On Genesis, Part 12: Solid Ground

On Genesis, Part 12: Solid Ground

Having discussed the onset, or perhaps, the onslaught of Noah’s Flood and The End of Sinners in Genesis chapter 7, we shall now move on to the aftermath of the Flood and the emergence of solid ground in chapters 8 and 9. However here the phrase solid ground relates just as much to our interpretation of the scope of the flood and subsequent events as it does to the experience of Noah. For one to acquire a proper understanding of the entire Bible depends upon a proper view of Noah’s flood. Claims that the flood covered the entire planet, that even the highest mountains on the globe were completely covered with water, are simply ridiculous and lead to very childish, and dangerous, views of the balance of Scripture. But these views persist, and have actually come to dominate denominational Christian thought, in spite of the fact that they are directly refuted by many passages and circumstances which are explained in Scripture itself.

At this point the denominational Christians may argue that races and cultures throughout the whole world have flood stories. But that does not mean that those floods were Noah’s flood, and since those races never had recorded histories, or even calendars, until they were encountered by Europeans, the dates of their own flood legends cannot even be determined. The truth is that numerous floods have impacted various regions of the world all throughout history. In 1931 in China, floodwaters as high as 53 feet covered approximately 69,000 square miles of land, put several large cities under water for several months, and the death toll is estimated from over 400,000 to as many as 4 million. But this was not Noah’s flood, and it certainly was not the first such flood in China. If it were not for the modern technology which the West had shared with China, perhaps many more Chinese would have died. Not that we care about Chinese, because they did not descend from Noah, nor from Adam, but this is only one example of many such historical floods.

At this point, denominational Christians also argue that certain archaeological discoveries, such as the fossils of sea creatures, usually mollusks or crustaceans, which have been found atop mountains prove that the flood covered the whole world. But here in Genesis it is apparent that the waters only covered the highest hills for five months, and five months would hardly be enough time for generally very slow-moving mollusks and crustaceans to migrate from the depths of the oceans and up to the tops of high mountains in any significant numbers even if the entire planet were covered in water. So there must be other explanations for those fossils, but those denominational Christians would first have to understand that the planet is much older than 6,000 years, and that Genesis does not teach that the earth is only 6,000 years old. So not all floods are Noah’s flood, and the fact that there are such floods, even if all of China was destroyed, does not mean that God had broken his rainbow promise to Noah, especially since the Chinese were never included in that promise in the first place.

As we shall see in later chapters of Genesis, and especially in chapters 14 and 15, there were even people in the ancient land of Canaan who were not descended from Noah, and since they were considered a plague to be destroyed, Abraham was promised that his seed would possess their land. They were not all Canaanites, and the only way to account for the presence of others, even if their names may have been different, is in the statement in Genesis chapter 6 which professes that there were Nephilim “in the earth in those days, and also after that…” meaning after the time of Noah’s flood, and understand that these must have come from the fallen angels, just as the Revelation of Yahshua Christ explains in its 12th chapter. So as we hope to exhibit throughout this commentary, our assertions that the flood must have been local, and that races which did not come from Adam must have come from the Nephilim, are consistent with the entire balance of Scripture, and are also a necessary prerequisite to understanding the balance of the Word of God and especially the Gospel of Christ, since Christ also denies that they are from of God. Here we must also ask ourselves, if all races came from Adam, why are there laws forbidding race mixing to begin with? And those laws are upheld in the New Testament, as prohibitions against fornication (1 Corinthians 10:8, Jude 7, Revelation chapter 2 and elsewhere).

So now that we have mentioned the law, perhaps we may draw another analogy in reference to Noah’s ark. In Genesis chapter 7 we read: “16 And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in.” So Noah obeyed Yahweh, and Yahweh ensured that Noah and his family were delivered from the flood, having been kept safe inside of the ark, which is a mere wooden box. Later, Moses would be instructed to build another wooden box, the ark of the covenant, into which were placed the tablets of the law. Then the children of Israel were promised that they too would be delivered and kept safe from the world, provided they kept the law. So in that manner the ark of Noah is a foreshadow and a sort of inverse analogy of the ark of the covenant. As for the ark itself, Solomon in his Wisdom made another analogy, where he wrote in Wisdom chapter 10, speaking of the unrighteous “on account of whom the earth having been flooded, Wisdom again saved, piloting the righteous by means of worthless wood.”

As we commence with Genesis chapter 8, just as Solomon had personified Wisdom, by which he meant the wisdom which is from of God, now Moses personifies God, describing the actions of Yahweh in a manner which some commentators interpret to mean that God is subject to human frailties:

1 AND God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged;

Of course, being God, Yahweh cannot forget anything in the sense that men forget, so He really had no need to remember in the manner that men may remember. But perhaps the text only implies that after some time, Yahweh God had turned His attention to Noah, as the Hebrew wordזכר or zakar (# 2142) is to remember or to call to mind.

The English word asswaged is an archaic spelling of assuage, which is to lessen the intensity of something, in this case to lessen the intensity of the water by causing the waters to begin to recede. So here once again there is evidence that the flood was only a regional flood, and did not cover the entire globe. The waters having been assuaged by the wind, they must have been able to run off into some other place on the earth. If the entire planet were flooded this could not have happened, as the waters would have had no place to go, and being pushed by the winds, they would constantly be rushing in on the empty space from the surrounding directions, thereby requiring an incredibly strong perpetual motion applied on all sides at once to keep them away from any particular area, something which wind alone is not capable of doing.

It is difficult to imagine this flooding unless one has experienced it, or something like it. But I had never experienced even a minor flood until three years ago, in September, 2020, when Hurricane Sally crossed the Gulf of Mexico heading northwest, turned north to pass through the Florida Panhandle at Pensacola and turned northeast to pass our area a second time, on the north as it crossed southeast Alabama. The resulting rains, which over a 24-hour period were only 10 to 14 inches in North Florida and parts of Alabama, 6 to 8 inches in Southeast Alabama, and even less as Sally continued to move north, were only a splash compared to Noah’s flood [1]. But they caused the river near our home to rise up to a level over 6 feet above the flood line within a week, and we had to secure our belongings and leave home for 10 days because there was 3 ½ feet of water over our entire property and the roads going in and out. Even though we are only a short distance from the bay and the Gulf of Mexico, and all the land is wide and rather flat, it took such a small amount of rain 10 days to assuage and to move completely out into the bay and ocean. Having that or a similar experience, it can be much better understood why it took the incredible rain waters of Noah’s flood so long to run off from the ground where he had landed.

[1 The National Cyclone Center Tropical Cyclone Report on Hurricane Sally, by Robbie Berg and Brad J. Reinhart, April 14th, 2021, https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/AL192020_Sally.pdf, accessed April 20th 2023]

2 The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained; 3 And the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated.

Once again, the word translated as earth would be better rendered as land, and the waters returned, where receded would be better, from off of the land continually. The word translated as abated is the Hebrew word חסר or chacer, which is to decrease. Where we read in chapter 6 only that “were all the fountains of the great deep broken up”, here where they are mentioned again the text seems to imply that during this period they had produced a continual flow of water. But where the rain from heaven was restrained, that is said to have happened after only 40 days, so evidently here there is an additional 110-day period where the waters were upon the earth, yet additional waters were not being added.

So now, after 150 days, we read:

4 And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.

Once again, the Septuagint text has this to be the twenty-seventh day of the month, rather than the seventeenth, as it also had where the flood began on the same date of the second month, in Genesis chapter 7. In either case, it is 150 days or five months since the flood had begun.

In my own opinion, the Hebrew word for Ararat (# 780), אררט or ararat, was formed from the Hebrew words אר or ar, which is a mountain or hill, and ארץ or erets, which in the plural form is ארצות or eretsuth and means lands, and therefore ararat is a contraction of ar eretsuth, and means mountain lands or hill country. But James Strong did not supply a definition for the word in the Hebrew lexicon which accompanied his Concordance, stating only that it is “of foreign origin”. In his own lexicon, Wilhelm Gesenius seems to have done better in spite of the fact that he did not define the word either, and then he erred by looking to a Sanskrit source for its etymology, as if Sanskrit were actually older than Hebrew. There he stated in part that “The name is that properly of a region, not of a mountain,” citing the 5th century Armenian historian and Christian theologian Moses Chorenensis, who once wrote a history of Armenia, among other things [2]. The translation in the Septuagint reflects this same understanding, where the Greek phrase for “upon the mountains of Ararat” here is ἐπὶ τὰ ὄρη τὰ Αραρατ, and a plural article, τὰ, accompanies both the words for mountains and Ararat, so a hill country is meant, and not just one particular mountain.

Speaking of Armenia, the Hebrew word אררט or Ararat appears four times in the Masoretic Text, where in the King James Version it is translated as Ararat only twice, both here and in Jeremiah chapter 51 (51:27). In 2 Kings chapter 19 (19:37) and Isaiah chapter 37 (37:38) it is translated as Armenia. But in Jeremiah chapter 51 where the word appears as Ararat, it is found alongside a kingdom called Minni, which is obscure unless it is realized that Minni is Armenia. In my opinion, the name Armenia is from אר or ar, a mountain, and מני or minni, which is a division or part (Strong's # 4480) , and therefore it means mountain parts. I am also persuaded that the same Hebrew word, min or minni gives us our English words such as mince, minus and minute.

Considering the challenges which would have been faced by Noah along with the geography of the land, there is another indication that this word ararat here cannot refer to the specific mountain known today as Mount Ararat. Mount Ararat has an elevation of nearly 17,000 feet, it is covered in snow, and most humans would not survive a descent from that peak without both honed skills and climbing equipment. At least most of the animals certainly would not be able to make such a descent, nor would they be able to live on the peak of the mountain. The frequent efforts of modern Christians to locate Noah’s Ark on that mountain today are utterly ridiculous and will never bear fruit. Moreover, it is highly unlikely that even such a substantial amount of gopher wood as that which the ark had contained could last in the wilderness for 5,000 years without rotting. How many Phoenician, Greek and Roman ships, out of what must have been tens of thousands of ships over the twelve-hundred year period of Classical Antiquity, have survived to this day? There are only very few examples of much more recent Viking ships which have survived a fraction of that time. Most of the Roman or Viking ships which have survived were found buried in mud or sand and only survived in fragments.

As for the location, there are over 200 miles of very rugged hills and mountains between the famous Mount Ararat and the northern plains of Mesopotamia, and the mountain is nearly 450 miles north of modern Baghdad, or nearly 500 miles north of the site associated with ancient Babylon. But the foothills on the southern edge of the hill country where Ararat is located are only half the distance to the site of ancient Babylon, and some are a little closer than 250 miles. From that distance, Ararat itself cannot be seen, as it is behind the horizon. If the ark of Noah settled there, it would not be such a challenge for Noah and his family, and both they and the animals would not have to achieve an impossible descent in order to survive after the flood. So the Armenian foothills skirting the northern edge of the Mesopotamian plain, which are now along the border between modern Turkey and Iraq, are a far better candidate for the settling place of the ark, only two hundred or so miles from where the descendants of Noah are found a few generations later, in Genesis chapters 10 and 11.

Disagreeing with our own opinions, as to the location of Noah’s landing and as to the chances that any portion of the ark had survived, are the words of Flavius Josephus in Book 1 of his Antiquities of the Judaeans, in lines 89 through 95, or in Whiston’s numbering, chapter 3 paragraphs 5 and 6, which we shall now offer here:

5. [89] When God gave the signal, and it began to rain, the water poured down forty entire days, till it became fifteen cubits higher than the earth; which was the reason why there was no greater number preserved, since they had no place to fly to. [90] When the rain ceased, the water did but just begin to abate after one hundred and fifty days, [that is, on the seventeenth day of the seventh month,] it then ceasing to subside for a little while. After this, the ark rested on the top of a certain mountain in Armenia; which, when Noah understood, he opened it; and seeing a small piece of land about it, he continued quiet, and conceived some cheerful hopes of deliverance. [91] But a few days afterward, when the water was decreased to a greater degree, he sent out a raven, as desirous to learn whether any other part of the earth were left dry by the water, and whether he might go out of the ark with safety; but the raven, finding all the land still overflowed, returned to Noah again. And after seven days he sent out a dove, to know the state of the ground; [92] which came back to him covered with mud, and bringing an olive branch: hereby Noah learned that the earth was become clear of the flood. So after he had staid seven more days, he sent the living creatures out of the ark; and both he and his family went out, when he also sacrificed to God, and feasted with his companions. However, the Armenians call this place Ἀποβατήριον, The Place of Descent; for the ark being saved in that place, its remains are shown there by the inhabitants to this day.

Here we see minor differences, as Josephus believed that the raven did return to Noah. Where Whiston has “on the seventeenth day” here, I do not find those words in the copy of the Greek text to which I have access. Here also, among other seeming embellishments, the dove is said to have been covered with mud. We shall nevertheless continue with another paragraph from Josephus:

6. [93] Now all the writers of barbarian histories make mention of this flood, and of this ark; among whom is Berosus the Chaldean. For when he is describing the circumstances of the flood, he goes on thus: "It is said there is still some part of this ship in Armenia, at the mountain of the Cordyaeans; and that some people carry off pieces of the bitumen, which they take away, and use chiefly as amulets for the averting of mischiefs." [94] Hieronymus the Egyptian also, who wrote the Phoenician Antiquities, and Mnaseas, and a great many more, make mention of the same. Nay, Nicolaus of Damascus, in his ninety-sixth book, hath a particular relation about them; where he speaks thus: [95] "There is a great mountain in Armenia, over Minyas, called Baris, upon which it is reported that many who fled at the time of the Deluge were saved; and that one who was carried in an ark came on shore upon the top of it; and that the remains of the timber were a great while preserved. This might be the man about whom Moses the legislator of the Jews wrote."

Certain denominational commentators believe that these words of Josephus serve to prove that the resting place of the ark was the modern Mount Ararat, and presume to be able to correct what they claim are mistakes by Nicolaus of Damascus, a Judaean historian living in Damascus in the 1st century BC whose works are mostly lost, in order to support their assertion. But in my opinion, Josephus only reflects some of the fantastic legends concerning the ark which were evidently developed in antiquity by the inhabitants of the various nations of Noah’s descendants in ancient Mesopotamia and the surrounding areas. Additionally, there were many other places in the Middle and Near East which were advertised as Biblical holy places, and men promoted them as attractions for the profit of the local inhabitants.

[2 Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament, translated by Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, Baker Books, 1979, p. 82.]

5 And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.

Now it has been nearly seven-and-a-half months since the flood had begun, unless the Septuagint is more accurate and it is closer to seven. So it is just over two months since the ark came to rest atop a hill, but that does not necessarily mean that the hilltop upon which the ark had rested was exposed out of the water any sooner than these other hilltops. It only means that the draft of the ark, the part of it below the water line, was deep enough for the ark to become lodged on a hilltop before the hilltop itself had emerged from the water.

6 And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made: 7 And he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth.

Another 40 days would bring us to the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year, and almost 9 months since the start of the flood. Evidently, this is the first time that Noah had opened the window at all throughout that entire period. The raven evidently never returned to Noah, and many philosophers and commentators have sought a symbolic meaning from that. (The raven is black, after all.) The Greek and Latin texts both state that the raven left and did not return until the waters had dried. In this context, they seem to be more accurate than the Hebrew text which implies that the raven went out and back continually until the waters had dried. In any event, Noah evidently did not learn anything from the raven unless he saw it circling, and from that he may have had one witness that the waters were dried once it was gone.

8 Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground; 9 But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth: then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark.

It is most probable that Noah did not await results from the raven before he sent out the dove, so the raven may still be circling as he sent this second bird. The text says that he sent the dove also, and not necessarily after he sent the raven. Evidently the dove is a more agreeable bird since it returned to Noah, but if it could not find or build a nest for itself, it may have returned to the ark simply because it was safer there and more comfortable.

10 And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark; 11 And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.

Here the dove returned, and although it had evidently found an olive tree, it very likely still could not collect the materials it needed to build a nest. The bird would naturally want the leaf, as a first step in that process of building a nest. So the tops of trees were evidently exposed, but not much more than that. While olive trees are not very tall, they can grow in mountainous areas, so the water has not necessarily abated from the plains and valleys. Therefore Noah did not rush out of the ark at the sight of the twig.

12 And he stayed yet other seven days; and sent forth the dove; which returned not again unto him any more.

Once the dove could find the materials it needed to build its own nest, it did not return. It may seem odd that the dove was willing to depart without a mate, however not all doves mate for life, which is commonly supposed.

13 And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth: and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and, behold, the face of the ground was dry.

We are not told explicitly where the window of the ark was, but it seems to have been in the ceiling where we read in Genesis chapter 6 that “16 A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above…” So evidently Noah was not able to see the land through the opening called a window, which was in the ceiling and only one cubit wide, and therefore after he removed the covering, or roof of the ark, only then could he see the land below.

Now it is nearly ten-and-a-half months since the flood began, and the face of the ground was dried, but evidently still not dry enough. Even grassy land which has been flooded with water becomes extremely soft, and it is very easy to sink down into the mud several inches when walking upon it, which would be much more difficult for cattle. Therefore Noah and his family would spend nearly two more months on the ark, where we next read:

14 And in the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dried.

According to the Masoretic Text and the Latin Vulgate, the flood had begun in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, so it is now a year and ten days. But according to the Septuagint, it has been exactly one year. However according to Origen’s Hexapla, the other early Greek translations all agree with the Masoretic Text in this case, which is the date in which the flood began in Genesis chapter 7 (7:11).

15 And God spake unto Noah, saying, 16 Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons’ wives with thee. 17 Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth; that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth.

While we should not elaborate irresponsibly on the plain text of Scripture, we may expect Noah to have let the wild and unclean animals return to the wild, as that is their natural condition, and to keep the domesticated and clean animals domesticated and within his own control, so that food may be cultivated for his family. This becomes evident at the end of the chapter where Noah made sacrifices to Yahweh.

18 And Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him: 19 Every beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl, and whatsoever creepeth upon the earth, after their kinds, went forth out of the ark.

It seems Noah may have needed the ark for a shelter, at least temporarily, and while we need not rule it out, the text is not informative in that regard. In any case, the ark must have rested on a hilltop, and not on the 17,000 foot peak of Mount Ararat, or it would have been an arduous and quite perilous task for Noah, his family and his animals to descend from such a peak.

20 And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

The altar must have been of stone, however we may imagine that the wood for the sacrifices may have come from parts of the ark itself, since any wood on the ground would have been saturated with water, and virtually useless after having been submerged for so long. Returning to our own experience with Hurricane Sally, the firewood we had stored outdoors during the flood, what was left of it, was submerged for over a week, and covered it was with fungus long before it dried, and therefore it was so useless that we never used it for fires. But that wood was only submerged for ten days, whereas the waters in Noah’s flood endured for over ten months. As for the animals which Noah “took of”, he did not take them all, but the text seems to imply that he took of one each of every kind. Of course, this also implies that before the flood, Noah and his fathers were accustomed to making such sacrifices unto Yahweh. Now Yahweh responds to Noah’s sacrifice:

21 And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.

Yahweh God is portrayed as if He had been relieved at the end of the flood at least as much as Noah and his family may have been, since his promise to not again curse the ground seems to be a reaction to the savor of Noah’s sacrifice. Throughout Scripture it is apparent that Yahweh God savors the sacrifices of men, both spiritually and literally, and Paul of Tarsus also made such an analogy in 2 Corinthians chapter 2 where he wrote in regard to the trials which were suffered by Christians: “15 Seeing that we of the Anointed are a sweet fragrance to Yahweh, among these being preserved and among those being destroyed; 16 Although in those, a fragrance of death into death, yet in these, a fragrance of life into life; and who for these things is befitting? 17 For we are not as the many, selling the word of Yahweh in trade, but as from sincerity, rather as from Yahweh. Before Yahweh we speak in respect of the Anointed.” Paul was settling a dispute which had lingered among the assembly at Corinth.

When Noah was born, as it is described in Genesis chapter 5, we read of his father Lamech: “29 And he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed.” This can only refer to the punishment of Adam in Genesis chapter 3, where we read: “17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; 18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; 19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”

But although here we read that “I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake”, that does not necessarily mean that the curse of the ground in Genesis chapter 3 was lifted. The word again in that passage is translated from the Hebrew word יסף or yasaph (# 3254) which is a verb that primarily means to add. So Yahweh had only promised Noah that He would not again add to the curse which Adam had suffered. So man continues to work the ground in the sweat of his brow, it still often produces thorns and thistles, and he still dies and returns to the dust of the earth.

Now the last verse of the chapter also seems to support the validity of this opinion, where we read:

22 While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.

This indicates that all of these conditions which had been since the fall of Adam would continue, but to Noah, who was born into those conditions, that is an assurance that life for him and his descendants would go on as it had been in the years before the flood.

However there are some sources, including some online resources such as StudyLight.org [3] and BlueLetterBible.org [4], that claim that the word ararat means “the curse reversed: precipitation of curse”, citing either Strong’s or Brown, Driver and Briggs. Yet I have not found that definition in other available copies of those lexicons. The association evidently takes advantage of the similarity of the word אררט or ararat with a Hebrew word ארר or arar, which means curse. But the slight spelling variation between the two words does not account for or support such a meaning.

Furthermore, from the plain statements in the text here, the curse spoken to Adam had not been reversed, and Noah only had a promise that it would not be added to again. Neither could the curse be reversed, because Yahweh God does not change.

[3 Old Testament Hebrew Lexical Dictionary Strong's #780 - אררט, StudyLight.org, https://www.studylight.org/lexicons/eng/hebrew/780.html , accessed April 21st, 2023; 4 Lexicon, Strong's H780 – 'ărārāṭ, 3 Blue Letter Bible, https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h780/kjv/wlc/0-1/, accessed April 21st, 2023.]

With this, we are going to commence with Genesis chapter 9, and discuss at least the first few verses in the chapter:

1 And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.

Once again, as it is in Genesis chapter 1 (1:28), The word translated as replenish in the King James Version is מלא or mala, and it simply means to fill, and not to fill anew or again, as we understand replenish today. Of course, the word earth would once again have been better translated as land.

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 a reiteration of the dominion mandate which Adam had been given in Genesis chapter 1 where we read: “27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” While it is expressed here in different terms, where it says “into your hand they are delivered” it essentially gives Noah and his descendants the same mandate.

As we shall see later in Genesis, at the time when this mandate was given, there were other races of men upon the earth, who were not of Adam. Yet they would necessarily fit into the category of “all that moveth upon the earth”. So this is the attitude which Yahweh God had expected the Adamic man, here in the persons of the sons of Noah, to have towards those other races, that they should only be in fear and dread when they encounter the children of Noah.

3 Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.

This statement should be understood within the context expressed in Genesis chapters 7 and 8, that Noah and his family already understood that there were animals which were clean and unclean. So in his act of sacrifice at the end of chapter 8, Noah only took from of the clean animals for the purpose of that sacrifice. So this should not be seen as a reason to transgress that distinction, and as an excuse to eat swine or other unclean creatures.

Now many denominational Christians have been deceived by Satan, which is World Jewry, to believe that there are seven so-called “Noahide Laws” to which all men of every race and nation should be subject. These laws are supposedly enumerated in several books of the Jewish Talmud, and are said to include prohibitions against idolatry, which is a Jewish trick in reference to Christians, against cursing God, murder, adultery, stealing, the eating of torn flesh, and a commandment to establish courts of justice. Of course, a Jewish court would convict all Christians of idolatry, and Christians should never agree to be tried by devils.

We may elaborate on these presumed laws when we return to this commentary on Genesis. But here we shall only note that the next verse, and the admonition not to eat blood, is very narrowly interpreted by the Talmudic rabbis:

4 But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.

The Noahide laws interpret this as the eating of flesh torn from a living animal, which is strange indeed. Rather, it is a commandment not to eat blood, not to eat the flesh with the blood still in it, and it does not distinguish between flesh living or dead so it must be interpreted as a commandment not to eat any blood. Later in Scripture, the children of Israel are told on frequent occasions not to eat blood, for example, in Leviticus chapter 7 where we read: “26 Moreover ye shall eat no manner of blood, whether it be of fowl or of beast, in any of your dwellings.”

So here it seems likely that the narrow interpretation of the rabbis seems to be tailored to the fact that their mohels (mohel is the ceremonial title of the rabbi performing the rite of circumcision) like to suck the blood from the penises of freshly circumcised male infants, whereby they are not only sucking baby penises, which is committing Sodomy, but they are also actually eating living human blood. There is nothing more disgusting than Judaism.

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. 6 Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.

This is the first law against murder, as well as a commandment requiring man to avenge murder. In the Talmud it is interpreted as a commandment to establish courts of justice, which is another Jewish elaboration and innovation. Here man is left to sort out the details for himself.

Now an earlier admonishment from the opening words of this chapter is repeated:

7 And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein.

Here we hope to have provided solid ground, upon which may rest a firm perspective for properly understanding the rest of Scripture. Now we shall pause our commentary on Genesis chapter 9, and hope to return to it in the near future.