(BA) Notes on Genesis 9

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Like the creation, the Flood is followed by a blessing and a command to be fruitful and multiply. While humans after creation were to rule over the animal kingdom, humans after the Flood are given the right to eat all sorts of animals. This is in contrast to the case with the Israelites, who later in the Pentateuch are told in great detail which animals they can and cannot eat. The idea that God had a covenant with all mankind, which contains less rules than the covenant with Israel specifically, later became, in Jewish thought, the basis for the idea of the "Seven Laws of Noah". In Christianity, the tension between God's more general moral commandments for people in general and his more restrictive rules for Israelites becomes one of the central theological issues that Paul and the early Christian movement reckoned with. This chapter is also noteworthy because it is the reason that some Christians believe that the death penalty is morally mandated by the Bible for murder -- it shows that the death penalty is not part of the Mosaic covenant alone. It is also, like the mandate after creation, a source of the idea that people should have many children.

This passage also contains the idea of a taboo on eating bloody meat, if I'm understanding it right. This shows up even in the New Testament, where believers are told to observe this taboo by avoiding blood and strangled animals (Acts 15). The passage implicitly connects the blood taboo in some way to the prohibition on murder. There is an interesting tension in this chapter: it is both the chapter that first authorizes human killing of animals, but it is also a chapter in which God makes a covenant which is between himself and not only human beings, but also animals. They are included in its ethical terms, in that not only human murderers but even animals who kill humans are subject to the death penalty.

God promises not to Flood the earth again, instituting the rainbow as the sign of his covenant. In anthropomorphic fashion, God uses the rainbow to remind himself not to destroy the earth. 2 Peter 3 takes the reassuring text of Genesis 9 and gives it a sinister twist. Where before God had promised not to bring the Flood on destruction, instead he will destroy it next time with fire.

An enigmatic story follows in which something happens between Ham and Noah, something involving Noah naked, and the upshot is that Canaan is cursed to slavery. This legitimizes the later genocide against the Canaanites ordered by God, and the enslavement of the survivors.

Noah dies at the age of 950, an age shocking to modern ears but perfectly typical within the context of Genesis -- most of Noah's forefathers are described as living similar lifespans. After Noah, the lifespans quickly become shorter, eventually reaching normal human lengths. This follows the template set by the Babylonian King Lists, in which a series of important persons lived extraordinary long lives prior to a flood, after which the length of lives was reduced bit by bit to normal lengths. In an even broader sense, it sits with ancient understandings of the world, in which the present world is inhabited by normal individuals, while moving backward in time one encounters more and more outlandish things: long lives (Genesis 5), demigods (Genesis 6), and so forth.

This chapter is often discussed as underpinning a notion which in Judaism has gone by the name of "the laws of Noah." With regard to eating meat, murder, and capital punishment, this chapter depicts God as giving some commandments to the ancestor of all humans, which in the logic of biblical covenant would then by extension apply to all his descendants.

The more famous legislation in the Bible is that given by Moses, which is particularly an arrangement between the Yahweh and Israel. The question, for believers in the Hebrew Bible, is then bound to come up -- how are non-Israelites morally bound to live? The traditional rabbinical to this answer is constructed (with some elaborations) on the textual basis of Genesis 9. On this interpretation, the Mosaic law binds the people of Israel, while a more general moral law is enjoined on all humanity. This line of thought is also further developed in various ways in the New Testament and later Christian traditions.

The "curse of Canaan" evidently served as a justification for the hostile attitude of the Hebrew Bible to the supposed indigenous pre-Israelite people of Canaan, who are targeted for genocide and enslavement by the Bible. More recently, some interpreters have applied to the "curse of Canaan" to black Africans in general, although this isn't what the text originally intended.

Genesis sees all humankind as descended from the three sons of Noah. The nations of the earth, in its scheme, are members of a family tree. Thus Genesis 10 outlines how the sons of Noah came to father the various peoples of what was, for the authors of Genesis, the known world. This world included various peoples of the Mediterranean, and people about as far north as the Black Sea, about as far east as the extent of the Babylonian Empire, and to the south a little below Egypt. To the extent that the various names of Genesis 10 can be identified, they are all parts of this known world. The chapter cannot be read as describing humanity as it is now known to be -- you won't find the Chinese, or Native Americans, or British in this scheme.

(9:1) The blessing of Noah and his sons echoes the blessing in Genesis 1:28. In the biblical scheme, there is creation (Genesis 1), de-creation (the Flood), and now a restoration.

fill. The ASV reads "replenish", but the Hebrew verb itself is the simple verb "to fill", not any special verb referring to re-filling.

(9:2) the fear of you and the dread of you. Genesis 6:12 says that, prior to the Flood, "all flesh had corrupted its behavior upon the earth". According to Dillmann, "all flesh" is broad enough that it refers not just to humans but also to animals. Therefore, now that animals have become violent, God makes them fearful of humans to protect them.

upon ... upon ... with ... with. Translating ʿl as "upon" and b- as "with". The KJV indiscriminately reads both particles as "upon", although the ASV does pick up on the distinction, as do a number of translations, in various ways.

All the beasts of the earth. I am not sure whether in this context the Hebrew phrase, ḥayyat ha-ʾareṣ (literally animals of the land) refers simply to wild animals or to animals in general. Some manuscripts of the Septuagint, according to the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (5th ed.), have a reading which would be the equivalent of inserting in Hebrew "and all livestock" here. If this reading reflects an earlier Hebrew text, then naturally it would seem that the Hebrew original here had in mind the wild animals specifically when saying ḥayyat ha-ʾareṣ. Another theory, of August Knobel (in Dillmann) is that domestic animals are specifically not mentioned here because they lack the fear of humans that wild animals have.

With all things. According to Kittel, two medieval Hebrew manuscripts, some Samaritan manuscripts, and some other ancient witnesses read "And with all things". Kittel says that we should follow the Masoretic Text here.

into your hand they are given. As August Knobel notes (in Dillmann), the language here implies the power of life and death. Compare the numerous cases in Judges and elsewhere where God "gives" a people "into the hands" of their enemies.

(9:3) crawling thing. Hebrew remeś. When this word refers to a subset of animals, it seems to refer to the small sorts of animals that might crawl low to the ground, or scurry about, or swarm. But in some places, like this verse, it seems to be used more generally to embrance all the animals. Note that the text says not just "every crawling thing" but "every crawling thing that is alive".

(9:3) From this verse one might draw the conclusion that the pre-Flood diet, at least as far as God's authorization is concerned, was vegetarian. Compare this verse to 1:29, where only plants are mentioned as human food.

Notice that Noah, as the representative of humanity in general, is given meat in general as food. Later Israel in particular will be restricted only to eating certain species, the so-called "clean" animals.

(9:4) with its life, its blood. Kittel thinks "its blood" is probably a later addition to the text.

(9:4) As a matter of traditional Jewish interpretation, Rashi here follows the Talmud in seeing two commands here. Not to eat an animal with its "life" forbad eating part of an animal removed while the animal was still alive. Not to eat "its blood" forbad eating literal blood. See Chabad.org's The Complete Jewish Bible with Rashi Commentary. As a matter of early Christian interpretation, it is worth noting that Acts 15 forbids both eating blood and the flesh of strangled animals.

(9:5) surely. The Samaritan Pentateuch does not have the word here (Skinner).

(9:5) from the hand of each one's brother. This is the reading of the Masoretic Text, the Septuagint, and the Vetus Latina, and the one which Kittel recommends. Another reading is and from the hand of each one's brother, supported, Kittel says, by eight medieval Hebrew manuscripts, the Peshitta, and the Vulgate.

(9:5) In the most obvious immediate context, we can read "each one's brother" as meaning "fellow human being". But in the somewhat broader context of Genesis, consider that the first murder was literally one man killing his brother. God did not require the life of the murderer as repayment in the case of Cain and Abel, but now in Genesis 9 he does institute the lex talionis, as far as murder goes. Another idea I have (so take that for what it's worth), is that "from the hand of each one's brother" refers to the later biblical idea of the next of kin being the one to carry out blood-vengeance, a theme developed in more detail later with the so-called "cities of refuge".

(9:6) by humankind or by humans his blood shall be shed. The plain meaning is that the murderer is to receive the death penalty. But the Talmud, in its curious way, pursues a novel interpretation. It reads "by humans" (ba-ʾadam) as meaning "with humans", i.e. with witnesses. Thus, for the Talmud, this verse demands that a murderer is only to be put to death after a proper trial. A plain reading, of course, says nothing about a trial. Whether or not trials are needed, they are simply not mentioned here.

(9:6) by humankind his blood shall be shed. The Septuagint reads "in return for this blood shall it [i.e. the blood] be shed" (New English Translation of the Septuagint). Kittel thinks that the difference might be explained by the Septuagint translators reading baddam (literally "in the blood") instead of the Masoretic Text's baʾadam (by humankind).

(9:6) he made. The Septuagint reads, I made.

(9:7) be fruitful and multiply. According to Knobel (via Dillmann) this verse is put here to contrast with the previous material about murder. Rather than committing murder and destroying human life, the mission of God is for humans to increase human life by multiplying.

(9:7) swarm. According to Kittel, four medieval Hebrew manuscripts, the Samaritan Pentateuch and (all or most of) the Versions read "and swarm".

(9:7) swarm in. The Septuagint reads fill. According to Dillmann this change was made to make the verse more clearly agree with Genesis 1:28, which it echoes.

(9:7) and multiply in it. Hebrew u-rebu bah. Kittel suggests that we read u-redu bah (and hold sway over it) (compare Genesis 1:28).

(9:9) establish. Hebrew heqim. According to Skinner, it is the Priestly source that uses "establish (heqim) a covenant" or "set a covenant", rather than the term karat "to cut" a covenant.

(9:10) livestock. According to Kittel, the Samaritan Pentateuch, Septuagint, and other ancient witnesses support the reading "and livestock".

(9:10) of all wild animals. Kittel suggests that perhaps this phrase should be deleted (it is missing in the Septuagint).

(9:11) ruin. The Masoretic Text and Septuagint differ on the spelling and perhaps the form (binyan) of the verb here, but I don't think it ultimately makes any difference to the interpretation of the verse. See Kittel here.

(9:12) God. The Septuagint reads "the Lord God" (Skinner).

(9:12) said. The Septuagint reads "said to Noah" (Skinner).

(9:12) sign of the covenant. The idea of a "sign" for a covenant is not unique to this story. Compare Genesis 17:11, in which circumcision is a "sign of the covenant" between God and Abraham.

(9:13) my bow I set in the cloud. The text does not say whether rainbows occurred before the Flood. Dillmann notes that several interpreters had assumed that this was the first rainbow, and on the basis of this each come up with ideas about the "condition of the atmospheric air before the Flood". This is going entirely too far -- the writers of Genesis were quite unaware of anything like a modern scientific view of the world. Compare Genesis 1, in which the sky is pictured as a solid dome holding back the waters in the sky.

(9:13) set. Or, as the ASV marginal note has it, "have set".

(9:14) when I bring clouds. Hebrew be-ʿanani ʿanan. You don't have to be a Hebrew reader to see the repetition. The verb ʿanan looks just like the noun ʿanan ("cloud"). The verb is typically taken as meaning "to gather clouds". But, if that is the meaning, it occurs only here. The is another binyan of the same root which has magical associations. I wonder if be-ʿanani ʿanan might be something like "when I conjure up a cloud", using a form of wordplay rather than just repeating the world "cloud" twice in two different forms.

(9:15) of all flesh. Kittel_{1909 thinks that perhaps this phrase is a later addition to this verse.}

(9:15) ruin. Something is going on here similar to verse 11 between the Masoretic Text and Septuagint.

(9:16) I will see it. "It is to be observed how the expressions used here, and in ver. 14, represent the bow as, so to speak, a relatively independent phenomenon, which, by its appearing, reminds God of something" (Dillmann).

(9:16) Though readers may differ on how much theological weight to give to the details of the wording, note that God makes the rainbow not to remind humans, but himself, not to drown the earth.

(9:16) between God. We might say that God is referring to himself in the third person; or we might equally say that Hebrew poetry frequently shifts perspective effortlessly in a way that we do not see in, say, English. The Septuagint reads and me here. Perhaps the Septuagint translators were not comfortable with this switching.

According to Dillmann, this verse is the kind of "closing formula, such as [P] has a peculiar fondness for."

(9:17) At the end of this page is a Masoretic petuhah, a line break roughly equivalent to a paragraph break in English.

(9:20) According to the KJV, "Noah began [to be] a farmer", but it seems questionable to add "to be" in the English where the Hebrew doesn't have it. For an example of an expression with the same "began" verb, consider Genesis 10:8, where it is said of Nimrod, huʾ heḥel lihyot gibbor ba-ʾareṣ.

Another thing to consider is that the verb ḤLL is used repeatedly in Genesis in contexts where something happens for the first time. And so, if we read literally, "And Noah, a farmer, began and planted [i.e. was the first to plant] a vineyard." If the idea is that Noah was the first to keep a vineyard, this could make a great deal of sense in the story -- perhaps he was taken by surprise by the intoxicating power of wine. But if we are to read Noah as the first farmer, this would not make sense -- earlier in another J story Cain is described as a farmer.

(9:20) was drunk. On the hypothesis that Noah is depicted as the very first grower of grapes, one explanation for his drunkenness is that he was unaware of alcohol's effects. Other interpreters have read his drinking here as a moral failure. Skinner interprets Noah's invention of wine as the fulfillment of his father's prediction that he would bring "relief" to humans from the toil of their agricultural labor.

(9:21) in his tent. Following the vowel-points of the Masoretic Text. If one did not have the Masoretic points, the h (as opposed to the expected w) at the end of the word might indicate that the word means "in her tent". This becomes relevant in light of the swirling mass of interpretations around what exactly happened in the tent.

(9:22) Ham, the father of. Skinner suspects that these words are a later addition to this story, added to it to harmonize it with other verses in which Canaan is a grandson rather than a son of Noah. On this reading, then, the curse of Canaan becomes more understandable. It is otherwise strange that Noah, upon realizing what Ham has done, curses Canaan. The curse poetry later in this chapter mentions three characters: Shem, Japheth, and Canaan, with no mention of Ham.

(9:22) In biblical terms, to "see the nakedness" of a person is sometimes used as a euphemism for sexual activity.

(9:22) and told. The Septuagint reads, and went out and told.

(9:23) garment. Hebrew simlah. According to the Semantic Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew, a sort of long cloak that might be used not only as an article of clothing, but also could be used as a blanket.

(9:23) see their father's nakedness. Here the concern is literally to avoid seeing nakedness. Does this indicate that the expression cannot have its well-known metaphorical sense in reference to Ham's "seeing"?

(9:24) and knew. How did Noah know? Did someone tell him?

(9:24) his youngest son. Because it is Canaan, rather than Ham, who takes the blame for the action, on some interpretations of this story the text originally had Canaan as Noah's youngest son. If this verse was originally written as a reference to Ham, then why is Ham consistently listed second in the order "Shem, Ham, and Japheth"? It would seem based on the order that is given, both describing the birth of the boys and elsewhere, that Japheth was the youngest. And if Ham is indeed the offender, why does the cursing poem skip him and go straight to Canaan?

(9:24) what his youngest son had done to him. What exactly had this youngest son done to Noah? Some have argued that if the offense was a simple noticing of his naked father, then the magnitude of the following curse seems overblown.

(9:25) Cursed be Canaan! Historically, some Christians believed that the curse on Canaan justified the enslavement of Africans. But this is stretching the text further than its early intent. While the curse of Canaan was intended to justify the enslavement of the Canaanites, the Canaanites were indigenous peoples of the Levant, not Africa. To the extent that black people do appear in the Bible, they are Kushites, and there is no hint that God had some kind of desire to have them enslaved. In fact, Moses is explicitly defended by God when his siblings complain about his Kushite wife. While there are biblical passages that support slavery and even genocide, they do not single out black people.

(9:25) slave of slaves. In a common biblical idiom, "X of Xs" means "the supreme example of X-hood." Thus the "holy of holies" means "the most holy place" and "slave of slaves" means "the lowliest of slaves". This idiom seems to be taken over into the New Testament as well, as Paul calls himself "a Hebrew of Hebrews" (Philippians 3:5).

(9:26) Blessed be Yahweh, god of Shem. Hebrew baruk Yhwh ʾelohei šem. It is odd that Yahweh is the subject of "Blessed". As the other characters "blessed" and "cursed" are Japheth and Canaan, we would expect here to see Shem himself blessed. One proposal is that the text originally read "Blessed of Yahweh be Shem". Another is "May Yahweh bless the tents of Shem" (Skinner).

If we do not amend the text here, it is curious that Yahweh is specifically thought of as being Shem's god in particular.

(9:27) enlarge. In Hebrew, it is obvious that this word sounds like "Japheth". This line in Hebrew reads yaft ʾelohim le-yefet.

(9:27) dwell in the tents of. Skinner notes that it is hard to say just what it would mean for Japheth to dwell in the tents of Shem. Does it point toward "friendly intercourse" or "forcible dispossession"?

(9:29) At the end of this verse in the Masoretic Text is a petuha, sort of like a paragraph break. In the Genesis chronology, Noah is the last individual to live more than 900 years.

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