Or, Blessing, Blood, and Barbecue
Scripture: Genesis 9:1-7
Date: November 29, 2015
Speaker: Sean Higgins
This paragraph may be a more material (relevant, essential) schema (a way of organizing concepts about the world) about life on earth than Genesis 1. Genesis 9 doesn’t make sense without Genesis 1 (and chapters 2-8, of course), but this chapter re-presents our given place and purpose in this world of sin.
Noah is not the second Adam, but he is a second Adam (maybe we could call him Adam 1.5). God created the universe, including planet earth, including man on earth, and commissioned man to make something great of it. Adam and Eve were made to make babies and businesses. God blessed them into it, to fill the earth and extend sacred space.
Through Adam’s disobedience, however, sin filled the earth. In less than ten generations the depravity of humanity was so bad that God uncreated much of His work, snuffing out the souls of every sinner on earth except for those on the ark. The tragic fall of Adam led to the traumatic flood around Noah.
Both men were charged by God Himself, as fountainheads of the human race, to sanctify their surroundings with life, labor, and law. For Adam such a commission held only excitement. He enjoyed walking with God in the garden, an intimacy with his wife, and no fearful imagination to weigh him down. He had to build a library, write books, and label all the shelves.
For Noah such a commission must have overwhelmed. He knew the grace of God and the judgment of God. Noah knew man’s capacities for invention and for iniquity. He experienced the terrible, brokenness of sin. All the library shelves of the world were knocked over, the books torn apart, and the card catalog lost. Starting over is often harder than starting fresh, yet in that context God reiterates and extends human image-bearing.
Never again has there been a time with so few people on the planet with so much understanding. Eight people carried the collective culture of humankind and God called them to procreate, to protein, and to protect society. They could not do it without faith and patience. They would have been conceited to do it without the Lord’s blessing. Because much of our life-and-world view starts here, we must walk more slowly through this paradigm-making paragraph.
The first seventeen verses of chapter 9 frame our understanding of the ecosystem, food chain, and zoology, as well as atmospheric and meteorological expectations. They offer primers in government and legislation, especially as concerns capital punishment. In verses 1-7 men are protected by God and in verses 8-19 men are protected from God by God. Through all of it we are reminded that God loves and gives life, that He gives blessings and boundaries for life. These are life givens, and these four blessings only make sense when seen as gifts from Him.
Only one of the God-givens shows up twice and it does so like field goal posts for the paragraph: everything in between is good.
And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. (Genesis 9:1)
And you, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.” (Genesis 9:7)
The command clearly echoes Genesis 1:28. A child-bearing call meant something unique to Adam and Eve, not only because they hadn’t ever seen a child (or birth) before but also because they were the first parents ever. The child-bearing call to Noah was unique because he didn’t actually have any more children. Mr. and Mrs. Noah obeyed through Noah’s sons who, for the first time in the story, are addressed when God speaks. God…said to them (see also in verse 8). The pronoun you throughout the paragraph is plural (think “y’all”).
Shem, Ham, and Japheth did their part. The next Book in Genesis is a genealogy of their offspring (Genesis 10:1). When Paul addressed the Athenians he said that “[God] made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26) and he meant Noah. Genesis 10 and 11 include what has been called the Table of Nations and “face of the earth” is flood story terminology.
The call to generational fruitfulness is divine. Yes, it was uniquely load-bearing to the eight persons on the ground floor of civilization but not unimportant for us. God loves fruitfulness, God gives fruitfulness, and we ought to pursue fruitfulness. I don’t mean that every husband and wife must try to have as many kids as possible. I do mean that every believing husband and wife ought to think about kids as desirable fruit.
I cannot remember anyone telling me—either with intention or by accident—that when I grew up I could win at life through faithful children. I never once thought about my legacy being offspring. Faithfulness was determined by my personal obedience and my work product rather than family. A wife and kids were a good that may or may not happen, not a very good that was worth pursuing, preparing for and praying for.
They are blessing: God blessed Noah and his sons just as He blessed Adam and Eve. It is His divine favor for population explosion. Interestingly enough, the Babylonian version of the flood story is about population control by the gods (Hamilton). The gods drowned out the noisy and judged a third of the women with barrenness after the waters receded.
What a degenerate culture kills its fruit and sorts parts in petri dishes. How upside down are the blessings that many believing parents choose and eschew the fruit found in chairs compassing the dining table.
It’s been said that men are pigs, and by it we’re meant to understand man’s bent toward selfish pride. But men are better than pigs (and pandas and penguins and poodles and puffer fish and pterodactyls). It is not humility to equate humans and animals, it is rebellion against one of life’s givens by God.
The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. (Genesis 9:2)
There are two parts to this ecological (the branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings) prerogative (the right or privilege exclusive to a particular class): animals have dread of men and men have dominion over animals.
God says they will have fear of you and dread of you as if to say, “They are more afraid of you than you are of them.” Man’s sin affected more than man. His sin affected the soil and, apparently, the animal kingdom. The flood destroyed all breathing flesh not only human beings. Animals are violent due to God’s judgment, and yet it is God’s mercy to man that, in general, even the big animals with razor claws and jagged teeth prefer to steer clear of man.
Whence is it that tigers, elephants, lions, bears, wolves, and other wild beasts without number, do not rend, tear, and devour everything human, except that they are withheld by this subjection, as by a barrier? (John Calvin)
In other words, Jumanji remains fiction only because of God’s fiat.
The categories of creatures deliberately classifies the kinds cataloged in the creation account. Not only does it cover all the groups, it connects with the commission to subdue the earth and “have dominion over every living thing that moves on earth” (Genesis 1:28). The final sentence in verse 2 also confirms it: Into your hand they are delivered . Animals can be used in worship, for clothing, for cultivating (oxen), for communicating (pigeons), for consuming (see the next verse), and for other creative efforts.
Or how much curious and loving attention was expended by the first man who looked hard enough at the insides of trees, the entrails of cats, the hind ends of horses and the juice of pine tree to realize he could turn them all into the first fiddle. (Robert Capon, The Supper of the Lamb, 19).
Men abuse their authority over animals but that is first because they have forgotten their real estate under God. Those who worship God will be kind to their beasts (see Proverbs 12:10) and they will also thank God for eating some of them.
I like brussels sprouts as much as the next guy, but life’s givens by God include burgers and brats off the barbecue.
Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. (Genesis 9:3–4)
Opinions differ over whether or not this is the inaugural meat eat. No mention of eating animals was given prior to this point in Genesis, though some (even the typically conservative John Calvin) assume men must have been eating meat before the flood but without warrant. That’s possible, but either way it is clear that God hadn’t given meat to men as His gift until now. The menu is wide open: every moving thing…everything . Later God restricts Israel to clean animals but at this point (and again after Peter’s vision in Acts) Noah could go hog wild.
Why now? Why not in Genesis 1, and why ever? If veggies were sufficient in paradise, why put so much digestive stress into our diets?
There may not be a single answer, but at the time of eating in Genesis 1:29 there was no death. Even more so, this demonstrates God’s generosity. That was stressed in Genesis 1:29, and God Himself builds on that liberality: As I gave you the green plants, I give you everything . It’s a color smorgasbord: green, red, and white.
There is no way around the killing here that is not less than human in the end; man is what he is: hunter, butcher, carnivore; save him without that and you save nothing—-manskins stuffed with sacred sawdust reach no New Jerusalem; the trip is not worth the baggage left behind. (Capon, 49)
As there was in the garden, there is liberal gifting with one restriction: you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood . God loves blood. He invented it, He created a body for His Son to have some, and then He shed it. Blood is so connected to life and life is so valuable to God that men are prohibited from eating raw flesh or drinking blood. That is a disregard for life given by God.
God-given life is so valuable that God establishes the most severe consequences for those who take it.
And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man.
Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed,
for God made man in his own image.
(Genesis 9:5–6)
A reckoning is an accounting, more than an explanation it is an exacting of payment. It is humane to kill animals that kill humans. To some extent animals are culpable according to this principle, and men most certainly are. Men must not take the life of other men or their own life will be taken by man.
From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man . Here is the seed of government officers, of legislative, judicial, and executive agents. God provides the law to man and God positions men to punish murderers. The sentence is carried out from his fellow man and the poetic statute confirms it:
Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed,
for God made man in his own image.
As we know, later laws distinguish between accidental cause of death and premeditated killing, between manslaughter and murder. All killing is not the same, including when the punishment is killing. The execution of justice does not require the execution of the executioner, or else there would be constant disobedience or a constant cycle of deaths. The second line uses all three key words from the first line in reverse order (shed-blood-man to man-blood-shed). This is the principle of lex talionis, the law of equivalent retaliation.
Reasoning behind this legislation is built in: for God made man in his own image . We are connected back to the first week, to creation by divine decree, to life’s givens. We do not bestow on ourselves a right to life, God does. This right can and should be recognized by all societies and not just Judeo-Christian cultures.
Of course men who fancy themselves as God replacements fancy that life is theirs to give or take as they please. This is as feeble as it is foolish. One government under God is different than one government acting as God. If man is a monkey’s older cousin, if he pulls himself up by his bootstraps, then there is no law that can help to protect him. But God gives life, blessing and fruitfulness for more life, barbecues feeding life by appropriate death, and capital punishment for those who reject life’s givens and the Giver Himself. Try as they will, such men will become babbling explorers always searching and never coming to the knowledge of their glory.
These instructions are for the flourishing of image-bearers everywhere. They are before Israel and above Christianity. Christians are the only ones capable of holding these truths consistently but, by common grace, many natural men recognize their value.
In other words, these are for us as human beings. Submitting to Christ does not limit our goals on earth, Christ opens our eyes to see the great goals of the Triune God for us on earth. Sin is still our internal enemy and the seed of the serpent still fights in the public square. But we have fruit to seek and weak to defend and meat to roast.
Carry on with the mandate. Look around and fix the broken shelves, or build some new ones. Tape the bindings of books back together, or write new ones. Label, organize, digitize, create a lending website. And show your kids how to do all of it, too.