Gen 9:1 God blessed Noah and his sons: He said, "Prosper! Reproduce! Fill the Earth!
Gen 9:2 Every living creature—birds, animals, fish—will fall under your spell and be afraid of you. You're responsible for them.
Gen 9:3 All living creatures are yours for food; just as I gave you the plants, now I give you everything else.
Gen 9:4 Except for meat with its lifeblood still in it—don't eat that.
Gen 9:5 "But your own lifeblood I will avenge; I will avenge it against both animals and other humans.
Gen 9:6 Whoever sheds human blood, by humans let his blood be shed, Because God made humans in his image reflecting God's very nature.
Gen 9:7 You're here to bear fruit, reproduce, lavish life on the Earth, live bountifully!"
Gen 9:8 Then God spoke to Noah and his sons:
Gen 9:9 "I'm setting up my covenant with you including your children who will come after you,
Gen 9:10 along with everything alive around you—birds, farm animals, wild animals—that came out of the ship with you.
Gen 9:11 I'm setting up my covenant with you that never again will everything living be destroyed by floodwaters; no, never again will a flood destroy the Earth."
Gen 9:12 God continued, "This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and everything living around you and everyone living after you.
Gen 9:13 I'm putting my rainbow in the clouds, a sign of the covenant between me and the Earth.
Gen 9:14 From now on, when I form a cloud over the Earth and the rainbow appears in the cloud,
Gen 9:15 I'll remember my covenant between me and you and everything living, that never again will floodwaters destroy all life.
Gen 9:16 When the rainbow appears in the cloud, I'll see it and remember the eternal covenant between God and everything living, every last living creature on Earth."
Gen 9:17 And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant that I've set up between me and everything living on the Earth."
Gen 9:12-16
The token of the covenant is now pointed out. “For perpetual ages.” This stability of sea and land is to last during the remainder of the human period. What is to happen when the race of man is completed, is not the question at present. “My bow.” As God’s covenant is the well-known and still remembered compact formed with man when the command was issued in the Garden of Eden, so God’s bow is the primeval arch, coexistent with the rays of light and the drops of rain. It is caused by the rays of the sun reflected from the falling raindrops at a particular angle to the eye of the spectator. A beautiful arch of reflected and refracted light is in this way formed for every eye. The rainbow is thus an index that the sky is not wholly overcast, since the sun is shining through the shower, and thereby demonstrating its partial extent. There could not, therefore, be a more beautiful or fitting token that there shall be no more a flood to sweep away all flesh and destroy the land.
It comes with its mild radiance only when the cloud condenses into a shower. It consists of heavenly light, variegated in hue, and mellowed in lustre, filling the beholder with an involuntary pleasure. It forms a perfect arch, extends as far as the shower extends, connects heaven and earth, and spans the horizon. In these respects it is a beautiful emblem of mercy rejoicing against judgment, of light from heaven irradiating and beatifying the soul, of grace always sufficient for the need of the reunion of earth and heaven, and of the universality of the offer of salvation. “Have I given.” The rainbow existed as long as the present laws of light and air. But it is now mentioned for the first time, because it now becomes the fitting sign of security from another universal deluge, which is the special blessing of the covenant in its present form. “In the cloud.” When a shower-cloud is spread over the sky, the bow appears, if the sun, the cloud, and the spectator are in the proper relation to one another. 16. “And I will look upon it to remember.” The Scripture is most unhesitating and frank in ascribing to God all the attributes and exercises of personal freedom. While man looks on the bow to recall the promise of God, God himself looks on it to remember and perform this promise. Here freedom and immutability of purpose meet.
The covenant here ostensibly refers to the one point of the absence, for all time to come, of any danger to the human race from a deluge. But it presupposes and supplements the covenant with man subsisting from the very beginning. It is clearly of grace; for the Lord in the very terms affirms the fact that the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth, while at the same time the original transgression belonged to the whole race. The condition by which any man becomes interested in it is not expressed, but easily understood from the nature of a covenant, a promise, and a sign, all of which require of us consenting faith in the party who covenants, promises, and gives the sign. The meritorious condition of the covenant of grace is dimly shadowed forth in the burnt-offerings which Noah presented on coming out of the ark. One thing, however, was surely and clearly revealed to the early saints; namely, the mercy of God. Assured of this, they were prepared humbly to believe that all would rebound to the glory of his holiness, justice, and truth, as well as of his mercy, grace, and love, though they might not yet fully understand how this would be accomplished.
Gen 9:17
God seems here to direct Noah’s attention to a rainbow actually existing at the time in the sky, and presenting to the patriarch the assurance of the promise, with all the impressiveness of reality.
No comments:
Post a Comment