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Gen.9:1. And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them Just as the founder of the first world, Adam, immediately after creation, received a special blessing from God (Gen. 1:28-30), and the founder of the second world, Noah, receives a similar blessing. Both this blessing equally concerns three points: human reproduction, his power (possession) over animals and his nutrition. The power of this divine blessing concerned not only the righteous Noah, but also “his sons,” that is, both his present and future descendants, in short, the entire human race, now renewed and called to a new life. be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth; But it was not added, as Adam once did: “and possess it,” since man, through the Fall, lost this god-like power or, at least, greatly diminished and reduced this god-like ability of his. And only the second Adam - our Lord Jesus Christ, who destroyed the power of sin, again put everything under His feet and left nothing unsubdued to Him (1 Cor. 15:27; Eph. 1:22; Heb. 2:8). Gen.9:2. Let all the beasts of the earth, [and all the livestock of the earth,] and all the birds of the air, and all that moves on the earth, and all the fish of the sea, fear and tremble at you: they have been given into your hands; “This was not in the blessing given to Adam: he was the ruler of the creation, but not terrible. When a person’s inner dignity no longer subjugates creatures to him, God curbs them with fear” (Filaret). Gen.9:3. everything that moves and lives will be food for you; I give you everything like green herbs; This will be the second largest law on food (Gen. 2:16), which now allows, along with the previous types of it - greens and field grains, one new one, namely, the meat of animals, birds and fish, in a word, everything that moves and lives. Blessed Theodoret explains the reason for the new permission as follows: “God, having foreseen man’s inclination towards idolatry and deification of animals, gave the flesh of these latter for food, so that he would know how indecent it is to pay divine respect to earthly creatures that can be killed and eaten.” Prohibition of blood eating and murder Gen.9:4. Only you shall not eat flesh with its soul, with its blood; By giving a new law on food, God introduces a significant restriction into it - he prohibits eating animal blood. The reason for this prohibition is indicated here, precisely because the blood of an animal is, as it were, identified with its soul. A similar idea is found in many other places in Scripture (Lev. 17:11, 14; Deut. 12:16; Prov. 28:17). It is curious that, in addition to the Holy Scriptures, it is found in the works of many ancient writers, and mainly in the classics (Virgil, Empedocles, Pythagoras, etc.). Thus, the popular psychology of antiquity believed the basic principle of animal life, i.e., what is called the soul, to be hidden in its blood. Taking the point of view of this naive psychology and wanting, on the basis of it, to instill in a person as much respect as possible for all other people’s (including animal) life, God gives a ban on eating blood. This is Noah's first commandment; subsequently, under Moses, it received a more detailed presentation and more extensive argumentation, physical, moral, ritual and educational (Lev. 17:11; cf. Heb. 10:4; John 1:17). Gen.9:5. I will require your blood, in which is your life, I will require it from every beast, These words provide excellent confirmation of the view we have just given of blood as the seat of the soul. The Lord even inspires due respect for the blood of an animal with strict discipline; and in order to highlight even more clearly the idea of ​​​​the criminality of murder, God says that He will exact for the blood of a person not only from a conscious murderer, but even from an unreasonable animal and wild beast, which later even received a certain legislative sanction (Ex. 21:28). I will also require the soul of a man from the hand of a man, from the hand of his brother; If the murder of a person by an unreasonable animal was subject to severe punishment, then, of course, the murder of a person by a person was much more criminal and therefore much more severely persecuted... In the very words of this text, some, not without reason, see a condemnation of two types of murder - suicide (of a person at the hand of a person, that is, oneself) and the murder of others. Gen.9:6. Whoever sheds the blood of man, his blood will be shed by the hand of man: The law prohibiting murder receives its exemption, but one that further strengthens the power of this law, restraining its violation by fear of corresponding (similar) reprisals. This permission perfectly expresses the spirit and essence of all Old Testament morality, which demanded an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life (Ex. 21:24; Lev. 24:20; 2 Sam. 1:16). Here lies the basis for the ancient custom of blood feud, a cultural relic of which, to a certain extent, our modern duels are. But Christianity, which introduced new humane principles into the world, has long condemned this practice: it commands both an involuntary and even a free killer not to kill, but to correct him in every possible way and return him to truly human life. for man was created in the image of God; This is the inner, deepest reason why killing a person is especially criminal. The creation of man in the image of God, placing him, as it were, in a certain spiritual relationship with God himself, makes his personality sacred and inviolable, so that absolutely no one, not excluding man himself, has the right to encroach on his life, the only stewards of which is only God himself who gave it. In these words, it is important to note, firstly, that here impliemphasis the difference between image and likeness is confirmed, and secondly, that the presence of the image of God is not denied in our man. God's Covenant with Noah Gen.9:8. And God said to Noah and his sons with him: The section under consideration talks about the renewal of the covenant that the Lord blessed to conclude with Noah before the flood (Gen. 6:18). But now this covenant is proclaimed even more solemnly and in a broader scope: previously it was only the personal union of God with the righteous Noah (“with you”), now it includes the entire family of Noah (“with you”) and all their future offspring and even the animal world. Gen.9:9. Behold, I establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you, It was a covenant of salvation from destruction and death, and in this sense it can serve as a type of the gospel promise, preaching the good news of deliverance from eternal, sinful death (Ezek. 34:25, 37:26; Jer. 32:40). Gen.9:10–11. and with every living creature that is with you, with the birds and with the cattle, and with all the beasts of the earth that are among you, with all those who came out of the ark, with all the animals of the earth; I establish my covenant with you, that all flesh shall no longer be destroyed by the waters of a flood, and there shall no more be a flood to destroy the earth. Here is another proof of how close the connection between man and all of nature is: when a man falls, all of nature falls; man perishes, and all living things perish; finally, man rises, and with him all creation rises (Rom. 8:20). Giving the Sign of the Rainbow Gen.9:12–13. And [the Lord] God said, This is the sign of the covenant that I establish between Me and you and every living soul that is with you throughout all generations forever: I set my rainbow in the cloud, so that it may be a sign of the [eternal] covenant between Me and the earth. As an external, visible sign certifying the uniqueness of the global flood, God pointed man to a rainbow, a well-known atmospheric phenomenon consisting of the refraction and decomposition of a light ray from the sun in a transparent medium (mass) of water. As for how to understand the very meaning of this sign, the opinions of exegetes here differ: some think that from this moment the rainbow appears only for the first time and that before it did not exist at all because there was no rain at all, and the earth was watered only by fog and dew, as can be assumed on the basis of Art. 6. Chapter 2 (Gen. 2:6). Others more firmly admit that the rainbow existed before; but before it was a completely indifferent celestial phenomenon, but now it acquires a special symbolizing effect. And the fact that it was the rainbow that was chosen for this purpose, and not anything else, has its full justification: the fact is that the rainbow, i.e. The refraction of the sun's rays that we see is possible only on the condition that the clouds do not completely cover the sky, but leave a gap for the sun, and the rain does not represent a continuous mass of water that could threaten a flood. Naturalists even now observe that rainbows do not occur during tropical downpours. Hence, the appearance of a rainbow is natural proof that the rain is not threatening and does not resemble the flood before the flood (Gen. 7:11). It was to this natural phenomenon that God deigned to acquire a special symbolic meaning, choosing it as a sign of His covenant with Noah. Examples similar to this are, for example, the crawling of a serpent on its belly, which became a symbol of humiliation, or immersion in water during the sacrament of baptism, which became a symbol of cleansing from original sin. In the Holy Scriptures we also encounter other expressions of the symbolic meaning of the rainbow: it serves as one of the attributes of the divine judgment of the world along with lightning (Ps. 17:14) or is a sign of divine greatness and glory (Ezek. 1:27–28; Sir. 43:12–13; Rev. 4:3, 10:1). The idea of ​​a special mysterious sign of the rainbow, apparently, found a response in the universal myths of pagan antiquity, where the rainbow was most often depicted as a meek messenger of heaven, bringing joy, peace and the favor of the gods to earth. Gen.9:14. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that [My] rainbow will appear in the cloud; The verb “to guide” in the sacred biblical language is used mainly to express the concept of some impending danger or thunderstorm (Gen. 6:17 and many others). Thus, at the moment of greatest anticipation of danger, the Lord promises to send a rainbow as a symbol of pardon and deliverance from heavenly punishment. Gen.9:15–16. and I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living soul in all flesh; and the waters will no longer be a flood to destroy all flesh. And [My] rainbow will be in the cloud, and I will see it, and I will remember the everlasting covenant between God [and between the earth] and between every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth. This is nothing more than an anthropomorphic image of the idea of ​​​​divine providence for people, which, by analogy with a person, seems to remember them whenever they are threatened with some hidden danger. This general providential attitude of God towards people does not exclude private special actions of divine providence arising from the fact of the covenant concluded between God and Noah. Gen.9:17. And God said to Noah, This is the sign of the covenant that I have made between Me and all flesh that is on the earth. These are the final words to the entire rather lengthy discourse on the covenant and its meaning. Noah plants a vineyard Gen.9:18. The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. From here begins a new biblical section - the history of the children and further descendants of Noah (toldoth Noach). As for the meaning of the very names of his immediate children, then, according to the most accepted interpretation, the word “Sim” means “sign, mark”, hence “name” in general; the word "Ham" probably means "burning, black, dark, swarthy" and the word "Japheth" means "spreading." The very listing of the sons of Noah is made here with the purpose of showing that humanity had no other ancestors besides them. According to the explanation of John Chrysostom, “Scripture wants to point out to us the extreme intemperance of Ham, to the fact that neither such a great disaster (the flood) nor such a cramped life in the ark could curb him, but while his elder brother still has no children, he, during such a wrath of God, when the whole universe was perishing, indulged in intemperance and could not restrain his unbridled lust.” (Demon 28). This does not exclude another explanation, according to which Canaan is indicated here as a representative of that tribe of Hamites, who received the name Canaanites and, subsequently living next to the Jews, most of all came into contact with the history of God's chosen people (Gen. 12:6). Gen.9:19. These three were the sons of Noah, and from them the whole earth was peopled. Further, in chapter 10, (Gen. 11:1, 19:31), we will see a more detailed disclosure of this thought. Here we can only note that the descendants of Shem (Semites) populated Armenia, Mesopotamia, Syria and Arabia; the descendants of Ham emigrated mainly to Africa, and finally the descendants of Japheth spread throughout the northern part of Asia, into India, penetrated into Europe and even, probably, into America (Acts 17:26). Falls asleep and is ridiculed by his son These verses reveal to us the motive behind Noah's subsequent important prophecy. Noah began to cultivate the land and planted a vineyard; Armenia, where, according to the Bible, Noah's Ark donkey, is considered the birthplace of grapes. and he drank wine, and became drunk, and lay naked in his tent. Moderate consumption of grapes and grape juice is an excellent and healthy remedy, so that, considered from this point of view by Noah, the cultivation of grapes is a useful and good thing. But antediluvian humanity was completely unfamiliar with it and with the use of wine; For the first time, only Noah had to become acquainted with all this, and it could easily have happened that he, not knowing the power and effect of wine, drank more of it than he should have, and fell into the state indicated here. The very expression “started” (LXX, Slavic) already shows that he initiated the use of wine and became intoxicated out of complete ignorance and ignorance of the extent of drinking wine. These mistakes, even of the righteous, are the best warning for us against our arrogance (1 Cor. 10:12) and the most effective medicine in those cases when we are overcome by despair and cowardice due to our sinfulness (Jer. 8:4). “For this reason,” says John Chrysostom, “not only the virtues of the sons, but also their sins are described, so that we avoid the latter and imitate the former” (Demon 29). Gen.9:22. And Ham the father of Canaan saw his father's nakedness, Ham saw the same nakedness that our first parents painfully felt immediately after eating the forbidden fruit (Gen. 3:7) and which, out of a sense of shame, they covered with aprons. However, there was very little fault on Noah's part in all this: first, as the context shows, he did it in a dream and therefore unconsciously; secondly, he allowed this to happen at home (in his tent), where no one else’s immodest gaze should penetrate and where every person has the right to allow himself greater freedom and ease of action. and going out, he told his two brothers. This last addition reveals all of Ham’s guilt: if Ham had only been an involuntary witness to such a somewhat seductive picture and had not attached any special significance to everything he saw, then he would not have committed any crime. But the Holy Scripture says the opposite: “in this haste to tell his brothers what he saw, a deeply corrupt nature is visible; in his act one can see an evil joy in humiliating his father, a sense of pride and self-superiority and a lack of shame” (Vlastov). Revealing Ham's motives, which are quite clearly expressed here, we can say that he mocked his father in front of his brothers, portraying in an unattractive light how their father - this six-hundred-year-old old man, such an unshakable pillar of piety and faith - could reach such a ridiculous state! “He, perhaps, while talking about what happened, still mocked the shame of his father, not heeding the wise one, who says: do not seek glory in the dishonor of your father” (John Chrysostom. Bes. 29), (Sir. 3:10; Exod. 21:17; Lev. 19:3; Matt. 15:4; Proverbs 30:17). He seemed glad that the one who served as a model of strict life and curbed his evil behavior was now himself in an indecent position from intoxication. Gen.9:23. Shem and Japheth took the robe and, putting it on their shoulders, went and covered the nakedness of their father; By this action they not only did not express sympathy for Ham’s act, but also destroyed its very reason. And since Ham revealed a vicious inclination and a corrupted imagination, a lack of filial piety, on the contrary, Shem and Japheth gave us an edifying example of chastity, modesty and high filial love and respect for their father, even at such an exceptional moment when he, apparently, least deserved it. their faces were turned back, and they did not see their father’s nakedness. A small but very characteristic detail, proving to what degree of moral sensitivity the moral sense of these two worthy sons of Noah reached. Gen.9:24. Noah woke up from his wine From here it is clear that everything that preceded happened to Noah during his sleep, that is, without the participation of his conscious will. and he knew what his youngest son had done to him, “How did he know this? - asks John Chrysostom and answers this way: maybe the brothers told it, not in order to accuse their brother, but to explain the matter, how it happened, so that Ham would receive the medicine appropriate to his illness” (Demon 24.). No less wisely, John Chrysostom resolves another bewilderment - how should we understand here the name of Ham as the “lesser” or youngest son, when it is reliably known that he was the middle one (Gen. 9:18): “Ham, of course, was not the youngest; he was second and older than Japheth, but if he was older than him in age, he turned out to be younger in soul and his insolence placed him lower than his younger brother.” In the Hebrew text, the word “lesser” expresses a comparative form, and not an excellent one, and therefore does not indicate Ham as the least of all the sons of Noah, but only comparatively younger in relation to Shem. These three verses contain the inspired prophecy of Noah, who, from the facts which revealed the inclinations and conduct of his children, foretold the future fate of each of them, together with their offspring. Gen.9:25 And he said, Cursed be Canaan; When asked why the full weight of this curse falls not on Ham, the main culprit of everything, but on his son Canaan, there are several more or less plausible guesses. Thus, Origen, following the Jewish tradition, explains this by saying that the youth Canaan was allegedly the first to notice the indecent position of his sleeping grandfather and pointed it out to his father Ham: but this explanation, among other things, does not stand up to criticism for the mere fact that one can never consider a young, foolish youth more responsible for the same offense than a mature husband. Much deeper and more thorough is another explanation of this, proposed by Chrysostom: “Not without purpose and not in vain did Scripture mention the son (of Ham), but for some hidden reason. Noah wanted to punish Ham for his crime and the insult inflicted on him, and at the same time not to violate the blessing given by God: “God blessed,” it is said, “Noah and his sons” when they came out of the ark (Gen. 9:1); further, Chrysostom explains in detail that Noah, having imposed a curse on Canaan, who most embodied the typical traits of his father and therefore was especially close and dear to him, inflicted the most sensitive punishment on Ham himself. Finally, the above consideration about the extremely important role of tribes in the future history of Israel is not without significance, in the spirit of the prophetic insight of which Noah pronounces a curse on the descendants of Canaan alone, without touching the other children of Ham. He will be a servant of servants to his brothers. This is a common form of amplification of thought in the Hebrew language (superlative degree), which can best be translated descriptively as follows: the descendants of Canaan will be in complete submission and in complete slavery to the descendants of Shem and Japheth. And history, indeed, has fully justified this prophecy. Thus, the descendants of Canaan were killed and enslaved by the Jews under Joshua, during his conquest of the Promised Land (Joshua 9:23). More than once, especially under David and Solomon, the Canaanites experienced the heavy hand of the descendants of Shem and served them (1 Kings 9:20–21). And other branches of the Hamites - the Phoenicians and especially the Ethiopians - were conquered by the tribes of Japheth - the Persians, Greeks and Romans. Gen.9:26. Then he said: Blessed is the Lord God of Shem; The prophecy given to Shem is the exact opposite of the previous one: this began with a curse, this begins with a blessing; this foretells slavery, this heralds domination. The very formula - “blessed is the Lord God,” when applied to God, means offering praise and gratitude to God (Eph. 1:3); but the most remarkable thing about it is that here the God of revelation - the Most High - is for the first time called the actual God of Shem. This means that the descendants of Shem will stand in a special, exceptionally close relationship to the Creator, as the ancestors of God’s chosen Jewish people, and that from them will come patriarchs and prophets - servants of God on earth, and, finally, from them will come Christ the Savior himself. Canaan will be his slave; This refers primarily to the subordinate vassal relations in which the Canaanites were among the Jews in the era of Joshua and during the time of the Jewish kings. Gen.9:27. may God spread Japheth, In the Hebrew text there is a kind of play on words (japhet éjephet), or parallelism of concepts, since the name “Japhet” means “widespread.” The descendants of Japheth were thus predicted to have the widest settlement on the face of the earth; and indeed, in the person of the peoples of the Caucasus, it populated most of Asia, almost all of Europe and America, not to mention the fact that it also constitutes a privileged part of the population in the rest of the countries of the New and Old Worlds. The quantitative spread of the Japhetites also corresponds to its intellectual superiority: the metaphysics of India, the philosophy of Greece, the strategy of Rome and the entire modern world civilization owe their existence and prosperity mainly to the genius of the Japhetites. and let him dwell in the tents of Shem; This is not about God, as some mistakenly believed (Philo, Theodoret, Onkelos, etc.), but about Japheth, who is predicted over time to have a dominant position even over the descendants of Shem. And, indeed, this prophecy was justified in a double sense: both in the political sense, when the Romans, the descendants of Japheth, conquered the Jews and destroyed Jerusalem itself, and in the religious sense, when the pagans entered the Church of Christ together with Israel (Eph 2.11-15). “Through these blessings spoken to Shem and Japheth, he (Noah), it seems to me, foreshadowed the calling of two nations, namely: through Shem - the Jews, since from him came the patriarch Abraham and the Jewish people, and through Japheth - the calling of the pagans” (John Chrysostom, Bes. 30). Let Canaan be his slave. The justification of this prophecy can be seen mainly in the growth of slavery of the black races to the white and in the comprehensive predominance of the latter over the former. Concluding a detailed commentary on the prophecy of Noah, we must say that this is one of the most significant legends, embracing in a general schematic outline the main trends of the entire subsequent history of mankind, personified in the fate of the three sons of Noah, as the ancestors of all subsequent humanity: here is Noah’s beloved firstborn - Shem, who is predicted to have special divine favor, here is the ungrateful Ham, to whom rejection and slavery are announced, here and the youngest son is Japheth, whose fate fulfilled the Gospel prophecy that “let the last be first,” the first in both the cultural-historical and Christian-religious sense. Gen.9:28. And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years. According to the calculations of some biblical scholars, the three hundred and fiftieth year of the post-flood era falls in the fifty-eighth year of Abraham's life; therefore, Noah witnessed the construction of the Tower of Babel and the subsequent dispersion of the nations. Gen.9:29. And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years, and he died. Both of these chronological dates remind us of well-known similar examples from the genealogy of the Sethites (Gen. 5:31, etc.). Noah was the last of the patriarchs who lived to such a deep old age, and this is not without special divine providence: a figure in the last six centuries of the antediluvian world, Noah was also a witness to the first three and a half centuries of the history of the new, post-flood humanity and with his personality, as it were, he held together both of these worlds and served as a bearer and guardian of all universal traditions of humanity. Six hundred years of Noah's antediluvian life allowed him to see Methuselah and hear from his lips stories about primitive times, received by Methuselah directly from Adam himself, and three hundred and fifty years of the post-Flood period opened up the possibility of personal conversation and transmission of all sacred traditions to Abraham, from where, through two or three intermediate steps (Jacob, Levi, Kohath), all this and in a purely natural way could reach the writer of everyday life Moses, who, in addition this, was also illuminated by a special supernatural divine Revelation. “The oral tradition inscribed on the pages of the Bible was so closely transmitted, and at the time when Moses inscribed it, the entire Jewish people could believe in the truth of these legends with the traditions of the elders” (Vlastov). You might be interested in: