< Genesis 9 >
1 Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “I want you to have many children who will live all over the earth.
2 All the wild animals on the earth and all the birds, all the creatures that scurry across the ground, and all the fish, will be very afraid [DOU] of you. I have put them under your control.
3 Just as I previously said you could eat green plants for food, now I am saying you can eat everything that lives and moves.
4 [It is blood that causes creatures to be alive], therefore you must not eat meat that still has blood in it after the animal is killed. [After you have drained the blood out, you may cook it and eat it].
5 I insist that murderers must be executed. Animals that kill people must also be executed. The reason that everyone who murders someone else must be executed is that
6 I made people to be like myself [in many ways]. So someone who murders another human being must be executed by others, [because he killed someone who is like me].
7 As for you, I want you to produce many children, in order that they and their descendants may live all over the earth.”
8 God also said to Noah and his sons,
9 “Listen carefully. I am now making a solemn promise to you and with your descendants,
10 and with all the living creatures that are with you—including the birds, the livestock, and the wild animals—every living creature on the earth that came out of the boat with you.
11 This is the promise that I am making to you: I will never again destroy all living creatures by a flood, or destroy everything else on the earth by a flood.”
12 Then God said to him, “This is the sign to guarantee that I will keep the promise that I am making to you and to all living creatures, a promise that I will keep forever:
13 [From time to time] I will put a rainbow in the sky. It will remind me of my promise that I have made to you and everything on the earth.
14 When I cause rain to fall from the clouds, and a rainbow appears in the sky,
15 it will remind me about the promise that I have made to you and all living creatures, my promise that there will never again be a flood that will destroy all living creatures.
16 Whenever there is a rainbow in the sky, I will see it, and I will think about the promise that I have made to every living creature that is upon the earth, a promise that I will keep forever.”
17 Then God said to Noah, “The rainbow will be the sign of the promise that I have made to all the creatures that live on the earth.”
18 The sons of Noah who came out of the boat were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham later became the father of Canaan.
19 All the people on the earth are descended from those three sons of Noah.
20 Noah was a farmer. He planted grapevines.
21 [When they later produced grapes, he made wine from the grapes]. One day, when he drank too much of the wine, he became drunk, and he lay naked in his tent.
22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father lying naked in the tent. So he went outside and told his two older brothers what he had seen.
23 Then Shem and Japheth took a large cloth and placed it across their backs, and walked backwards into the tent. They covered their father’s naked body with the cloth. Their faces were turned away from their father, so they did not see him naked.
24 When Noah woke up [and was sober again], he found out how wrongfully Ham, his youngest son, had behaved toward him.
25 He said, “I am cursing Ham’s youngest son, Canaan, and his descendants. They will be like slaves to their uncles.
26 I will ask God to enlarge the territory that belongs to Japheth, and allow his descendants to live peacefully among the descendants of Shem [MTY].
27 And I desire that Canaan’s descendants will be like slaves of Japheth’s descendants.”
28 Noah lived 350 more years after the flood.
29 He died when he was 950 years old.
