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And God Blessed Noah and His Sons

Text: Genesis 9:1-10:32

Introduction

The opening verse of Genesis 9 summarizes the action that unfolds in the next two chapters: “And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.”

Chapters 9-10, as we might expect, conclude the story of the great Flood, and transition us into the major themes of the rest of the book of Genesis: the tower of Babel, and the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They do this by describing for us how the small family of Noah becomes 70 nations…

I. God Makes a Covenant with Noah and His Descendants (vv.1-17)

  1. There are many parallels between the Creation narrative, and the events that transpire immediately post-Flood.
    1. There is a forming of order out of chaos; Noah is a kind of second-Adam; there is the repetition of the command to multiply/fill the earth.
    2. And then here Ge 9:1-4 is remarkably similar to 1:28-30. Yet there are also a couple of notable differences: 1) in the perfect, pre-fall world humanity is given dominion over the earth, now that same principle is expressed but in terms of fear/dread that animals will have of humans. And 2) whereas people were first given every plant to eat, now God gives permission for animals to be food for humanity as well.
  2. But vv.5-6 make a sharp contrast between humans taking the life of animals and humans taking the life of other humans.
    1. While God will here, in his address to Noah, provide a legal deterrent to homicide, we are also reminded that some greater solution is still needed.
      1. A solution that will not only provide civil law, but will fulfill the broken law on behalf of sinful humans; a solution that will not only outwardly discourage murder, but will restrain sin by changing sinful hearts from the inside-out.
    2. Yet even in this temporary, outward deterrent against homicide—whoever sheds the  blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed—we are provided with a crucial lesson for  post-fall humanity: even fallen humanity is still in some sense the “image of God” in ways that no animal or plant life ever will be.
      1.  Why shouldn’t an innocent human be killed, even while in the verses right before God  gave permission to kill animals? Because, v.6 God made man in his own image.
    3. To murder another human, unlike killing any animal, is to put to death God’s image.
      1.  v.7 is the repetition, again then, of the command to multiply/fill the earth. Although God, in righteous judgment of sin, destroyed most of humanity with the Flood, he still affirms that He wants humanity to flourish.
  3. vv.8-11 contain detailed unpacking of the covenant that was already referenced at the end of Gen 8: a covenant God made with Noah, his descendants, and even we are specifically told, every living creature from the Ark.
    1. In prospect of the coming, successful, wrath-absorbing work of Jesus on the cross—as we are reminded by Noah’s successful sacrifice in Ge 8, God promises never again to plant the lightning rod in this feeble earth.
    2. So in v.11 God promises ‘never again’ to destroy the earth with a flood.
  4. vv.12-17 describe the sign/seal of this covenant from God: the rainbow.
    1. v.12 specifically states that this covenant includes all future generations.
    2. v.16 describes this covenant as an everlasting covenant. This is why we find the rainbow again, in Ezekiel & Revelation, surrounding the throne of God in heaven.

II. Noah and Ham Sin (vv.18-29)

  1. vv.18-19 remind us of the theme of the multiplication of humanity following the flood. But it also emphasizes that all these peoples had as their source Noah and his sons.
    1.  And this source we quickly find is just as faulty/failing as Adam and Eve proved to be…
  2. vv.20-23 Noah, now plants a vineyard, makes wine from it, and then gets himself drunk from the wine. This is obviously sinful and a moral failure on Noah’s part.
    1. This was wrong-doing after many years of right living. Where Adam had sinned thru eating wrongly, Noah sinned through drinking wrongly.
    2. Yet the focus of this passage is not actually what Noah does, but rather how Ham responds when he discovers his father’s indiscretion: he sees his father’s nakedness and tells his brothers about it.
      1. It does not seem that there was sin in Ham’s going into the tent or seeing his father’s  nakedness; this all seems accidental.
      2.  The problem seems to be that Ham told his brothers about it, and in doing so publicly dishonored his father; this is contrasted with how the other brothers respond, who respectfully cover their father’s nakedness.
    3. Whereas Ham dishonors Noah, his brothers treat their father honorably even while in his still asleep.
  3. So in vv.24-27 Noah awakes and responds to Ham’s sin by pronouncing a curse upon Ham’s son Canaan.
    1. As with Adam, the godly and ungodly line almost immediately become distinctive and separate. The Canaanites take the place of the Cainites as the ungodly/cursed seed who will oppose the Messiah.
    2. This curse was carried out when the Israelites conquered Canaan—the land named after Ham’s son. This curse has nothing to do with slavery or current racial issues, as some have tried to claim.
    3. In contrast to Ham’s cursing, Noah blesses Shem and Japheth. Notice that in v.26 it is the LORD/Yahweh of Shem who is specifically blessed, in connection with Shem: ‘Blessed be the LORD God of Shem.’
      1.  So the one true Creator God, who has promised to send one who would crush the  serpent’s head/seed, is Shem’s God: the one thru whom the Messiah will come. Here is the promised seed of the woman, still divinely preserved, continuing thru Shem.
    4. And it is possible that Japheth’s blessing, of living in the tents of Shem, is fulfilled in the NT when the Gentiles are brought into the covenant people of God.
  4. vv.28-29 As we should expect from the earlier genealogies already in Gen, Noah’s life—long as it is—comes to its eventual end, and he dies.
    1. Even the great Flood has not eradicated sin, so death has not been eradicated.

III. The Nations Multiply (chapter 10)

  1. In chapter 10 we have the genealogies of Noah’s three sons, and their descendants. And more specifically, we are given a description of how God’s command to replenish the earth is carried out following the Flood, and where each of Noah’s sons and their descendants settled in different regions of the earth.
    1. Again, the phrase “these are the generations of’ serves as an outline for the book, so this marks a transition from the conclusion of the Flood story, to the people and stories that followed, particularly the story of the Tower of Babel in Gen 11.
    2.  To quickly summarize the genealogies/geography described in chp 10:
      1.  vv.2-5 tell the story of Noah’s son Japheth.
      2.  vv.6-20 detail the genealogy of Ham and his descendants.
      3.  Most importantly vv.22-31 recount Noah’s oldest son Shem and his descendants.
        1. Most important here, Eber—ancestor to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—is specifically mentioned in v.21, whose descendants eventually became the nation of Israel.
        2. In fact the word ‘Hebrew’ probably comes from the name Eber.
  2. So chapter 10 is the detailed fulfillment of 9:7 and God’s command to be fruitful and multiply, to increase on the earth and multiply.
    1. Thus a huge number and diversity of people, all over the earth, was not just God’s plan before Adam’s fall into sin in the garden, but post-Flood as well! And God says this is because—as different as people around the world are from each other—they are all equally and alike made in the image of their Creator God.
    2. Yet in chapter 11 we will find that there are also negative aspects to the multiplying of people on the earth, as sin once again begins to evidence itself in human civilization.
  3. Yet the 70 names which appear in chapter 10, which settle various nations of the world, seem to be purposefully paralleled in the 70 disciples that Jesus sends out in Lk 10:1. The message of the gospel is for all nations!
    1. Whether you descend from Shem, Ham, or Japheth—the message of the Messiah who crushes the serpent’s head, who takes our place and absorbs the punishment that humanity could not endure—is for you!
    2. And whether you are a believer or not, Jesus has been given authority over the nations. He sits enthroned in heaven even now, surrounded by a majestic rainbow—which serves as a heavenly reminder that this world will never again be destroyed by water… but will one day end in fiery judgment for every sin not absorbed by Christ himself on the cross.
    3. How will that day overtake you?