Genesis 9:1-29 • The Rainbow
- Steve Schott
- Jun 21
- 9 min read
Updated: Jun 23
Genesis 9 records the events immediately after the flood. Both the good and the bad. We'll see God reiterating His command to "be fruitful and multiply", in order to replenish the earth with more people. With just the 8 of them, it's going to be a little precarious for a while. Heaven forbid they should all be on the same plane when it crashes into the ocean! We'll also see God changing the human diet. We'll see the institution of capital punishment. And God will also ratify a covenant to never destroy the earth by a flood again, and give us the rainbow as a reminder of that. Alas, we'll also see some of the human foibles that will affect the relationships of the brothers. And finally, we'll say goodbye to Noah as the number of the years of his life will come to an end.
Gen 9:1-29 → 1And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.
• The reiteration of God's command to "be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth."
• God said it to Adam and Eve in Gen 1:28.
• God said it to Noah in Gen 8:17 when they were leaving the ark.
• God will say it to Jacob, when He renamed him Israel, in Gen 35:11
• And He says it twice in this passage!
2The fear of you and the terror of you will be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky; with everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish of the sea, into your hand they are given. 3Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant. 4Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.
• God now expands the human diet to include animals.
• Along with that, the animals, birds, and fish will now have a natural fear of humans.
• The one caveat is that we don't eat the blood - so make my steak well done!
5Surely I will require your lifeblood; from every beast I will require it. And from every man, from every man’s brother I will require the life of man.
• So this is an interesting twist, related to the blood - since blood is the essence of life ("lifeblood") it is to be held as sacred, in that not only do we not eat it, but we shouldn't shed it among ourselves either, the idea that shedding the blood is to murder another person.
• This was demonstrated in Gen 4:8-11, where Cain killed his brother Abel, and God asked him, "What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to Me from the ground."
• God once more reiterates His command - "be fruitful and multiply; populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it."
• I think maybe He is serious about this!
8Then God spoke to Noah and to his sons with him, saying, 9“Now behold, I Myself do establish My covenant with you, and with your descendants after you; 10and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you; of all that comes out of the ark, even every beast of the earth. 11I establish My covenant with you; and all flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of the flood, neither shall there again be a flood to destroy the earth.”
• God now makes a "covenant", an irrevocable agreement, with Noah and his sons, which He says is for all mankind moving forward, that He will never again destroy the world by a flood.
• It doesn't mean there won't be localized floods, but never another global one.
12God said, “This is the sign of the covenant which I am making between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all successive generations; 13I set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth. 14It shall come about, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow will be seen in the cloud, 15and I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and never again shall the water become a flood to destroy all flesh. 16When the bow is in the cloud, then I will look upon it, to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” 17And 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.”
• We should always remember, when we see a rainbow in the sky, that this is a reminder, not just for us, but for God as well, that He made a promise to never flood the entire earth again.
• So say what you will about global warming, er, climate change - no matter how badly we mess up the earth, there won't be another global flood that wipes out the earth.
• Oh, and BTW, the rainbow belongs to God, not the alphabet people. It has NOTHING to do with sexual preference, or sexual identity (or lack thereof), or any of that. I'm not making judgements here about people whose preferences detour from the biblically traditional path designed for male and female, that's your business and none of mine, I'm just saying the rainbow has nothing to do with that.
18Now the sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem and Ham and Japheth; and Ham was the father of Canaan. 19These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the whole earth was populated.
20Then Noah began farming and planted a vineyard. 21He drank of the wine and became drunk, and uncovered himself inside his tent.
• Now here is an interesting twist. So Noah plants a vineyard, made wine from the produce thereof, drank said wine, and became drunk. This, and the fact that Canaan is listed as the son of Ham, indicates that some time has passed since they came off of the ark. Enough time to plant a farm, and to make some kids.
• To all my Christian friends, because of Jesus making wine in John chapter 2, who want to make a case about the wine back in those days as being not very alcoholic, or watered down to make it less so, I say this - wine is wine, fermented grapes (hence the need for new wine skins - Matt 2:22; Luke 5:37), and if you drink enough of it, you will get drunk.
• The Bible doesn't condemn the drinking of wine anywhere. Yes, there are numerous places in the Bible where drunkenness is warned about, but not drinking. So if you drink, know your limits, because you normally won't see that line until you've crossed it. Or if you're like me, just don't drink alcohol at all, then you never have to worry about when you've consumed too much! I've been there, I've done that, and I never want to go back again.
• This passage is the first of numerous ones in the Scripture that will elucidate on why you shouldn't drink too much. When you drink too much, you do things you ought not to do, such as Noah leaving himself "uncovered... inside his tent." Meaning, to be blunt, that he's now left his man parts exposed for the entire world to see. Which in this point of time is only 8 people.
22Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. 23But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it upon both their shoulders and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were turned away, so that they did not see their father’s nakedness.
• There's a lot of dialogue amongst commentators about just exactly what is going on here. The idea I get is that when Ham entered his father's tent and saw his "nakedness", a word that can take many connotations biblically. I tend to leave it at what it says - Noah was either naked, or at least was exposing that part of himself that would normally not be viewed by others in public.
• Ham, instead of averting his eyes, and fixing the problem to cover his father's embarrassing situation, goes outside and informs his brothers. They in turn, do what Ham should have done, covering their father, and did so in a manner to not see him in that state.
• There's also some confusion as to whether it was actually Ham who was offending, or his son Canaan. There's a possibility that Ham witnessed his con Canaan doing something inappropriate to his grandfather. It's just weird.
• There is so much going on here; I'm not sure if I totally understand, but I'll try to make sense of it.
• When Noah wakes up, and it's obvious to him that someone has covered him, and eventually he understands how Ham, or his son Canaan, was involved, instead of placing the punishment on his son Ham (the perpetrator of the crime?), he curses Ham's son Canaan. Absolutely no idea why Noah did this. It doesn't make any sense to me at all. But there's more...
• Noah basically creates a hierarchy between his children.
► Shem is in charge. He must be the first-born, whether he is the oldest or not. Whenever the three brothers are listed together in the Scripture, they are always listed as "Shem, Ham, and Japheth". I'm making the assumption that this is their birth order. It looks like the bulk of the blessings go to Shem.
► Japheth, who is listed third, also being blessed ("may God enlarge Japheth,..."), is listed as dwelling "in the tents of Shem", which I'm guessing means that big brother will always be looking out for his youngest brother and his lineage.
► Ham isn't listed here at all. His son Canaan, on the other hand, is cursed to be "a servant of servants he shall be to his brothers." Now I have no idea, for how long Canaan and his progeny are going to be servants. An interesting note is that in verse 24 where it says "he knew what his youngest son had done to him" either means that Ham is actually the youngest of the three, or quite possibly, it was not Ham who committed the offense, but Ham's son, Canaan. This would make more sense of Canaan being the recipient of the curse.
→ A side note on this cursing of Canaan, and how this passage has been twisted historically to justify slavery, specifically the subjugation of the African people; this is so twisted it is beyond belief. If anything, the curse on the person Canaan, might have been played out when eventually the people of Canaan, are replaced by Israelites in the future. The misuse of this event comes from Ham's son Cush, which historically has been a name for a region where modern Egypt is now located. Even if that is true, Cush was Canaan's brother, so why is subjugating the people of Africa have anything to do with this? This was a lame attempt to justify the taking of slaves from Africa and is totally unacceptable.
28Noah lived three hundred and fifty years after the flood. 29So all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years, and he died.
• So now we come to an end of an era. Noah is dead. The year is 2006 (from Adam at 0 (zero)). In three years Abram/Abraham will be born. It's 350 years since the flood. The next two chapters will deal with Noah's lineage, and the last significant event in what theologians call "Primeval History".
• So we've made it past the flood, and coming up is another significant intervention by God to shake things up on the planet (the confusion of languages at the tower of Babel), but what can we learn from what we've looked at today.
• God is in charge, not us. I am reminded that we have a tendency to think that because we don't see Him physically, or hear Him audibly, that we seem to put Him out of our thoughts while we live our day-to-day lives. We need to remember, that He's the Creator of the entire universe, yet He's desirous of being in an intimate relationship with each one of us. He created us to have fellowship with Him.
• God is serious about sin. He won't tolerate it. So even if we've received Jesus as Savior and Lord, there should be no place in our lives for sin. We will sin, but we need to deal with it and get past it.
• God loves us. As mentioned, He sent His Son Jesus into history, who lived and died and rose again - FOR US! To deal with the sin problem. All we need to do is to trust or believe in who He is and what He has done for us. Acceptance of Him is all we need, to resolve the sin problem in our lives.
Photo • 5/31/2014 - Double rainbow over the Rogers County Courthouse - Claremore, OK
“Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995
by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org”
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