Genesis 9:1-17

Bible Study Lesson for June 3

Usually on Wednesday nights, some in our community get together to share prayer requests, we pray together, and I bring a Bible lesson for them. Last week, we covered Genesis 8:13-22 so I will pick up today where we left off.

First I’d like to talk about prayer requests. Online communication being what it is, I would rather not get into specific requests in this space, and will leave that for the more private communications that the church has with each other. But I do want to remember a few general prayer requests:

-our government, those making decisions on our behalf

-those in the medical community

-those in food service, grocery stores, and other essential businesses

-those in other businesses that are opening and preparing to open

-teachers and students still figuring out what the closures of schools means for them -prisoners and prison guards

-first responders

-those whose life and income has been disrupted by the current crisis.

I also want to remember all of those suffering from Covid-19 and the communities that it is affecting, including our own.

In addition to these, let’s also pray for everyone involved with demonstrations around our country and the world.

-protesters

-police

-government officials

-hospitals

-reconciliation

Take a moment to pray for these folks now before we begin.

Genesis 9:1-17 “God’s Promises”

Last week when we concluded our Bible study, I observed that God had made a decision. God decided to never “curse the ground” again because of human wickedness. God also promises to honor the cycle of days and seasons. In this week’s lesson, we will discuss what life after the flood meant for the small surviving human community: the family of Noah.

In parts of Jewish thought, Noah becomes a representative of all of humanity, because God is “starting over” through his family and making him the father of all humans. After this, we will quickly begin to see in the genealogies the origins of Israel’s neighbors and enemies.  The demands God makes on Noah become the demands God makes of all people - both the nation of Israel and everyone else. God will later give a specific covenant to Abram for God’s chosen people Israel. Here we read about the demands God makes on Noah and, from there, all people.

9:1-7 New Beginnings, a New Deal

In verse 1, God begins by recommissioning the human race through Noah: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.” This is a repetition of the first command given to humans in Genesis 1:28. After that, things start to get a little different. In Genesis 1, God gives humans “dominion” over all the animals and plant life for food for both humans and animals. As we saw after the Fall, God also uses animal skins to make clothes for the humans. Here, as the world is beginning again, God expands the human diet. But God begins by emphasizing a new relationship between humans and animals: animals will “fear and dread” humans, and God also allows humans to eat animals.

For Noah, the clean-unclean distinction in animals we noted in previous lessons does not apply to what he can have for food. The only restriction is that humans are not to eat “flesh with its life, that is, its blood.” Life and blood are two important concepts in Hebrew thought. Here the word for life is the Hebrew word nephesh which is often translated “soul” or “breath,” but carries the connotation of life itself, or animating force. Dam, likewise, is the word translated blood. Elsewhere in Scripture it is lifeblood. Breath and blood are connected concepts. If you think about it, those are the two things that most quickly separate life from death. They are also both substances that fill the body.

From Hebrew thought, we carry to this day a taboo against eating meat with blood in it or eating living creatures. In ancient times, this meant that in many societies the butcher was also the local priest. Slaughtering an animal carried ritual significance, as the blood had to be drained from the animal prior to cooking it. Additionally, it carried communal weight, because in a world without refrigeration meat from large animals had to be cooked and eaten very soon after slaughter. 

In verses 5 and 6, God attempts to forestall the cycle of violence present in the world before the Flood (Genesis 6:11-13), and particularly present in the genealogy of Cain’s descendants (Genesis 4:17-24). The natural consequences of murder are laid out. This shows us the foundations of the idea of “an eye for an eye” we see throughout the Old Testament (Exodus 21:23-24). This verse from Exodus sets the standard of equal damage for damage. Human nature often runs toward escalation, as in the case of Lamech (of the family of Cain) in Genesis 4:23: “I have killed a man for wounding me/ a young man for striking me.” In this story of Noah, God makes it clear that anyone or anything that takes a human life requires a reckoning. 

Of course, Jesus reinterprets this “limited retribution” tradition, asking his followers to forgive, and “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:38-40). Reading the covenant with Noah through the lens of Jesus’s teaching makes it clear that Jesus wants us to relinquish our “rights” for the good of our neighbor. And as Jesus points out later in the same sermon, “if you forgive others their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14-15). 

In the C.S. Lewis’s book The Great Divorce, he imagines a woman trying to get into heaven by asking for her “just desserts.” She simply insists that she wants what she’s got coming to her. We can imagine a person exercising their version of justice their whole life, exacting every penalty and keeping a ledger of other people’s debts. That sort of mindset is a corruption of God’s intention and only ends poorly because everyone surely falls short in paying every debt and righting every wrong.

God ends the commands to Noah the same way that he began them. “Be fruitful and multiply, abound on the earth and multiply in it.” As I have said before, this type of repetition in Hebrew writing indicates the closing of a thought. Everything in between these repeated phrases are boundaries. When humans live within these conditions - eating animals, abstaining from their blood as a way to respect life, and prohibiting murder - they live in freedom. Humans are freest when they respect the boundaries of their freedom. Some of those limits are imposed by God (don’t eat blood), while others come into play when our exercise of freedom would limit the freedom of the other (do not murder).

9:8-17 God’s Promise

It is striking that God’s part of the bargain is a promise not only to Noah and the other humans, but also with the animals who were on the ark with them. God’s promise is that there will never be a flood to destroy all life on earth. God gives Noah the sign of a rainbow.  This sign of the covenant is linked to God’s promise. One could imagine that having been through the traumatic experience of the Great Flood, Noah would feel anxious whenever it rained. Therefore God compassionately gives Noah an assurance: the rainbow. It not only serves as a sign to Noah, but it also has another function.

The second function of the rainbow is to be a reminder to God. Now this might surprise us, since we don’t like to think of God needing to be reminded of anything. But in covenant contracts, signs are important reminders to the parties at hand of what it was they had agreed to. Among other things, God is modeling good covenant behavior. From here on out, Noah can be assured that when he sees the rainbow, not only does Noah remember God’s promise, but God also remembers God’s promise. In some Christian traditions, shortly after Christmas they celebrate the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. The Baptized Christians in those churches are reminded to “Remember your baptism.” Like Noah, I think sometimes the trials and struggles of life weigh us down. I have encountered many people who, near death or in dire circumstances, doubt their salvation. We are wise in such times to “Remember our Baptism,” as a sign between us and God that we are forgiven, saved by the blood of Christ. God remembers. Do you?

Conclusion

God’s promise to never again destroy all flesh is unconditional.  But God does have expectations for human beings. We have been failing to live up to them ever since the Flood, but Jesus makes things simpler (and also somehow far more difficult) by reducing everything to love. Love is the fulfillment of all of God’s commands. But sometimes we forget to love. Perhaps we need to do what God did with the rainbow and provide ourselves with reminders. A rubber band around your wrist, a piece of string, a special bracelet. When you don’t know what to do, look down at it and remind yourself: “love.” That will keep us inside God’s commandments.

Bible Scholar Walter Brueggeman points out that God “remembering” is an important theme in the Old Testament. Frequently in the Bible, folks wonder if they have been forgotten (Psalms 10:11, 13:1, 42:9; Isaiah 49:14; Lamentations 5:20). In the story of the flood, when Noah had spent a year on the ark, we discover this wonderful gospel message: “God remembered Noah...” (Genesis 8:1). Brueggeman writes, “But the gospel of this God is that he remembers. The only thing the waters of chaos and death do not cut through (though they cut through everything else) is the commitment of God to creation.” Here, at the end of the Flood story, we have a faithful God promising to remember the People of God.

In a world where the news comes a mile a minute, where destruction is sowed in so many ways, it is easy to feel forgotten. It is at these moments that we need to cling desperately to the promises of God. Remember your baptism. God remembers you.