Genesis · chapter 9 of 50
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Genesis 9 tells how God blesses Noah and his sons, tells them to multiply, gives instructions about blood and human life and establishes a covenant with the earth and its creatures, with the rainbow as its sign. Then Noah plants a vineyard, becomes drunk, and his son Ham sees him naked; Shem and Japheth cover him. Noah curses Canaan and blesses Shem and Japheth.
Genesis 9 opens the world after the flood. God renews humanity with a blessing like that of Genesis 1 and establishes a covenant that is the first of several in the Bible. But it also shows that sin is still present: even a righteous man like Noah fails, and his family is marked by it.
God blesses Noah and his sons and tells them to be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth. The animals will fear human beings, and God now permits them to eat meat, on the condition that they do not eat it with its blood. God will require an account for the blood of every human life, because man was made in the image of God, and whoever sheds the blood of man, by man his blood will be shed.
God then establishes his covenant with Noah, with his descendants and with every living creature: never again will a flood destroy the earth. The sign of the covenant is the bow he sets in the clouds, and God says he will see it and remember his everlasting covenant.
The sons of Noah who came out of the ark are Shem, Ham, who is the father of Canaan, and Japheth; from them the whole earth was populated. Noah becomes a man of the soil and plants a vineyard. He drinks some of the wine, becomes drunk and lies uncovered in his tent. Ham sees his father's nakedness and tells his brothers; Shem and Japheth, instead, take a cloak, walk in backward and cover their father without seeing him. When Noah wakes and learns what his youngest son has done, he pronounces a curse on Canaan, who will be a servant of servants to his brothers, and blesses the Lord, the God of Shem, and Japheth. Noah lives 350 years after the flood and dies at 950.
References follow ESV book names and verse numbers. Read each verse in your Bible before the explanation.
God says that whoever sheds human blood will be held to account, because man was made in the image of God. The value of human life rests on the image of God that each person bears, which is why murder is a grave offense.
God promises that never again will all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood. The promise is one-sided: God himself commits, without conditions, to all creatures, not only to Noah.
God sets his bow in the clouds as the sign of the covenant between him and the earth. The bow in the sky is a visible reminder that God keeps his word, and he sees it each time the rain returns.
Noah curses Canaan and blesses Shem and Japheth. The text does not say this was a sentence on a race; it is a prophecy about Canaan's line, which later relates to the peoples of the land that Israel would inherit.
6 questions with answers and references, ready for Sunday school, small group or a Bible quiz night.
Answer: To be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth. — Genesis 9:1
Answer: Because man was made in the image of God. — Genesis 9:6
Answer: That never again would a flood destroy all flesh or the earth. — Genesis 9:11
Answer: The bow that God set in the clouds. — Genesis 9:13
Answer: They took a cloak, walked in backward and covered their father without seeing him. — Genesis 9:23
Answer: On Canaan, the son of Ham. — Genesis 9:25
The rainbow reminds us that God keeps what he promises. In a group you can talk about the signs God has given us of his faithfulness and how to remember them in times of doubt. The covenant with Noah does not depend on human goodness: God establishes it by his own grace.
The scene of Noah uncovered also teaches how we treat other people's sin. Ham talks about it, while Shem and Japheth cover it with respect. Ask how you react when someone close to you fails: by spreading the news of the fall or by seeking to restore them discreetly, without ignoring what happened.
Genesis 9 ends with Noah's death and his three sons about to populate the world. Genesis 10 presents the table of nations, which shows how the families of Shem, Ham and Japheth spread out.
Ham is the father of Canaan, and the text directs the curse at Canaan, not at Ham or all his descendants. This passage has often been misused to justify slavery or racism, but neither the text nor Christian tradition allows it. It refers to a specific people, the Canaanites.
It is human language for speaking of God's faithfulness. God does not forget, but the bow is a visible sign so that people remember that God will keep his promise not to destroy the earth again with a flood.
In Genesis 1:29 God gave human beings plants for food. After the flood he adds animals, with the restriction of not eating meat with its blood. Blood represents life, which belongs to God, and this rule teaches respect for life.