Slices
Prepare
What are some of your earliest memories of life with God? Maybe as a child, or when you went through a conversion experience? Give thanks for good early memories.
Bible passage
God’s covenant with Noah
9 Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. 2 The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands. 3 Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.
4 ‘But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. 5 And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.
6 ‘Whoever sheds human blood,
by humans shall their blood be shed;
for in the image of God
has God made mankind.
7 As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it.’
8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: 9 ‘I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you 10 and with every living creature that was with you – the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you – every living creature on earth. 11 I establish my covenant with you: never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.’
12 And God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: 13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. 16 Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.’
17 So God said to Noah, ‘This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.’
The sons of Noah
18 The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) 19 These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the whole earth.
20 Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. 21 When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. 22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside. 23 But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backwards and covered their father’s naked body. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked.
24 When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, 25 he said,
‘Cursed be Canaan!
The lowest of slaves
will he be to his brothers.’
26 He also said,
‘Praise be to the Lord, the God of Shem!
May Canaan be the slave of Shem.
27 May God extend Japheth’s territory;
may Japheth live in the tents of Shem,
and may Canaan be the slave of Japheth.’
28 After the flood Noah lived 350 years. 29 Noah lived a total of 950 years, and then he died.
Explore
New Year’s resolutions never work. So God doesn’t make them. Here we are right after the flood, restarting ‘Project Earth’, and what does God start with? Not new resolutions, but a return to the old ones. Notice how verse 1 takes us straight back to creation in Genesis 1, blessing and filling the earth. Verse 6 also takes us back to the opening chapter, emphasising the image of God in humankind. Like new creation, this is another idea that won’t get taken up again until the New Testament, where Jesus turns out to be the true image of God (eg Colossians 1:15).
God makes a covenant with Noah, which means a binding agreement. God is committing himself to Noah, and to humankind and to every living creature, in a profound way (vs 8–11).
All this good news (blessing, promise, covenant) is to be marked in some way. God puts a ‘rainbow’ in the sky (v 13). Although the word just meant ‘bow’ – God has just said he will defend life (v 11), and the ‘bow’ reminds us that God fights for all living creatures – the ‘bow’ that we see in the sky is of course a rainbow. I think of Genesis whenever I see one. So it works!
Respond
Is God wanting to ‘relaunch’ anything in your life? How might your early memories become prayers for new experiences with God?
Deeper Bible study
‘God is not human, that he should lie … Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfil?’1
Verses 1–3 reiterate what God said to Adam and Eve: to be fruitful and multiply, that the animals will be subject to them and that plants have been given for food.2 On this occasion, however, God expands the human diet to include meat. Perhaps this is to make a clearer distinction between animal and human life and to emphasise that human life is sacred and must not be taken, since men and women are created in the image of God. Certainly, this seems the thrust of verses 5 and 6. Having given the injunction against shedding human blood, God further stresses the point by reiterating that humans should make life by procreation (v 7).
Finally, we have the covenant that God promised in chapter 6 and spoke to himself in chapter 8, though note that four times we are told that the covenant includes animals as well as humans. The covenant is mentioned seven times and the bow/sign of the covenant five times – and three times God says that he will not again destroy the world. Again, what is reiterated is life. Nevertheless, it is a sobering thought that when God looks on his rainbow, he thinks, ‘No, I must not destroy them, despite the atrocities that I see’.
It is sad that directly afterwards, the righteous and blameless man, Noah, gets drunk, Ham does something with regard to Noah’s nakedness and Noah curses Ham’s son Canaan (v 25). This is the only time in the whole of the story that Noah speaks – and his first word is ‘Cursed’. He does then bless, but we get a hint already that God is going to need his rainbow.
Father, we cannot understand how, hating sin as you do, you still love us as you do, but we thank you for your patience, love and forgiveness.
1 Num 23:19 2 Gen 1:28,29
Bible in a year
Read the Bible in a year: Genesis 32,33; Acts 12
Pray for Scripture Union
This term, local mission partner YOYO will be working with some secondary schools and possibly primary schools in York looking at the Holocaust and the themes of suffering and faith. Pray that this will help children and young people to see that God cares about human suffering.
