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From: Genesis 9:1-13

God’s Covenant with Noah

[1] And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, “Be fruitful and multi-
ply, and fill the earth. [2] The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every
beast of the earth, and upon every bird of the air, upon everything that creeps on
the ground and all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are delivered. [3] Every
moving thing that lives shall he food for you; and as I gave you the green plants,
I give you everything. [4] Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its
blood. [5] For your lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning; of every beast I will
require it and of man; of every man’s brother I will require the life of man. [6] Who-
ever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man
in his own image. [7] And you, be fruitful and multiply, bring forth abundantly on
the earth and multiply in it.”

[8] Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, [9] “Behold, establish my
covenant with you and your descendants after you, [10] and with every living
creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with
you, as many as came out of the ark. [11] l establish my covenant with you, that
never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall
there be a flood to destroy the earth. [12] 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 all future generations: [13] l set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a
sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

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Commentary:

9:1-7. The sacred text now describes the new order of things that emerged after
the flood. Noah and his sons receive from God, in the first place, the same bles-
sings as Adam and Eve were given after they were created — fruitfulness and do-
minion over the earth; and then God makes another disposition, to the effect that
the beasts will serve them as food, for, according to the biblical narrative prior to
the falI, in paradise (cf. 1:29), they only had plants available to them; now, in the
new situation of mankind, after the first sin, the original harmony of the world has
been shattered and violence has come on the scene. Finally, God makes two pro-
hibitions — eating meat with blood in it, and murder. The first of these reflects the
culture of a period when blood was regarded as the source of life; therefore, even
in the case of animals, that life was to be respected in some way, by avoiding the
eating of flesh which had blood in it, thereby acknowledging that life comes from
God. The second prohibition refers to human life, which is always sacred because
every human being (we are reminded) is God’s image and likeness. As in the
case of Cain and Abel, God is never indifferent to the taking of human life, no
matter who the victim is.

9:8-17. To show that he was pleased by Noah’s sacrifice, God promised that he
would never again flood the earth (cf. 8:20-22); now he renews that promise in the
context of a covenant that covers all creation and which is ratified by a sign – the
rainbow.

This marks the start of a series of covenants which God will freely establish with
men. The first covenant (with Noah) takes in all creation, now purified and re-
newed by the flood. Later there will be the covenant with Abraham, which will
affect only himself and his descendants (cf. chap. 17). Finally, under Moses, he
will establish the covenant of Sinai (cf. Ex 19), also confined to the people of Is-
rael. But because man proved unable to keep these successive covenants, God
promised, through the prophets, to establish a new covenant in the messianic age:
“I will put my law within them and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their
God, and they shall be my people” (Jer 31:33). This promise found its fulfilment in
Christ, as he himself said when he instituted the eucharistic sacrifice of his body
and blood: “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood”
(Lk 22:20).

The Fathers and ecclesiastical writers saw this rainbow as the first proclamation
of this new covenant. Rupert of Deutz, for example, writes: “In it God established
a covenant with men through his son Jesus Christ; by the death (of Christ) on the
cross God reconciled us to himself, cleansing us of our sins in his blood, and he
gave us through (Christ) the Holy Spirit of his love, instituting the baptism of water
and the Holy Spirit by which we are reborn. Therefore, that rainbow which appears
in the clouds is a sign of the Son of God. [. . .] It is the sign that God will never
again destroy all flesh by the waters of the flood; the Son of God himself, who was
taken out of sight by a cloud, and who is lifted up beyond the clouds, above all the
heavens, is forever a sign which reminds God the Father he is an eternal memorial
of our peace: now that he in his flesh has destroyed the old enmity, friendship be-
tween God and men is secure: men are no longer servants but friends and children
of God” (”Commentarium in Genesim”, 4, 36).

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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.