Genesis 9:1 - Meaning and Application

At the close of the last chapter, we saw the kind thoughts God had in his heart about the small remnant of mankind that would begin the world again. Here those good intentions are spoken directly to them. In a general way, God blessed Noah and his sons (Genesis 9:1), meaning he assured them of his favor and his gracious plans for them. All of God’s promises of good flow from his loving purpose and his own wise will (Ephesians 1:11; Ephesians 3:11; Jeremiah 29:11).

Noah had just blessed God by building an altar and offering sacrifice (Genesis 8:20). Now God blesses Noah. Those who truly honor God and speak well of him may expect him to do them good. People who are sincerely thankful for the mercy they have already received are taking the surest path to have that mercy continued and confirmed.

Here we may think of this as the great charter, the founding grant, for the new world of human life. The grants in this charter are generous to human beings. First, God gives them a broad place to live and promises a great increase in people to fill it. He repeats the blessing, “Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth” (Genesis 9:1), and again in Genesis 9:7, because the human race was, in a sense, starting over.

God sets the whole earth before them and tells them it belongs to them and their descendants while it lasts. The earth is given to people for a home and a possession (Psalm 115:16). It is not paradise, and it is more like a wilderness than a garden, but it is still better than we deserve. Blessed be God, it is not hell.

God also gives a blessing by which people would increase and continue on the earth. In time, all the habitable places of the earth would be filled. One generation would pass, and another would come after it, while the world lasted. The human family would keep moving forward, side by side with time itself, until both were given up together into eternity. Death would still rule, and God would still make himself known through judgment, yet the earth would never again be emptied as it had been after the flood. It would continue to be inhabited (Acts 17:24-26).

Second, God gives them rule over the creatures below them (Genesis 9:2). He gives them a right to use them for their benefit, and he gives them authority over them. Without authority, the right would mean little. “The fear and the dread of you” would be on every beast. This renews the grant first given in Genesis 1:28, but with an important difference. In innocence, man ruled by love; after the fall, he rules by fear.

This blessing is still in force, and we still enjoy it in part. Creatures that are useful to us are brought under our control, so we use them for work, service, or food, as they can serve us. Horses and oxen submit to the bridle and yoke, and sheep are quiet before the shearer and the butcher, because the fear of man is on them. Creatures that can harm us are also restrained. They may injure people now and then, but they do not unite in open rebellion against mankind. God could use them to destroy the world just as surely as he once did by the flood, and such things are one of his severe judgments (Ezekiel 14:21). What keeps wolves out of our towns and lions out of our streets, and keeps them in the wild, if not this fear and dread? Even some creatures have been tamed (James 3:7).

Third, God gives them food and support for life. “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you” (Genesis 9:3). Most think that before this, people were limited to the fruits of the earth, herbs, roots, grain, and milk, as in the first grant (Genesis 1:29). But the flood may have washed away much of the earth’s strength, making its produce less nourishing and less pleasant. So God widened the grant and allowed people to eat meat. Man may not have thought of this on his own until God directed him to it, just as a sheep would never naturally think of drinking blood like a wolf.

Now people may eat flesh as freely and safely as the green plants. Here we learn that God is a good master. He provides not only what we need to survive, but also what makes life comfortable in his service. He also shows that every creature God made is good, and nothing should be refused if received with thankfulness (1 Timothy 4:4). Later, the ceremonial law forbade some foods that were fit to eat, but from the beginning that was not so, and therefore it is not so under the gospel either.

The commands and limits attached to this charter are just as kind and show the same goodwill toward human beings. The Jewish teachers often speak of seven laws given to Noah, or to Noah’s descendants, which they thought all nations should keep. They listed these as forbidding idols, blasphemy, murder, incest and all impurity, theft and robbery, requiring justice, and forbidding the eating of flesh with the blood. Whether or not that full list is sound, the commands here certainly all concern human life.

First, people must not damage their own lives by eating food that is harmful to health (Genesis 9:4). “Flesh with its life, that is, its blood” means raw flesh, or flesh still full of blood, and they were not to eat it like wild animals do. This limit had to be added to the permission to eat meat, so they would not turn that gift into harm and ruin their bodies with it. In this law God shows several things. He shows that, though people are rulers over the creatures, they are still under the Creator and bound by his law. He shows that they must not be greedy or careless with food, but must wait for it to be prepared, unlike Saul’s soldiers (1 Samuel 14:32) or the reckless gluttons spoken of in Proverbs 23:20. He shows that they must not be cruel to lower creatures. They may kill them for use, but they must not torture them for sport, or tear off part of a living creature and eat it.

He also shows that, while the sacrificial law continued, blood was not to be treated as ordinary. In those sacrifices, “the blood makes atonement for the life” (Leviticus 17:11), showing that the life of the sacrifice was accepted in place of the sinner’s life. So blood had to be poured out before the Lord, either on his altar or on his ground (2 Samuel 23:16), and not treated as a common thing.

But now that the great and true sacrifice has been offered, the law’s obligation ends with the reason for it. Human beings must not take away their own lives: “Your blood, which is your life, I will require” (Genesis 9:5). Our lives are not our own so that we can end them whenever we choose. They belong to God, and we must give them back at the time he appoints. If we hasten our own death in any way, we are accountable to God.

The animals must also not be allowed to kill human life: “At the hand of every beast I will require it.” God had just shown such care for human life, even after the flood’s great loss of life, that he ordered the animal to be put to death if it killed a person. This was later confirmed in the law of Moses (Exodus 21:28), and it would not be unsafe to follow that principle now. In this way God showed how much he hates murder, so that people would hate it more and not only punish it, but also prevent it (Job 5:23).

Willful murderers must be put to death. This is the sin the passage is mainly meant to restrain by the fear of punishment. God himself will judge murderers: “At the hand of every man’s brother I will require the life of man.” That means, “I will avenge the murdered person’s blood on the murderer” (2 Chronicles 24:22). When God requires the life of the one who was wrongly killed, the murderer cannot give that life back. So the murderer must give his own life instead, which is the only restitution left.

The righteous God will certainly investigate every murder, even if people cannot or do not. At some point, in this world or the next, he will uncover hidden murders, which are out of human sight, and he will punish open and defended murders, which are too serious for human courts to handle.

The civil magistrate must also punish murderers (Genesis 9:6): “Whoever sheds man’s blood,” whether in sudden anger or after planning it, “by man shall his blood be shed.” Rash anger is heart-murder, just as planned hatred is deliberate murder (Matthew 5:21, Matthew 5:22). This means the magistrate, or whoever is appointed to act as the avenger of blood, is to carry out the penalty. God has appointed rulers as his servants for this purpose, to protect the innocent and to warn evil people, and they must not bear the sword in vain (Romans 13:4).

Before the flood, as the story of Cain suggests, God took the punishment of murder into his own hands. But now he gave this judgment to people, first to family heads and later to rulers over nations, who must be faithful with the trust given to them. Willful murder should always be punished with death. It is a sin the Lord would not pardon in a king (2 Kings 24:3, 2 Kings 24:4), and so a king should not pardon it in a subject.

A reason is given for this law: “For in the image of God made he man.” Human beings are dear to their Creator, and so they should be dear to us. God has placed honor on them, so we must not dishonor them. Even after the fall, people still bear enough of God’s image that anyone who unjustly kills a human being dishonors God’s image itself. When God allowed people to kill animals, he still forbade them to kill their slaves, because human beings are far nobler and more excellent. They are not only God’s creatures, but also bear his image (James 3:9).

All people still have something of God’s image in them. But rulers also bear the image of his authority, and believers bear the image of his holiness. So those who shed the blood of princes or saints incur a double guilt.