Gen 9 - Government, Blood, and Rainbows
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So tonight we continue into our journey through the book of beginnings, Genesis. The Flood is now past and the Earth is a new and different place than it was prior. It would be somewhat like landing on a new planet. Everything is waiting to be discovered. All you know for sure is what you brought with you.
One thing to keep in mind, the flood did more than unload enormous amounts of water. It literally changed everything.
It ended the thermal blanket around the Earth. Harmful UV and solar rays now hitting the Earth.
Ended the universal climate on the Earth. Thus we find quick frozen mammoths with tropical plants in their digestive system in the polar regions.
We believe that the atmospheric pressure decreased significantly. Scientists believe the AP was 2x higher pre-flood. Studies using hyperbolic chambers have shown curative properties. Athletes use them now to quicken healing of injuries. Scientist postulate this would have added to the longer longevity.
Let’s stand as we read the first 7 verses of Gen 9;
1 And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.
2 “The fear of you and the terror of you will be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky; with everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish of the sea, into your hand they are given.
3 “Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant.
4 “Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.
5 “Surely I will require your lifeblood; from every beast I will require it. And from every man, from every man’s brother I will require the life of man.
6 “Whoever sheds man’s blood,
By man his blood shall be shed,
For in the image of God
He made man.
7 “As for you, be fruitful and multiply;
Populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it.”
Verse 1 opens in a way that reminds of Gen 1, and in a this is a re-creation, or a restart so the command is the same;
1 And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.
The command is an imperative, meaning to multiply exceedingly, and re-fill or populate the Earth.
Statistical studies have shown that starting with just 8 total people they would become 4 billion if each had just 2.5 children over 4,000 years.
Verses 2 & 3 share another difference from the pre-flood epoch, man was no longer to be vegetarian. There is discussion as to why that became so. Some believe that do to the differences in conditions man we need more animal protein. Weather would be much more of a factor moving forward.
Notice according to verse 2 something innate in the animal changed as well. They would now fear man. It seems that pre-flood the animal kingdom lived more or less at peace with mankind, interestingly in the millennial kingdom it will go back to the pre-flood nature.
However God gives one caveat,
4 “Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.
This prohibition on eating blood is constant through out the Old and New Testaments.
10 ‘And any man from the house of Israel, or from the aliens who sojourn among them, who eats any blood, I will set My face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from among his people.
11 ‘For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement.’
12 “Therefore I said to the sons of Israel, ‘No person among you may eat blood, nor may any alien who sojourns among you eat blood.’
This is not just a Jewish custom.
Acts 15:19–20 (NASB95)
19 “Therefore it is my judgment that we do not trouble those who are turning to God from among the Gentiles,
20 but that we write to them that they abstain from things contaminated by idols and from fornication and from what is strangled and from blood.
Many cultures do eat blood however. Things like blood sausage and blood pudding are common.
Images- Blood foods
Bottom line, don’t eat blood!
Now in verses 5-7 God establishes human governments.
5 “Surely I will require your lifeblood; from every beast I will require it. And from every man, from every man’s brother I will require the life of man.
6 “Whoever sheds man’s blood,
By man his blood shall be shed,
For in the image of God
He made man.
7 “As for you, be fruitful and multiply;
Populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it.”
Here God putting the responsibility of capital punishment on mankind. Thus the establishment of human government. Notice this not regarding accidental or manslaughter type of deaths. This is the penalty for murder. This is carried forward into the Ten Commandments,
13 “You shall not murder.
Notice who is to carry out this penalty, “every man’s brother.” So you can see where the concept of the kinsman redeemer/avenger of blood came from.
BTW - guess who our kinsman redeemer, our avenger of blood is? Jesus Christ.
Now, it would be a lot easier if God meted out this penalty yet He in His wisdom choose not to do it that way. Thus man must, and is commanded, to carry out capital punishment.
Now this concept brings into focus a passage that may have been obscure previously. The patriarch Jacob on his deathbed prophetically spoke over each of his sons. He said this about Judah;
10 “The scepter shall not depart from Judah,
Nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,
Until Shiloh comes,
And to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.
According to historian Josephus, “The scepter shall not depart from Judah until Shiloh come” was the phrase that caused the rabbis to run through the streets of Jerusalem screaming in anguish in the year A.D. 12.
You see, it was in that year that the Romans—who were occupying the land of Israel—withdrew the ability of the Sanhedrin to mete out capital punishment. Having taught that the mark of a nation’s sovereignty resided in its ability to execute capital punishment, when this power was taken from them, the Jews thought the scepter had indeed departed from Judah—that God had broken His promise to them. After all, Shiloh, Messiah, had not yet come.
Oh, but He had. For right in their midst sat Shiloh, Messiah, Jesus as a twelve-year-old boy, astounding the teachers and rabbis with His wisdom (Luke 2:46).
Now God speaks again; this time regarding a new covenant He was enacting;
Genesis 9:8–17 (NASB95)
8 Then God spoke to Noah and to his sons with him, saying,
9 “Now behold, I Myself do establish My covenant with you, and with your descendants after you;
10 and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you; of all that comes out of the ark, even every beast of the earth.
Notice this covenant is unilateral. God alone is promising.
11 “I establish My covenant with you; and 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.”
This is the covenant, never to destroy the earth again by a worldwide flood. (no chance here for a local flood)
12 God said, “This is the sign of the covenant which I am making between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all successive generations;
13 I set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth.
14 “It shall come about, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow will be seen in the cloud,
15 and I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and never again shall the water become a flood to destroy all flesh.
16 “When the bow is in the cloud, then I will look upon it, to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”
17 And God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant which I have established between Me and all flesh that is on the earth.”
So here God is setting sign or a token of His promise, (His covenant) which is of course the Rainbow. The vast majority of people have no idea what the rainbow signifies. It is unfortunate that the LBGT community has adopted this beautiful sign as have others.
In The Genesis Record, Henry Morris;
The rainbow reappears only three more times in Scripture. Once in Eze 1:28, the rainbow is seen surrounding the throne of God as He prepares to visit judgment on Hid people Israel. Again, the rainbow is seen around His throne just before the coming Great Tribulation, Rev 4:3. In both these cases, the picture is one of imminent judgment and suffering, but only limited judgment and suffering, with God’s grace ruling over all.
Finally, when the mighty angel of Rev 10:1, who can be none other than the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, comes to claim dominion over the world, which He created but which had long been under the dominion of the wicked one, He is accompanied by the same”seven thunders” of judgment which apparently had cried forth at the time of the flood. And instead of a crown of thrones, which once He wore as He bore the Curse for us, the Word says there will be “the rainbow upon His head.” The definite article is in the original: the rainbow. This can hardly refer to any other than to “My bow,” the token of the everlasting covenant between God and all flesh.
Furthermore, it is in this glorious apparel that we will see our Lord Jesus Christ “crowned with glory and honour, that by the grace of God should taste death for every man” (Hebrews 2:9)
Now as a quick aside, another usage of the word “bow” is found in Rev 6;
2 I looked, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.
We generally think of the bow here as bow and arrow type. However the LXX translates the “rainbow” in Gen 9 with the same word. So perhaps the “bow” carries the idea of Gen 9 of a covenant. Compare this idea to Dan 9 regarding the AC;
27 “And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering; and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate.”
So the bow mentioned in Rev 6 carried by the AC may well be a type of covenant with Israel.
Now we get to a very curious section; look with me;
Genesis 9:18–24 (NASB95)
18 Now the sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem and Ham and Japheth; and Ham was the father of Canaan.
19 These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the whole earth was populated.
20 Then Noah began farming and planted a vineyard.
21 He drank of the wine and became drunk, and uncovered himself inside his tent.
22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside.
23 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.
24 When Noah awoke from his wine, he knew what his youngest son had done to him.
There are 2 topics we should address, the first being “wine.” Is wine bad or forbidden? Fermentation is a natural process and Wine is described as a blessing throughout the OT.
14 “You shall furnish him liberally from your flock and from your threshing floor and from your wine vat; you shall give to him as the Lord your God has blessed you.
Wine was used in nearly all sacrifices to the LORD and in celebrating the feasts.
In the NT our Lord Jesus made wine at the wedding feast in Cana. The wine was not some watered down grape juice. It was called the best wine. So wine is not the issue. The issue is drunkeness which is condemned and which is an issue in our text.
The second topic is the interpretation of the text itself. What does this mean? Well there are 3 main views on this.
So let’s watch the video here that does a great job in explaining the 3 views and gives a fourth as well.
Video- Noah’s Nakedness and Canaan’s Curse (Genesis 9:20-27) - 119 Ministries, 13 minutes
(Start at 1:40 -15:00)
Personally, I had not heard of this fourth view and to me it makes the most sense with these closing verses in mind;
25 So he said,
“Cursed be Canaan;
A servant of servants
He shall be to his brothers.”
26 He also said,
“Blessed be the Lord,
The God of Shem;
And let Canaan be his servant.
27 “May God enlarge Japheth,
And let him dwell in the tents of Shem;
And let Canaan be his servant.”
28 Noah lived three hundred and fifty years after the flood.
29 So all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years, and he died.
Now again the idea that Canaan would be a “servant of servants” is difficult ascertain what is meant. This becomes a very complex issue as well. But, what we can say for sure is that this not a racial thing. Many scholars had defined the Canaanite lines as people of dark skin, but as we will see next week there are darker skinned people in all three group. We will follow this different people groups in Chapter 10 to see where the ended up. Very interesting stuff.
Some scholars see the three brothers as representing - Physical Service, Spiritual Service, and Intellectual Service. These of course are generalities and each group has all three characteristics.
Hamite line, who ended up as the Egyptians, Sumerians, Hittites, African nations, and the Chinese and Japanese, as servants to mankind in the types of things they developed and did. They were explorers, builders (pyramids), mathematics, farming & cultivating, trade, money and banking.
The Semites seem to be identified as people of God, in general, as the great religions of the world come from them and they are centered in the middle east.
The line of Japheth are known as Indo-European and associated with the intellectual and learning.
The chapter closes with an interesting point that Noah lived 950 years total, making him the 3rd oldest recorded, only Jared (962) and Methuselah (969) lived longer. Add to that Noah lived 350 years after the flood. This means Noah lived until Abraham was 58 years old if there are no gaps in the genealogies.
Prayer