Genesis 8:20-9:17 · Featured Study

The Noahic Covenant

Noah steps off the ark onto a washed earth and builds an altar. God answers with the first covenant Scripture calls one by name, cut not with Noah alone but with every living creature, for as long as the earth stands. No condition is attached, no sign is required of the human party, and the bow in the cloud belongs to God’s own memory of His word, not to man’s.

John Martin, The Deluge, 1834. Public domain.

THE ARTWORKMartin paints the waters still standing over a broken world. The covenant this page studies is God’s own answer to that scene: never again.

Summary

Genesis 8:20-9:17 is the first covenant Scripture calls one by name, cut with Noah and with every living creature after the flood: no second flood-curse, the grant of meat with its blood prohibition, capital justice grounded in the image of God, and the bow set in the cloud as the sign.

Genesis 9 names the word covenant, Hebrew berith, seven times in seventeen verses; the word first enters Scripture just before the flood, at Genesis 6:18, of this same covenant.
The covenant's own parties are named as wide as they can be: Noah, his descendants, and every living creature that came off the ark.
Meat is granted for food for the first time (9:3), with one condition attached: the blood, the life of the creature, is not to be eaten.
Human life is placed under a capital penalty for bloodshed, grounded directly in the fact that man is made in God's image (9:6).
The bow in the cloud is the sign, and the text says God Himself looks on it and remembers His covenant (9:16), not that man's remembering keeps it.

The Altar and the Promise

8:20-22: Noah's sacrifice, and what God resolves in His own heart

“Then Noah built an altar to the LORD. And taking from every kind of clean animal and clean bird, he offered burnt offerings on the altar. When the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma, He said in His heart, “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from his youth. And never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done. As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall never cease.”” Genesis 8:20-22Noah's first act off the ark is worship, and God's answer is a resolve made within Himself, before any covenant is formally cut.

Before the covenant of chapter 9 is cut in the terms Scripture names, God already resolves, in language the text puts in His own heart, never again to curse the ground because of man or to smite every living thing as He had done. Seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night: the ordinary rhythm of the world is set on a footing that will not be withdrawn. The formal covenant that follows in chapter 9 makes explicit and public what chapter 8 already resolves in private.

The Blessing Renewed

9:1-3: the same words spoken over Adam, spoken again over Noah, and meat granted for the first time

“And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you will fall on every living creature on the earth, every bird of the air, every creature that crawls on the ground, and all the fish of the sea. They are delivered into your hand. Everything that lives and moves will be food for you; just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you all things.” Genesis 9:1-3Be fruitful and multiply, the exact words of Genesis 1:28, and every moving thing given for food, a new grant.

And God blessed Noah--Here is republished the law of nature that was announced to Adam, consisting as it originally did of several parts. Be fruitful, &c.--The first part relates to the transmission of life, the original blessing being reannounced in the very same words in which it had been promised at first [Ge 1:28].

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed

Genesis 9:1

Every moving thing - shall be meat - There is no positive evidence that animal food was ever used before the flood. Noah had the first grant of this kind, and it has been continued to all his posterity ever since. It is not likely that this grant would have been now made if some extraordinary alteration had not taken place in the vegetable world, so as to render its productions less nutritive than they were before; and probably such a change in the constitution of man as to render a grosser and higher diet necessary.

Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible, 1832Methodist

Genesis 9:3

(2.) That every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, 1 Tim. iv. Afterwards some meats that were proper enough for food were prohibited by the ceremonial law; but from the beginning, it seems, it was not so, and therefore is not so under the gospel.

Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Nonconformist

Genesis 9:3

The blessing that opened Genesis 1 returns almost word for word, but the world it addresses has changed. Where Genesis 1:29 gave plants alone, Genesis 9:3 adds every moving thing. The dominion named in Eden was spoken in love and kindness; the fear and dread of 9:2 speak of the same dominion continuing now under a harder footing, after the flood has shown what the earth had become.

Blood and the Image of God

9:4-6: the one condition attached to the grant, and human life placed under law

“But you must not eat meat with its lifeblood still in it.” Genesis 9:4The blood, called the life of the creature, is withheld even as the flesh is granted.

“And surely I will require the life of any man or beast by whose hand your lifeblood is shed. I will demand an accounting from anyone who takes the life of his fellow man: Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man his blood will be shed; for in His own image God has made mankind.” Genesis 9:5-6God will require a reckoning for every life taken, and the reason given is the image of God man carries.

But flesh . . . the blood . . . shall ye not eat--The sole intention of this prohibition was to prevent these excesses of cannibal ferocity in eating flesh of living animals, to which men in the earlier ages of the world were liable.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed

Genesis 9:4

Whoso sheddeth man's blood . . . for in the image of God made he man--It is true that image has been injured by the fall, but it is not lost. In this view, a high value is attached to the life of every man, even the poorest and humblest, and an awful criminality is involved in the destruction of it.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed

Genesis 9:6

Our lives are not so our own as that we may quit them at our own pleasure, but they are God's and we must resign them at his pleasure; if we in any way hasten our own deaths, we are accountable to God for it.

Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Nonconformist

Genesis 9:5

Two prohibitions sit side by side, and the second is grounded on the deepest ground Scripture has: not custom, not utility, but the image of God man carries. That grounding is what makes 9:6 more than a tribal rule. It applies to every man, made of every bloodline, because every man bears the same image, injured by the fall but never erased by it.

The Covenant Cut

9:9-11: the word itself, named seven times, and the parties named as wide as possible

““Behold, I now establish My covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth—every living thing that came out of the ark. And I establish My covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”” Genesis 9:9-11I establish my covenant, with you, and with your seed, and with every living creature: the widest party list any biblical covenant names.

Genesis 9 uses the word berithseven times across seventeen verses: 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, and 17. The word enters Scripture one chapter earlier, at Genesis 6:18, where God announces this same covenant to Noah before the flood; chapter 9 is where it is cut and named over and over. Whatever readers make of the covenant question raised on Eden’s own page, no such question attaches here. The text names its own terms: established, unconditional on the human side, and binding on every living creature that came off the ark, not on Noah’s family alone.

7
uses of berith in Genesis 9
6:18
where the word covenant first enters Scripture, of this same covenant
0
conditions placed on the human party
every living creature
the covenant's own stated scope

The Bow in the Cloud

9:12-17: the sign, and whose memory it serves

“And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between Me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set My rainbow in the clouds, and it will be a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth.” Genesis 9:12-13The sign named and set: I do set my bow in the cloud.

“And whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of every kind that is on the earth.” So God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between Me and every creature on the earth.”” Genesis 9:16-17God says He will look on the bow and remember. The remembering the text describes is His own.

I do set my bow in the cloud--set, that is, constitute or appoint. This common and familiar phenomenon being made the pledge of peace, its appearance when showers began to fall would be welcomed with the liveliest feelings of joy.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed

Genesis 9:13

This is the token - אות oth, The Divine sign or portent: The bow shall be in the cloud. For the reasons above specified it must be there, when the circumstances already mentioned occur; if therefore it cannot fail because of the reasons before assigned, no more shall my promise; and the bow shall be the proof of its perpetuity.

Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible, 1832Methodist

Genesis 9:17

A weapon set asidethe bow's own everyday meaning in the ancient world

The Hebrew word for the sign, qesheth, is the ordinary word for the war-bow. Ancient Near Eastern art regularly shows a god or king holding a bow as an emblem of power to strike. Read against that background, the sign in the sky is a weapon hung up rather than drawn, aimed away from the earth it once threatened. Scripture does not state this reading directly; it is drawn from the word’s ordinary use elsewhere, offered here as background, not as the text’s own explicit claim.

Paul’s own picture of creation groaning, waiting for its own release from bondage (Romans 8:19-21), is read by some as an echo of this covenant’s scope: the whole created order, not humanity alone, stands inside a promise made to it and still waiting on its fullest answer.

“The creation waits in eager expectation for the revelation of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not by its own will, but because of the One who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” Romans 8:19-21Creation itself, not humanity alone, waits for a release the text does not name as this covenant by word, but echoes its scope.

The Words Underneath

the Hebrew the covenant turns on

The words underneath

berith: covenant

Hebrew · H1285

בְּרִית

Strong's entry: a compact (because made by passing between pieces of flesh)

9:9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17's berith, covenant. Seven uses in one chapter. The word first enters Scripture at 6:18, of this same covenant, announced before the flood.

284 times in the Old Testament · berith, in full →

oth: sign: miraculous

Hebrew · H226

אוֹת

Strong's entry: a signal (literally or figuratively), as aflag, beacon, monument, omen, prodigy, evidence, etc.

9:12, 13, 17's oth, sign or token. The same word later marks circumcision (17:11) and the Sabbath (Exodus 31:13).

80 times in the Old Testament · oth, in full →

qesheth: bow

Hebrew · H7198

קֶשֶׁת

Strong's entry: a bow, forshooting (hence, figuratively, strength) or the iris

9:13's qesheth, bow. The ordinary word for a war-bow, the weapon the sign in the sky borrows its shape from.

76 times in the Old Testament · qesheth, in full →

The Voices

with the work named

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown

Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)

Reads the blessing of 9:1 as the law of nature announced to Adam republished over Noah, and grounds capital justice in 9:6 on the image of God, injured by the fall but not lost.

Matthew Henry

Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710)

Notes that no creature of God is to be refused as food, though the blood prohibition stands; reads 9:6 as placing every human life, however poor or humble, under God's own protection.

Adam Clarke

Commentary on the Bible (1832)

Marks 9:3 as the first grant of animal food and 9:17 as the bow's own logic: as certain as the sign in the sky, so certain the promise it seals.

Marcus Brown's own commentary leads above all; within a tier, all voices are equal. No modern in-copyright voice earned a place under the relevance gate on this chapter; none is cited.