Genesis 9. Then comes the second; when … 2. GOD’S COVENANT WITH THE EARTH WAS DECLARED (vv. 8-17). Verse 8-9 tells us,
Then God spoke to Noah and to his sons with him, saying: “And as for Me, behold, I establish My covenant with you and with your descendants after you …” (vv. 8-9).A covenant can be understood as a solemn agreement—ordinarily between two or more parties—in which each party commits to something they will do. But in this case, God entered Himself into a covenant in which He declared what He would do, completely apart from anything that any other party was required to do. It is an unconditional covenant. And what’s more, it is not only made with humanity, but also with all of the creatures over which humanity is to have dominion—and even with the very earth itself. In verse 10, God went on to say,
“… and with every living creature that is with you: the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you, of all that go out of the ark, every beast of the earth” (v. 10).All of creation had been brought under a curse because of mankind’s disobedience in the case of the covenant that God made with Adam (Genesis 2:15-17; 3:17-18). But now, all of creation is included in the blessing of this new, unconditional covenant. Theologians often refer to this as ‘the Noahic Covenant’. In it, God made this perpetual promise:
“Thus I establish My covenant with you: Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood; never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth” (v. 11).2 Peter 3:5-7 tells us that
by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water. But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men (2 Peter 3:5-7).God has promised that judgment will again come upon the earth in the future. But God made the promise—back in the day when Noah and his family came out of the ark—that it would not be by means of another worldwide flood. God will never completely destroy life on earth in that way again. He even ratified this covenant with a sign:
And God said: “This is the sign of the covenant which I make between Me and you, and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between Me and the earth” (vv. 12-13).Before the time of the flood, a thick canopy of water covered the earth; and so, it’s not likely that the sun rays pierced through in such a way as to create the phenomenon of a rainbow. But even if a rainbow may have appeared before the flood, it would now appear often. The canopy over the earth was gone, and the sunshine shone down upon the earth through the mist with clouds spotting the sky. Such a rainbow would have been a stunning sight for Noah and his family to behold; and it was here, being given symbolic significance, as the sign and seal of God’s promise to post-flood humanity. God said,
“It shall be, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the rainbow shall be seen in the cloud; and I will remember My covenant which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. The rainbow shall be in the cloud, and I will look on it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth. And God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant which I have established between Me and all flesh that is on the earth” (vv. 14-17).Though the world today has misused and misrepresented the rainbow, we should never allow its significance to be robbed from us. In fact, we should counter its misuse by affirming that it is a symbol of both the time when God brought severe judgment upon the earth because of sin, and also of how God’s grace is greater than our sin. We today who see a rainbow in the sky should remember what God remembers. We can thus be assured that God will keep His unconditional covenant to Noah—and can also be assured of His character as a God of grace. He will never again curse the ground for man’s sake; nor will He ever again destroy every living thing as He had once done. He has provided both the full judgment of sin and the full gift of saving grace through the cross of His Son, Jesus.
AE