Paul Kretzmann Commentary - Genesis 9:1 - 9:7

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Paul Kretzmann Commentary - Genesis 9:1 - 9:7


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

God blesses Noah and His Sons

v. 1. And God blessed Noah and his sons and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. This is a repetition and a confirmation of the blessing of creation, Gen_1:28. As founders of the new human race, Noah and his sons received the assurance of God's blessing for the propagation of their kind. Note that the blessing of the Lord is incidentally a command; it is His will that the human race should be propagated, that man and woman, in holy wedlock, should be fruitful and multiply. The modern criminal limiting of offspring is a blasphemous perversion of God's order of creation.

v. 2. And 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 moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered.
This is an extension and a confirmation of the order of God by which man was given dominion over the animals. Before the Fall all creatures willingly placed themselves under the direction of man, as the lord of creation. But now the fear of man and the dread of man was to keep the animals and the birds and the fishes in check, because sin with its consequences has dissolved the bonds of willing subjection, man having lost his natural power over nature, and nature, in turn, being constantly on the verge of rebellion against man. God gave them under the hand of man, but man is constantly obliged to resort to force to maintain his superiority.

v. 3. Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.
In the early days of the human race God had restricted man to a vegetarian diet, Gen_1:29, but now everything that lived and moved, all animals, were included in the food which was at man's disposal. Thus was the eating of flesh formally legalized and, at the same time, commended.

v. 4. But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.
Although the eating of flesh was permitted, yet a restriction is added to the concession, namely, that excluding flesh as food while the living blood was still coursing through the veins, whether this referred to pieces cut out of the living animal or to the eating of blood. This provision was added to prevent man's degeneration to coarse and brutal barbarism, or even savagery.

v. 5. And 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 man's brother will I require the life of man.

v. 6. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made He man.
While the blood and the life of animals is in the power of man, he is strictly forbidden to shed that of his fellow-man. The blood of every person with reference to his soul (since the life is in the blood) the Lord will require at the hands of man and of every beast. Thus the life of man is here safeguarded against beasts as well as against fellow-men. The killing of every human being will be punished by the Lord, but not directly or immediately, as He had promised in the case of Cain. He that sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. The punishment of murder is laid into the hands of the government, which shall punish the murderer by requiring his life in exchange for that which he took. This is, as Luther remarks, the first command regarding the authority of the government in the wielding of the sword. In these words the temporal government is authorized, and the authority from God to use the sword is conferred. For in the image of God made He man: murder is a violation of the image of God in man, which the Lord intends to restore in all those that are renewed in faith, and which He wants all men to put on. In a wider sense, therefore, man bears even now the image of God, since he is a rational creature and has an immortal soul.

v. 7. And you, be ye fruitful and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein.
Cf v. 1; Gen_1:28. The emphatic repetition is not without significance, especially in view of the situation as it now exists.