Genesis 9

KJV · Chapter 9/50

¹And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.

²And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered.

³Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.

⁴But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.

⁵And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of man.

⁶Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.

⁷And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein.

⁸And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying,

⁹And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you;

¹⁰And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth.

¹¹And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.

¹²And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations:

¹³I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.

¹⁴And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud:

¹⁵And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.

¹⁶And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.

¹⁷And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.

¹⁸And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan.

¹⁹These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread.

²⁰And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:

²¹And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.

²²And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.

²³And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness.

²⁴And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.

²⁵And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.

²⁶And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

²⁷God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

²⁸And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years.

²⁹And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years: and he died.

📖 Chapter study

Summary

God blesses Noah and his sons, establishes a covenant with all humanity symbolized by the rainbow, and afterward Noah plants a vineyard, becomes drunk, and one of his sons, Ham, dishonors him.

Explanation

This chapter presents God's first formal 'covenant' with all humanity (and even with the animals), promising never again to destroy the earth with a flood, with the rainbow as a visible and permanent sign of that promise. Along with this come basic instructions about respect for life (the prohibition against eating blood and the penalty for taking another's life), grounding the idea that all human life has value because it is made in the image of God. The second part of the chapter, however, shows that even after the flood sin is still present: Noah becomes drunk and is disrespected by his son Ham, resulting in a curse on his grandson Canaan. The contrast teaches that no human fresh start is perfect, but God's faithfulness remains regardless of human failures.

Fun facts

The promise of the rainbow (v. 12-17) uses the Hebrew word for 'bow' that also means a war bow — the image suggests that God 'hangs up his weapon' pointed toward the sky, a poetic sign of lasting peace with humanity.
The curse on Canaan (not directly on Ham) is historically associated, in later chapters of Genesis and in Joshua, with the Canaanite peoples that Israel would encounter in the promised land — the text is laying the groundwork for conflicts that would appear centuries later.

Verse-by-verse explanation

Genesis 9:1God blesses Noah and his sons with the same command given to Adam and Eve in chapter 1: be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth. It’s a fresh start for humanity after the flood, repeating creation’s original plan.
Genesis 9:2After the flood, the relationship between humans and animals changes: now the creatures will feel fear of the human being, unlike the harmony described before the fall in the garden.
Genesis 9:3Beyond the plants already permitted since chapter 1, animals may now also serve as food — a change in the human diet that comes with a condition explained in the next verse.
Genesis 9:4After the flood, God permits eating animal meat for the first time — before this, in chapter 1, the diet described was plant-only. But a condition comes with it: not eating the flesh ‘with the life thereof,’ that is, with the blood still in it. This rule about blood will come up again, in much more detail, in the laws of Moses later on.
Genesis 9:5God establishes that He will require an account for any human life taken, whether by an animal or by another person — the basis for the principle laid out in the next verse about the value of human life.
Genesis 9:6Here the principle is established that taking someone’s life carries a consequence of equal weight — the basis, later on, for the Old Testament laws on capital punishment. The reason given is direct: human beings are made ‘in the image of God,’ so an attack on a human life is treated as far more serious than killing an animal.
Genesis 9:7This repeats the command to be fruitful from the start of the chapter, reinforcing that repopulating the earth is the priority after the flood’s destruction.
Genesis 9:8This introduces God’s speech that will formally announce the covenant of the rainbow, addressed not only to Noah but also to his sons.
Genesis 9:9God announces that He will make a covenant with Noah and with all his descendants who would come after — it isn’t an agreement just for that generation, it’s forever.
Genesis 9:10The covenant also includes the animals that came out of the ark — it isn’t just a promise for humanity, it’s for every form of life that survived the flood.
Genesis 9:11Here God reveals the content of the covenant: He will never again destroy all life on earth by means of a flood like that one.
Genesis 9:12God announces that He will give a visible sign of this covenant, valid for all future generations — the sign itself is revealed in the next verse.
Genesis 9:13The ‘bow’ God sets in the cloud is the rainbow, but the Hebrew word is the same one used for a war bow, for shooting arrows. One possible reading is that the image shows the weapon hung up, pointed upward, without an arrow — a sign that the conflict with humanity, the flood, had ended. ‘Covenant’ here is an old word for a pact or agreement, a promise made binding between two parties.
Genesis 9:14This explains when the sign of the covenant will appear: whenever there are rain clouds in the sky, the bow will appear along with them.
Genesis 9:15The bow works as a reminder to God Himself: every time it appears, it’s the renewed guarantee that water will never again destroy all life on earth.
Genesis 9:16This repeats the bow’s role as the sign of the eternal covenant, reinforcing the idea with another sentence — a device the Bible often uses to make clear how much something matters.
Genesis 9:17This closes the covenant scene: God confirms to Noah that the rainbow in the clouds is the visible sign of the promise He has just made.
Genesis 9:18The text names Noah’s three sons who left the ark again, but adds an important detail: Ham is the father of Canaan, the name that will come up in the curse told later in the chapter.
Genesis 9:19This explains that all humanity after the flood descends from these three sons of Noah — the basis for the table of nations detailed in the next chapter.
Genesis 9:20Noah takes up farming again, the same trade tied to the land since Adam, and plants a vineyard — the first cultivation of grapes mentioned in the Bible.
Genesis 9:21Noah drinks wine from his own vineyard and becomes drunk to the point of lying exposed, naked, inside his own tent, without realizing it — the scene that will spark the conflict told in the following verses.
Genesis 9:22Ham sees his father drunk and naked inside the tent, and tells his brothers, who walk in backward to cover him without looking. Some scholars read this scene as simply a serious lack of respect and discretion, exposing the father’s shame; others think the expression ‘saw the nakedness’ may be a Hebrew euphemism for something more serious that the text doesn’t describe directly. The text itself doesn’t make clear which of the two readings is correct.
Genesis 9:23Unlike Ham, the other two sons cover their father by walking in backward, so as not to look at his nakedness — a gesture of respect and discretion in place of the exposure Ham caused.
Genesis 9:24Noah wakes up from his drunkenness and finds out what happened while he was vulnerable — it’s this discovery that leads to the words of curse and blessing in the verses that follow.
Genesis 9:25The strange thing here is that Ham is the one who did wrong, but Canaan, one of his sons, is the one who receives the curse — not Ham himself. The text doesn’t explain this detail; it simply records the curse falling on Canaan’s line, which would later be a people mentioned repeatedly through the rest of the Bible.
Genesis 9:26In blessing Shem, Noah makes a point of blessing the God of Shem first, and repeats that Canaan will serve that line — reinforcing the curse from the previous verse.
Genesis 9:27The blessing over Japheth promises an expanded territory and a special closeness with Shem’s line — completing Noah’s three statements about his own sons and his grandson Canaan.
Genesis 9:28After the flood, Noah goes on living another 350 years — a long life, though already much shorter than the ages recorded before the flood, in chapter 5.
Genesis 9:29This closes out Noah’s story with a total of 950 years lived, following the same closing pattern used in chapter 5’s genealogies.