The first thing that Noah did when he departed from the ark was to build an altar and offer 1 (pair?) of every clean animal and bird, which Noah had previously took 7 pairs into the ark, as a burnt offering to God.
The Noahic Covenant
Genesis 8:21 to 9:17 is the Noahic Covenant. The content are as follows:
(a) Recipient: Noah, his descendants (that includes you and me), and all living creatures.
(b) The Promise: 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.
(c) Our Obligation:
This is an unconditional covenant, that is, we need not do anything for
this particular covenant to be in effect.
(d) The Sign: bow in the cloud (rainbow).
(e) Other Instructions:
- Human beings are to populate the earth. In fact, this instruction was repeated in verses 1 (Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth) and 7 (be fruitful and multiply; Populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it), emphasising God's seriousness. Of course, humankind, for some reasons not revealed, decided not to obey this command which we will see in Chapter 11.
- On top of the green plants, every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you. Human beings would be omnivorous. Because of this, God instilled the fear and terror of human beings into the all living creatures because God has also given human beinge dominion over all the living creatures. This also demonstrated God's grace towards the animals. The only restriction to this diet is that they are not to "eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood". This can be interpreted as not eating [drinking] blood (which became an occultic practice later] or flesh which is not drained of its blood.
- Capital punishment was mandated for murder in verse 6 - Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed. Man was mandated to implement capital punishment on those who kill. The reason being "for in the image of God He made man". Since man was made in the image of God, killing a human being is an affront to destroying God's image. There is no indication here that this was to have any deterrence purpose. It was simply God's punishment to be executed by humankind for those who kill.
Things to Note
(1) In Gen 8:21-22, God promised not to destroy the earth and all living things as he had done [via water]. While comforting, those of us familiar with the Bible will know that God will ultimately judge the earth with fire.
(2) The sign that God gave for this covenant, the bow or rainbow, points to the fact that the rainbow did not happened pre-flood, else why would it be so special that God gave it as a sign if it was already observed in the pre-flood era. This also alluded to the idea that the canopy theory can be plausible. The canopy theory is the idea that the atmosphere, pre-flood era, contained high concentration of water vapour. This was also the hypothesis why people during that era could live such long lives. Sure there are good scientific reasons why the atmosphere could not have contained so much water vapour but we should not limit what God is able to do.
The Strange Incident
Gen 9:20-29 narrated a strange incident. You would think that with the flood, Noah and his sons would experience intimately God's presence and know what needs to be done. Unfortunately, for some unknown reason(s), Noah decided to plant a vineyard, gather the grapes, made the wine and got himself drunk. The only saving grace was that he did not publicly embarrased himself but became naked inside his tent.
His son Ham saw the nakedness of his father and told his 2 brothers. This demonstrated 2 points: (a) It seems that the only way that Ham could see his father's nakedness was that he went into Noah's tent, which he shouldn't have done and (b) to compound this, instead of covering Noah, he decided to go and tell his brothers about it. While the Bible did not say why, we can speculate that Ham wanted his brothers to see their father's shame.
To the credit of Shem and Japheth, they did not gloat over their father's plight but covered Noah's nakedness in a ver deliberate manner (But 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.). When Noah woke up, he pronounced the future states of his 3 sons.
Ham: Critics have criticised Noah's curse on Ham through his 4th son Canaan. Their contention is why should Ham's son be punished for Ham's wrongdoing. Some Bible commentators tried to justify this by pointing to Bible references (Exo 20:5, 34:6-7, Num 14:18 and Deut 5:9) that say that God punished the sins of a person down to the 3rd and 4th generations. My view is that this is unnecessary for several reasons:
(a) In Deut 5:10, God also said that He would show "lovingkindness to thousands [generations], to those who love Me and keep My commandments" (similarly in Exo 34:6-7). This means that Canaan was also responsible for his own destiny which of course turned out to be bad. In fact, the indictment of God against Canaan speaks for itself in Deut 12:29-31:
When the LORD your God cuts off before you the [Canaanite] nations which you are going in to dispossess, and you dispossess them and dwell in their land, beware that you are not ensnared to follow them, after they are destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, 'How do these [Canaanite] nations serve their gods, that I also may do likewise?' You shall not behave thus toward the LORD your God, for every abominable act which the LORD hates they have done for their gods; for they even burn their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods.
(b) If God's punishment of Ham to the 3rd and 4th generations was true, then it should have also affected Ham's three other sons - Cush, Mizraim and Put who were the ancestors of what became the north African nations and Egypt. As far as we know, these other sons (and nations) of Ham did not suffered God's judgment for Ham's transgression.
(c) it could be God's [Moses'] way of explaining the state of affairs of the Canaanite nations during his time as exemplified in Deut 12:29-31 above.
In any case, Noah prophesised that Ham's son Canaan would become the lowliest of servants (servant of servants) to both his uncles', Shem and Japheth, descendants.
Shem: Noah's blessing on Shem could be missed if one reads too quickly. It is interesting that Noah did not bless Shem but blessed Yahweh, the God of Shem. From this blessing, the descendants of Shem would uniquely possess the knowledge of God through which God's redemptive plan would be fulfilled. Canaan would become the slaves of the Shemites as detailed in Genesis 14:1-4 and 1 Kings 9:20-21.
Japheth: Japheth would have the largest numbers of descendants (May God enlarge Japheth) and would ultimately include the inhabitants of Asia and Europe (this will be discussed in the next chapter). Noah also mentioned that Japheth will "dwell in the tents of Shem". The Hebrew word for "dwell" is שׁכן (shakan), which also can mean tabernacle. It could mean that the descendants of Japheth would adopt the cultural and religious practices of the Shemites. Again, Canaan was to become the slaves of the descendants of Japheth as well as seen in the later fulfilment when the Phoenicians became the slaves to Greeks and Romans.
Ham's Curse as Justification for Slavery?
During the European and American slavery periods, people have attempted to use Ham's (or more correctly, Canaan's) curse to justify slavery. They deliberately mis-translated the name Ham to mean "black" through its Egyptian word origin and sought to justify enslavement of the Africans. This is totally bizzare as not all descendants of Ham were black-skinned as can be seen from the Canaanites and Egyptians. There is no room to use the Bible to justify the enslavement of any races.
Death of Noah
Chapter 9 ends with the death of Noah who died at the age of 950 years old. He would be the last of the patriarchs that lived to such a long age.
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