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This is just like the first post in this series.
According to Eugene Ulrich, the Qumran Scrolls (aka “The Dead Sea Scrolls”) contain no material from Genesis 9.
According to Dillmann, 9:1-17 are from the Priestly Source, which Dillmann called A, and which is today usually referred to as P. In Dillmann’s judgment, this picks up the story where P left off at the end of 8:17. Richard Elliot Friedman also attributes 9:1-17 to P.
Here’s Dillmann on the first seven verses:
As to the first, so also to the second race of men, God gives His blessing; He even enlarges it, in consideration of the previous development of man, by an extension of his right of dominion over the animals, but to regulate the new dispensation thus opened, limitations are added, the strict observance of which is imposed on man as his sacred duty.
1 And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
The blessing assuring fertility, repeated from 1:28.
2 And the fear of you and the dread of you will be upon [ʿl] all the land animals__, and upon [ʿl] all the birds of the sky. With [b-] all things that crawl on the earth, and with [b-] all the fish of the sea they are given into your hand.
The phrase I am translating here as land animals is often used to mean specifically wild animals as opposed to domestic animals.
Where the Masoretic text has with all things that crawl, according to Kittel two Masoretic manuscripts and the Samaritan Pentateuch read and with all things that crawl, by the addition of the single letter w. However Kittel endorses the reading of the Masoretic text here.
Verse 2. Your fear and your dread, Deuteronomy 11:25; fear and dread of you, objective genitive suffix [Footnote: As in 16:5, 27:13, 50:4; Gesenius 135. 4]. “The animals were from the beginning subject to man (1:26, 28), but before the Flood lived peaceably and fearlessly alongside of him,” until he became degenerate (6:12); “from now onward they are to avoid and fear him as well.”
“Animals of the land, as in 1:25. The bhmh is unmentioned, because it is less afraid of man” (Knobel).
bkl, etc. — according to the Massoretes is to be taken with bydkm ntnw, b being understood as inter or cum [2]: With all wherewith (1:21) the ground [3] is animated, and with all the fish of the sea they are given into your hand; “given over to your power, so that you may dispose of them as you please; the expression implies a power which includes even that of life and death, as in Leviticus 26:25; Deuteronomy 1:57, 19:12, etc.” (Knobel). The Massoretes are doubtless right in rejecting the view which takes b as distributive b (Del. and others), or as interchangeable with ʿl and like it dependent on ḥtkm yhyh. [4] — ydkm, Ewald, 255e.
[Footnote 2: Exodus 10:9, 15:19; 1 Kings 10:2; Jeremiah 11:19, 41:15. Footnote 3: ʾdmh, as in 1:25, 6:20; Leviticus 20:25. Footnote 4: Budde, Die biblische Urgeschichte, 297ff.; Septuagint epi.]
3 Every crawling thing [rmś] that is alive will serve as food for you. Just like the green herbs, I give them all to you.
herbs not in the culinary sense (kitchen spices, or something) but in the broader sense of plants that are used as food.
Verse 3. Permission is specially given to make use of the animals as food. This constitutes a chief distinction of the present in contrast to the first age of the world [Footnote: See 1:29f.]. The very expressions used are intended to remind one of the previous era.
rmś — here in the widest sense, of every thing which has the capacity of motion, of the whole animal world, see 7:21. Even here the Priestly source still adds no distinction between clean and unclean. — ʾt-kl, see 1:21, 8:21.
4 Only [ʾk] flesh with its life — its blood — you must not eat.
According to Kittel, dmw, the expression its blood, is probably a later addition to the text. Dillmann agrees, as he explains below.
Verse 4 f. These rights of dominion on the part of man are restricted by two prohibitions, both introduced by ʾk, only, nevertheless. The first: Only thou shalt not eat flesh with [6] its soul, i.e., as is here added in explanatory apposition (6:17, 7:6), with its blood. Men may eat only eat flesh which no longer has blood in or upon it. For although the soul or life is not indeed the blood itself, yet it is inseparable from it. The blood is a sensible and palpable manifestation of the soul. But the life belongs to God, the Lord of all life. Men are forbidden to use it for the gratification of their palate, are required, on the contrary, by abstinence from it to preserve their respect for the divineness of life and to find protection of savagery and coarseness of feeling. This command not to use as food blood [2], or flesh which was not free from blood [3], was a fundamental precept of Mosaism, and was there all the more important, because the blood was exalted to be the means of atonement (Leviticus 17). But the author does not restrict its validity to Mosaism, but places it among the fundamental ordinances of the early race of men; hence even in Christianity the continuance of its validity has been the subject of many discussions since the time of Acts 15:29.
[Footnote 6: see 1:29f. Footnote 2: Leviticus 3:17, 7:26f, 37:10ff; Deuteronomy 12:16ff, 15:23. Footnote 3: Leviticus 19:26; 1 Samuel 14:32ff; Ezekiel 33:25.]
5 And likewise [ʾk] your blood [dmkm], which belongs to yourselves [lnpštykm], I will demand. From [myd] every animal I will demand it. And from [myd] humankind, from [myd] a man his brother [ʾyš ʾḥyw], I will demand human life.
The expression I will demand refers to God demanding just punishment (execution) against murder. The expression from the hand of a man his brother looks to me a bit awkward, but I’m an English-speaker. I wonder if it as a metaphorical way of saying that murder is by nature fratricide (compare the story of Cain). Such an interpretation might be especially reasonable in a passage like Genesis 9, in which all of mankind is a single original family.
Verse 5f. The other limitation, yet more important, and, therefore, expressed with greater circumstantiality. If the slaying of animals is allowed to man, the blood of man himself is not to be shed with impunity either by man or by beast. The life of man is to be inviolably sacred, and none may dare touch it. Compare how C [the Yahwist] has in his own way expressed these same thoughts in chapter 6. — dmkm, Ewald, 225c.
lnpštykm — not dativus commodi (Deuteronomy 4:15; Joshua 23:11): For the protection of your souls [4], where the promise implicit in the statement of the future action is substituted for the statement itself; nor yet: according to your souls, or, whose soel soever it may be to whom it belongs (Del. as in verse 10); but dative of possession: your blood, namely, that of your souls [1], i.e. which belongs to yourselves [2] in contrast to that of the animals [3], although a possible translation is: as being or namely your souls [4], just as in the second clause of the verse npš occurs instead of dm (compare verse 4).
[Footnote 4: Schumann, Tuch, Knobel, and others. Footnote 1: Septuagint, Peshitta, Vulgate, and most interpreters. Footnote 2: Budde, Die biblische Urgeschichte, 282. Footnote 3: For the plural, see Leviticus 11:43f.; Jeremiah 37:9, 42:20, 44:7. Footnote 4: Ewald, 310a; Giesebrecht, Praeposition Lamed, 103 ff.]
God will require the blood, demand it back as avenger (Genesis 42:22; Psalm 9:12) from the hand of every beast, compare Exodus 21:28f. myd, come to be almost a mere preposition, and elsewhere [Footnote: E.g. 1 Samuel 32:37; Psalm 22:21; Job 5:20] also placed before names of animals and things, here all the more unhesitatingly because drš myd = drš mʿm was a rooted idiom of the language (see Lexicon). And from the hand of man will God require back the (murdered) life of man, by the vengeance which he either himself takes, or allows to be taken.
myd ʾyš ʾḥyw — co-ordinate with myd hʾdm, is explained by the fact that a noun instead of being subordinated in the genitie after a construct may (whatever its function in the sentence) be replaced by a retrospective pronominal suffix, and itself be removed to an emphatic position in front. ʾyš ʾḥyw = ʾḥy ʾyš = of each one’s brother of neighbour, Ewald 287b [6]. To take ʾyš ʾḥ to mean a (certain) brother, like ʾyš nbyʾ a (certain) prophet, Judges 16:8, and ʾyš ʾḥyw to mean a brother of his (Knobel), is neither in accordance with the idiom of the language nor the analogy of the passages quoted. We must therefore render: From the hand of the brother of a (each) man, i.e. from the hand of his neighbour, in each case. The neighbour is not the man or relative under obligation to avenge blood [7], but the murderer. But the author could not could not say myd ʾḥyw nor myd rʿhw, because the suffix would have had nothing to refer to, seeing ʾdm is collective. A reference was only made possible by placing before it the (murdered) ʾyš (individual). The words are not, I take it, a gloss (Olshausen). They introduce a limitation to the effect that God requires man’s blood not of men generally, but of the hand of the murderer. The rendering: From men, from one another [1], is impossible, in respect both of sense and of language. The various reading ʾyš wʾḥyw [2] = uniusquisque (Ezekiel 4:17), is a correction for the worse.
[Footnote 6: Compare Genesis 15:10, 42:25, 35; Exodus 28:21; Numbers 17:17, etc. Footnote 7: Von Bohlen, Tuch, Baumgarten. Footnote 1: Budde, Die biblische Urgeschichte, 288f. Footnote 2: Samaritan, Peshitta, Vulgate.]
6 Someone who sheds the blood of man, by man [bʾdm] his blood will be shed, because in the image of God he made [ʿšh] man.
man: Hebrew ʾdm.
Verse 6. God proceeds to add in what way He wishes blood to be required again, and charges men with the accomplishment of vengeance.
bʾdm — Septuagint anti tou haimatos (to) autou ekchuthesetai, therefore bdm (b pretii). The official reading is explained by the Targums: Before witnesses, therefore with (summons of) men. But the only suitable meaning is: By men, in which case men are looked upon as merely the instruments of the (divine) execution of punishment [3]. Those appointed to be the executors of retribution are men in general. A civil authority is not yet expressly assigned the duty, but neither are the nearest of kind [4], so that one cannot say that blood revenge by the nearest of kin, which the Mosaic law presupposes and regulates [5], is here carried back to the time of Noah. On the contrary, only the fundamental maxim is enunciated, that retribution is to be exacted by the hands of men. How this shall be done is left to further social and civil development. Inasmuch as no human society is conceivable unless human life is regarded as sacred, it may be said with truth that the foundation is here laid for the social organisation of man (Luther).
[3] Compare on this b instrumentalis before names of persons: Hosea 1:7, 12:14; Psalm 18:30 (29); 1 Samuel 28:6; Isaiah 45:17; and ʿbd b, Exodus 1:14, etc. On the other hand, Hosea 14:4, Numbers 36:2, are to be understood otherwise. [4] Tuch, Knobel. [5] Numbers 35:18ff.; Deuteronomy 19:12.
The prohibition and punishment are grounded upon this, that in the image of God He (God) [1] made man. Man does not merely live, like the animal, but bears in himself God’s image. He who touches him touches God in him, and God has charged man with the punishment of this.
ʿaśah — the use of the third person is for the same reason that in 1:26 naʿaśeh is put for eʾeʿśeh, because the narrator does not wish to make God say bṣlm. The LXX have ʿaśiti.
[1] Ewald, 303b. Compare 34:1f.
7 As for you, be fruitful and multiply, swarm on the earth and multiply in it. [Break]
In the Masoretic Text, a setumah paragraph divider occurs right after the end of this verse.
Verse 7 refers back to verse 1: “Men are not to destroy one another, but to propagate and multiply, in order to replenish the earth” (Knobel). The Septuagint has made changes to conform this verse with 1:28. On the so-called Precepts of Noah of the Synagogue, see Schürer [2].
In the blessing (verses 1-7) man’s task is pointed out to him, and at the same time some fundamental principles are given, on the basis of which more developed legal ordinances may afterwards be constructed.
I am not positive but my best guess is that when Dillmann talks about these Precepts, he is referring to what is also known as the Seven Laws of Noah, a list of regulation considered in rabbinical law to be binding on both Jews and non-Jews.