Genesis 9:1-7
‘God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth! And the fear and dread of you shall be upon every beast of the Earth…and upon all the fishes of the sea…. Every moving thing that lives, shall be meat for you…; but flesh with its life, which is its blood, you shall not eat…. Surely, your blood of your lives, I will require! At the hand of every beast, I will require it; and at the hand of man…. Whosoever sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed. For God made man in His image. But you — be fruitful and multiply! Bring forth abundantly in the Earth, and multiply in it!’ Genesis 9:1-7.
Calvin commented: “God blessed Noah and his sons. He does not simply mean that the favour of fruitfulness was restored…. But that…the new restitution of the world was revealed to them…. Those four men and their wives…, the Lord prescribes…their future condition of life…. They shall raise up mankind from death to life…. He directs His Word to men, in order that they may recover the lawful use of marriage…so that a progeny shall spring from them which shall diffuse itself through all regions of the Earth….
“After the fall of man, the beasts were endued with…ferocity. Yet some remains of that dominion over them which God had conferred on him in the beginning, were still left…. The same dominion shall continue…. The fact that oxen become accustomed to bear the yoke; that the wildness of horses is…subdued…to cause them to carry a rider…(and) to bear burdens; that cows give
milk, and permit themselves to be milked; that sheep are mute under the hand of the shearer — all these facts, are the result of this dominion!….
“The Lord…grants animals for food to men, so that they may eat their flesh…. God here does not bestow on men more than He had previously given…. They had before offered sacrifices to God, and were also permitted to kill wild beasts…. (Yet) if it be a savage and barbarous thing…to swallow down living flesh, men betray their brutality by eating blood….
“God so highly estimates our life (as men), that He will not permit murder to go unavenged…. They are deceived…who think that a political law simply for the punishment of homicides is here intended…. The punishment which the laws ordain, and which the judges execute, are founded on this divine sentence!…. God so threatens and denounces vengeance against the murderer, that He
even arms the magistrate with the sword for the avenging of slaughter — in order that the blood of men may not be shed with impunity….
“‘And you, be fruitful and multiply!’ He again turns His discourse to Noah and his sons, exhorting them to the propagation of offspring. As if He would say: ‘You see that I am intent upon cherishing and preserving mankind. Do you therefore also attend to it! At the same time, in commending to them the preservation of seed — He deters them from murder, and from unjust acts of violence.”
So Noah’s spared family was again to multiply! Ours too!
