CHAPTER 9

(2348 B.C.)

THE COVENANT

¹And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the Earth (the Blessing that God gave to Noah was in effect a Covenant; the Covenant concerned the subject matter of the Verse).

²And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the Earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moves upon the Earth, and upon all the fish of the sea; into your hand are they delivered (to be delivered into the hand of man refers to the fact that man would be able to tame and reduce certain animals to be of help to him).

³Every moving thing that lives shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things. (All the animals, if so desired, could serve as food, as well as could vegetables; Genesis 1:29 implies that man was exclusively vegetarian before the flood.)

⁴But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall you not eat (man is prohibited from eating blood; there were several reasons; however, the main reason was because the shedding of blood in Sacrifices typified the Great Atonement which would be carried out by Christ, in the shedding of His Lifes Blood).

⁵And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every mans brother will I require the life of man (this Verse condemns suicide, as well as homicide; this is a solemn proclamation of the sanctity of human life).

⁶Whoso sheds mans blood, by man shall his blood be shed (in this Covenant, we actually have the institution of Government; the Passage speaks of cold-blooded murder; that being the case, the State has the right to take the life of such a murderer): for in the Image of God made He man (capital punishment is not meant by God to serve as a deterrent, but rather to portray the inherent worth of man).

⁷And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the Earth, and multiply therein (were it not for demonic religion and mans rebellion against God, the Earth could easily care for 100 billion people).

⁸And God spoke unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying (the problem with the world is that it ignores what God has said),

⁹And I, behold, I establish My Covenant with you, and with your seed after you (the Covenant that God established with Noah was to be extended to all thereafter; in fact, it still stands);

¹⁰And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the Earth with you; from all that go out of the Ark, to every beast of the Earth. (This Covenant includes all of Gods creation on Earth.)

¹¹And I will establish My Covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off anymore by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the Earth. (This Covenant guarantees that the world will never again be destroyed by water.)

¹²And God said, This is the token of the Covenant which I make between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations (means that generations of people will continue forever):

¹³I do set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a Covenant between Me and the Earth (the whole creation rests, as to its exemption from a second deluge, on the eternal stability of Gods Covenant, of which the bow is the token).

¹⁴And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the Earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud (the rainbow):

¹⁵And I will remember My Covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh (it doesnt mean that there will not be local floods, but rather a flood to destroy the entirety of the Earth).

¹⁶And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the Everlasting Covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the Earth (in this Passage, we are told that this Covenant is everlasting; in the Hebrew, it means the Covenant of Eternity).

¹⁷And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the Covenant, which I have established between Me and all flesh that is upon the Earth (the Covenant being universal, the sign of the rainbow is also universal).

¹⁸And the sons of Noah, who went forth of the Ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan. (The entirety of the population of the Earth, and for all time since the flood, are descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth; Canaan is mentioned because his lineage will prove to be bitter enemies of Israel about 800 years into the future.)

¹⁹These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole Earth overspread (this means that every single person on the Earth died in the flood, with the exception of this family).

NOAHS DRUNKENNESS

²⁰And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:

²¹And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. (This is the first mention of wine in the Bible, or any type of intoxicating beverage. Inasmuch as the first mention of intoxicating beverage in the Bible reveals such a shameful episode, we cannot help but garner from this illustration, as given by the Holy Spirit concerning Noah, the warning against alcohol taught here.)

²²And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without (sin is like leaven; it always spreads; Noah not only gets drunk, but now pulls off his clothes, and does so intentionally; there is a form of insanity about sin).

²³And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their fathers nakedness (a lack of love exposes sin, while the Love of God covers sin, but without condoning it).

²⁴And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him (there are some Scholars who believe that either Ham or Canaan, and more likely Canaan, committed an act of homosexuality on the Patriarch; while there is no concrete proof of such, there is definitely some indication in that direction).

THE CURSE ON CANAAN

²⁵And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. (What was this curse? It had absolutely nothing to do with the skin of some people being black. In fact, all the descendants of Ham and Canaan were not black; some were white, and we speak of those who occupied the land of Canaan. The evidence is, it was only upon those, and because they opposed Israel, hence the statement being Cursed be Canaan. Even then, Canaanites who placed their faith in God could escape it. Rahab, a Canaanite and a harlot, is an excellent example. She placed her faith in God and after a period of purification, was brought into Israels camp. She married an Israelite, and became an ancestress of David, and even the greater Son of David, the Lord Jesus Christ [Josh. 6:25; Mat. 1:5; Heb. 11:31].)

²⁶And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem (through Shem would come the Jewish people, who would give the world the Word of God and, as well, would bring forth the Messiah, the Saviour of the world); and Canaan shall be his servant (the Canaanites in Israel were defeated by David, and became the servants of Israel).

²⁷God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem (Israel, the descendants of Shem, would reject Christ, while the descendants of Japheth would accept Him, which means that the Blessing intended for Shem, i.e., Israel, would instead go to the descendants of Japheth, i.e., the Gentiles); and Canaan shall be his servant. (The descendants of Canaan continue unto this hour [2003], in a sense, to be the servants of Japheth. For instance, the descendants of Canaan, wherever they might be, in a sense, answer to the United States, which part of the population are descendants of Japheth.)

²⁸And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years.

²⁹And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years: and he died. (This means that Noah lived almost to the birth of Abraham, and was thus, in all probability, a witness of the building of the Tower of Babel, and of the consequent dispersion of mankind.)