Noah built an altar to Yahweh, and took of every clean animal, and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. Yahweh smelled the pleasant aroma. Yahweh said in his heart, “I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake because the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth. I will never again strike every living thing, as I have done. While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night will not cease.”
Parallel Translations
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Noah built an altar to Yahweh, and took of every clean animal, and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.
Yahweh smelled the pleasant aroma. Yahweh said in his heart, “I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake because the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth. I will never again strike every living thing, as I have done.
While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night will not cease.”
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And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.
And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.
While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
Show all 3 translations
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And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt-offerings on the altar.
And the LORD smelled the sweet savour; and the LORD said in His heart: 'I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.
While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.'
Examined in Scripture Analysis
Science (1)
Historical claims about the natural world, weighed against the scientific record.
Contradictions (4)
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
- Will God curse the earth?
- Does God destroy man for his wickedness?
- Has the sun ever stood still in the sky for 24 hours?
Show all 4
Cross-references (72)
- James 5:7 (v22) Be patient therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. Behold, the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient…
- Psalms 74:16-17 (v22) The day is yours, the night is also yours. You have prepared the light and the sun. You have set all the boundaries of the earth. You have…
- 2 Corinthians 2:15 (v21) For we are a sweet aroma of Christ to God, in those who are saved and in those who perish:
- Jeremiah 5:24 (v22) They don’t say in their heart, ‘Let’s now fear Yahweh our God, who gives rain, both the former and the latter, in its season, who preserves…
- Jeremiah 31:35 (v22) Yahweh, who gives the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, who stirs up the sea,…
Show all 72 cross-references
- Song of Solomon 2:11-12 (v22) For behold, the winter is past. The rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth. The time of the singing has come, and the voice…
- Ephesians 5:2 (v21) Walk in love, even as Christ also loved us and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling fragrance.
- Genesis 6:5 (v21) Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was continually…
- Jeremiah 17:9 (v21) The heart is deceitful above all things and it is exceedingly corrupt. Who can know it?
- Jeremiah 33:20-26 (v22) “Yahweh says: ‘If you can break my covenant of the day and my covenant of the night, so that there will not be day and night in their time;…
- Isaiah 54:9-10 (v21) “For this is like the waters of Noah to me; for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah will no more go over the earth, so I have sworn…
- Hebrews 13:15-16 (v20) Through him, then, let’s offer up a sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of lips which proclaim allegiance to his…
- Exodus 34:21 (v22) “Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest: in plowing time and in harvest you shall rest.
- Isaiah 54:8-9 (v22) In overflowing wrath I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting loving kindness I will have mercy on you,” says Yahweh your…
- Romans 12:1 (v20) Therefore I urge you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your…
- Genesis 3:17 (v21) To Adam he said, “Because you have listened to your wife’s voice, and ate from the tree, about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall…
- Genesis 22:9 (v20) They came to the place which God had told him of. Abraham built the altar there, and laid the wood in order, bound Isaac his son, and laid…
- Leviticus 1:9 (v21) but he shall wash its innards and its legs with water. The priest shall burn all of it on the altar, for a burnt offering, an offering made…
- Leviticus 1:13 (v21) but the innards and the legs he shall wash with water. The priest shall offer the whole, and burn it on the altar. It is a burnt offering,…
- Ezekiel 20:41 (v21) I will accept you as a pleasant aroma when I bring you out from the peoples and gather you out of the countries in which you have been…
- Romans 3:23 (v21) for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God;
- Philippians 4:18 (v21) But I have all things and abound. I am filled, having received from Epaphroditus the things that came from you, a sweet-smelling fragrance,…
- Genesis 12:7-8 (v20) Yahweh appeared to Abram and said, “I will give this land to your offspring.” He built an altar there to Yahweh, who had appeared to him.…
- Ecclesiastes 7:20 (v21) Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and doesn’t sin.
- Matthew 15:19 (v21) For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual sins, thefts, false testimony, and blasphemies.
- 2 Peter 3:6-7 (v21) by which means the world that existed then, being overflowed with water, perished. But the heavens that exist now and the earth, by the…
- Genesis 6:17 (v21) I, even I, will bring the flood of waters on this earth, to destroy all flesh having the breath of life from under the sky. Everything that…
- Genesis 9:11-15 (v21) I will establish my covenant with you: All flesh will not be cut off any more by the waters of the flood. There will never again be a flood…
- Genesis 45:6 (v22) For these two years the famine has been in the land, and there are yet five years, in which there will be no plowing and no harvest.
- Leviticus 11:1-47 (v20) Yahweh spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying to them, “Speak to the children of Israel, saying, ‘These are the living things which you may…
- Job 14:4 (v21) Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one.
- Psalms 51:5 (v21) Behold, I was born in iniquity. My mother conceived me in sin.
- Psalms 58:3 (v21) The wicked go astray from the womb. They are wayward as soon as they are born, speaking lies.
- John 3:6 (v21) That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
- Romans 8:7-8 (v21) because the mind of the flesh is hostile toward God; for it is not subject to God’s law, neither indeed can it be. Those who are in the…
- James 1:14-15 (v21) But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed. Then the lust, when it has conceived, bears sin. The sin, when…
- 1 Peter 2:9 (v20) But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim the excellence of…
- Genesis 13:4 (v20) to the place of the altar, which he had made there at the first. There Abram called on Yahweh’s name.
- Genesis 26:25 (v20) He built an altar there, and called on Yahweh’s name, and pitched his tent there. There Isaac’s servants dug a well.
- Genesis 35:1 (v20) God said to Jacob, “Arise, go up to Bethel, and live there. Make there an altar to God, who appeared to you when you fled from the face of…
- Genesis 35:7 (v20) He built an altar there, and called the place El Beth El; because there God was revealed to him, when he fled from the face of his brother.
- Exodus 10:25 (v20) Moses said, “You must also give into our hand sacrifices and burnt offerings, that we may sacrifice to Yahweh our God.
- Exodus 24:4-8 (v20) Moses wrote all Yahweh’s words, then rose up early in the morning and built an altar at the base of the mountain, with twelve pillars for…
- Exodus 29:18 (v21) You shall burn the whole ram on the altar: it is a burnt offering to Yahweh; it is a pleasant aroma, an offering made by fire to Yahweh.
- Exodus 29:25 (v21) You shall take them from their hands, and burn them on the altar on the burnt offering, for a pleasant aroma before Yahweh: it is an…
- Leviticus 1:17 (v21) He shall tear it by its wings, but shall not divide it apart. The priest shall burn it on the altar, on the wood that is on the fire. It is…
- Proverbs 20:9 (v21) Who can say, “I have made my heart pure. I am clean and without sin?”
- Jeremiah 18:12 (v21) But they say, ‘It is in vain; for we will walk after our own plans, and we will each follow the stubbornness of his evil heart.’ ”
- Amos 5:21-22 (v21) I hate, I despise your feasts, and I can’t stand your solemn assemblies. Yes, though you offer me your burnt offerings and meal offerings,…
- Romans 1:21 (v21) Because knowing God, they didn’t glorify him as God, and didn’t give thanks, but became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless heart…
- Ephesians 2:1-3 (v21) You were made alive when you were dead in transgressions and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world,…
- Hebrews 13:10 (v20) We have an altar from which those who serve the holy tabernacle have no right to eat.
- James 4:1-2 (v21) Where do wars and fightings among you come from? Don’t they come from your pleasures that war in your members? You lust, and don’t have.…
- 1 Peter 2:5 (v20) You also, as living stones, are built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God…
- 1 John 5:19 (v21) We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.
- Isaiah 47:12 (v21) “Stand now with your enchantments and with the multitude of your sorceries, in which you have labored from your youth, as if you might…
- Isaiah 47:15 (v21) The things that you labored in will be like this: those who have trafficked with you from your youth will each wander in his own way. There…
- Isaiah 48:8 (v21) Yes, you didn’t hear. Yes, you didn’t know. Yes, from of old your ear was not opened, for I knew that you dealt very treacherously, and…
- Isaiah 53:6 (v21) All we like sheep have gone astray. Everyone has turned to his own way; and Yahweh has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
- Isaiah 65:6 (v21) “Behold, it is written before me: I will not keep silence, but will repay, yes, I will repay into their bosom,
- Jeremiah 8:6 (v21) I listened and heard, but they didn’t say what is right. No one repents of his wickedness, saying, “What have I done?” Everyone turns to…
- Genesis 4:4 (v20) Abel also brought some of the firstborn of his flock and of its fat. Yahweh respected Abel and his offering,
- Genesis 4:12 (v21) From now on, when you till the ground, it won’t yield its strength to you. You will be a fugitive and a wanderer in the earth.”
- Genesis 5:29 (v21) He named him Noah, saying, “This one will comfort us in our work and in the toil of our hands, caused by the ground which Yahweh has…
- Genesis 7:2 (v20) You shall take seven pairs of every clean animal with you, the male and his female. Of the animals that are not clean, take two, the male…
- Genesis 13:18 (v20) Abram moved his tent, and came and lived by the oaks of Mamre, which are in Hebron, and built an altar there to Yahweh.
- Genesis 33:20 (v20) He erected an altar there, and called it El Elohe Israel.
- Exodus 20:24-25 (v20) You shall make an altar of earth for me, and shall sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your…
- Leviticus 1:1-17 (v20) Yahweh called to Moses, and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying, “Speak to the children of Israel, and tell them, ‘When anyone of…
- Leviticus 26:31 (v21) I will lay your cities waste, and will bring your sanctuaries to desolation. I will not take delight in the sweet fragrance of your…
- Song of Solomon 4:10-11 (v21) How beautiful is your love, my sister, my bride! How much better is your love than wine, the fragrance of your perfumes than all kinds of…
- Genesis 22:2 (v20) He said, “Now take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go into the land of Moriah. Offer him there as a burnt offering on…
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (22 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv20–22 20. And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord.…
20. And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord. As Noah had given many proofs of his obedience, so he now presents an example of gratitude. This passage teaches us that sacrifices were instituted from the beginning for this end, that men should habituate themselves, by such exercises, to celebrate the goodness of God, and to give him thanks. The bare confession of the tongue, yea, even the silent acknowledgment of the heart, might suffice for God; but we know how many stimulants our indolence requires. Therefore, when the holy fathers, formerly, professed their piety towards God by sacrifices, the use of them was by no means superfluous. Besides, it was right that they should always have before their eyes symbols, by which they would be admonished, that they could have no access to God but through a mediator. Now, however, the manifestation of Christ has taken away these ancient shadows. Wherefore, let us use those helps which the Lord has prescribed. Moreover, when I say that sacrifices were made use of, by the holy fathers, to celebrate the benefits of God, I speak only of one kind: for this offering of Noah answers to the peace-offerings, and the first-fruits. But here it may be asked, by what impulse Noah offered a sacrifice to God, seeing he had no command to do so? I answer: although Moses does not expressly declare that God commanded him to do it, yet a certain judgment may be formed from what follows, and even from the whole context, that Noah had rested upon the word of Gods and that, in reliance on the divine command, he had rendered this worship, which he knew, indubitably, should be acceptable to God. We have before said, that one animal of every kind was preserved separately; and have stated for what end it was done. But it was useless to set apart animals for sacrifice, unless God had revealed this design to holy Noah, who was to be the priest to offer up the victims. Besides, Moses says that sacrifices were chosen from among clean animals. But it is certain that Noah did not invent this distinction for himself since it does not depend on human choice. Whence we conclude, that he undertook nothing without divine authority. Also immediately afterwards, Moses subjoins, that the smell of the sacrifice was acceptable to God. This general rule, therefore, is to be observed, that all religious services which are not perfumed with the odour of faith, are of an ill-savor before God. Let us therefore know, that the altar of Noah was founded in the word of God. And the same word was as salt to his sacrifices, that they might not be insipid.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv20–22 For sacrifices which were as an exercise of their…
For sacrifices which were as an exercise of their faith, whereby they used to give thanks to God for his benefits.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv20–22 Gen 8:20 And Noah builded an altar unto the…
Gen 8:20 And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.
Ver. 20. And Noah builded an altar to the Lord.] This was his first care; and so it was Abraham’s wherever he came. It must be also ours, after great deliverances especially. God’s mercies are binders: Beneficium postulat officium . He is content we have the comfort of his blessings, so he may have the praise of them. This peppercorn is all the rent he looks for. Oh, cover we God’s altar "with the calves of our lips, giving thanks to his name". {Heb 13:15} This will "please him better than an ox that hath horns and hoofs". {Psa 69:31} Only let it be done, the first thing that we do, after the receipt of a benefit, which else will soon wax stale and putrify as fish. No part of the thank offering might be kept unspent to the third day. Hezekiah wrote his song the third day after his recovery. Noah was no sooner out of the ark, but he offered on his newly built altar; as well for testification of his thankfulness, as for confirmation of his faith in that Lamb of God, slain and sacrificed from the beginning of the world. "God was" now also "in Christ reconciling this" new "world to himself". {2Co 5:19}
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv20–22 This is the first altar we read of, but…
This is the first altar we read of, but not the first which was built; for the sacrifices which were offered before, Gen 4:3-4, presuppose an altar. Therefore it is no sufficient evidence that such things were not done because they are not said to be done in Scripture; which will be a useful consideration for the understanding of many passages in Scripture hereafter.
The first thing Noah doth, is to pay his debt of justice and gratitude to that God which had so miraculously preserved him, and restored him to his ancient and proper habitation. God expects to be served in the first place. What beasts were clean and what unclean, see Gen 7:2; Lev 11:2, &c.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v20 Here is, I. Noah's thankful acknowledgment of God's favour…
Here is, I. Noah's thankful acknowledgment of God's favour to him, in completing the mercy of his deliverance, Gen 8:20. 1. He built an altar. Hitherto he had done nothing without particular instructions and commands from God. He had a particular call into the ark, and another out of it; but, altars and sacrifices being already of divine institution for religious worship, he did not stay for a particular command thus to express his thankfulness. Those that have received mercy from God should be forward in returning thanks, and do it not of constraint, but willingly. God is pleased with free-will offerings, and praises that wait for him. Noah was now turned out into a cold and desolate world, where, one would have thought, his first care would have been to build a house for himself; but, behold, he begins with an altar for God: God, that is the first, must be first served; and he begins well that begins with God. 2. He offered a sacrifice upon his altar, of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl - one, the odd seventh that we read of, Gen 7:2, Gen 7:3. Here observe, (1.) He offered only those that were clean; for it is not enough that we sacrifice, but we must sacrifice that which God appoints, according to the law of sacrifice, and not a corrupt thing. (2.) Though his stock of cattle was so small, and that rescued from ruin at so great an expense of care and pains, yet he did not grudge to give God his dues out of it. He might have said, "Have I but seven sheep to begin the world with, and must one of these seven be killed and burnt for sacrifice? Were it not better to defer it till we have greater plenty?" No, to prove the sincerity of his love and gratitude, he cheerfully gives the seventh to his God, as an acknowledgment that all was his, and owing to him. Serving God with our little is the way to make it more; and we must never think that wasted with which God is honoured. (3.) See here the antiquity of religion: the first thing we find done in the new world was an act of worship, Jer 6:16. We are now to express our thankfulness, not by burnt-offerings, but by the sacrifices of praise and the sacrifices of righteousness, by pious devotions and a pious conversation.
II. God's gracious acceptance of Noah's thankfulness. It was a settled rule in the patriarchal age: If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? Noah was so. For,
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1. God was well pleased with the performance, Gen 8:21. He smelt a sweet savour, or, as it is in the Hebrew, a savour of rest, from it. As, when he had made the world at first on the seventh day, he rested and was refreshed, so, now that he had new-made it, in the sacrifice of the seventh he rested. He was well pleased with Noah's pious zeal, and these hopeful beginnings of the new world, as men are with fragrant and agreeable smells; though his offering was small it was according to his ability, and God accepted it. Having caused his anger to rest upon the world of sinners, he here caused his love to rest upon this little remnant of believers.
2. Hereupon, he took up a resolution never to drown the world again. Herein he had an eye, not so much to Noah's sacrifice as to Christ's sacrifice of himself, which was typified and represented by it, and which was indeed an offering of a sweet-smelling savour, Eph 5:2. Good security is here given, and that which may be relied upon,
(1.) That this judgment should never be repeated. Noah might think, "To what purpose should the world be repaired, when, in all probability, for the wickedness of it, it will quickly be in like manner ruined again?" "No," says God, "it never shall." It was said (Gen 6:6), It repented the Lord that he had made man; now here he speaks as if it repented him that he had destroyed man: neither means a change of his mind, but both a change of his way. It repented him concerning his servants, Deu 32:36. Two ways this resolve is expressed: - [1.] I will not again curse the ground, Heb. I will not add to curse the ground any more. God had cursed the ground upon the first entrance of sin (Gen 3:17), when he drowned it he added to that curse; but now he determines not to add to it any more. [2.] Neither will I again smite any more every living thing; that is, it was determined that whatever ruin God might bring upon particular persons, or families, or countries, he would never again destroy the whole world till the day shall come when time shall be no more. But the reason of this resolve is very surprising, for it seems the same in effect with the reason given for the destruction of the world: Because the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth, Gen 6:5. But there is this difference - there it is said, The imagination of man's heart is evil continually, that is, "his actual transgressions continually cry against him;" here it is said, It is evil from his youth or childhood. It is bred in the bone; he brought it into the world with him; he was shapen and conceived in it. Now, one would think it should follow, "Therefore that guilty race shall be wholly extinguished, and I will make a full end." No, "Therefore I will no more take this severe method; for," First, "He is rather to be pitied, for it is all the effect of sin dwelling in him; and it is but what might be expected from such a degenerate race: he is called a transgressor from the womb, and therefore it is not strange that he deals so very treacherously," Isa 48:8. Thus God remembers that he is flesh, corrupt and sinful, Psa 78:39. Secondly, "He will be utterly ruined; for, if he be dealt with according to his deserts, one flood must succeed another till all be destroyed." See here, 1. That outward judgments, though they may terrify and restrain men, yet cannot of themselves sanctify and renew them; the grace of God must work with those judgments. Man's nature was as sinful after the deluge as it had been before. 2. That God's goodness takes occasion from man's sinfulness to magnify itself the more; his reasons of mercy are all drawn from himself, not from any thing in us.
(2.) That the course of nature should never be discontinued (Gen 8:22): "While the earth remaineth, and man upon it, there shall be summer and winter (not all winter as had been this last year), day and night," not all night, as probably it was while the rain was descending. Here, [1.] It is plainly intimated that this earth is not to remain always; it, and all the works in it, must shortly be burnt up; and we look for new heavens and a new earth, when all these things must be dissolved. But, [2.] As long as it does remain God's providence will carefully preserve the regular succession of times and seasons, and cause each to know its place. To this we owe it that the world stands, and the wheel of nature keeps it track. See here how changeable the times are and yet how unchangeable. First, The course of nature always changing. As it is with the times, so it is with the events of time, they are subject to vicissitudes - day and night, summer and winter, counterchanged. In heaven and hell it is not so, but on earth God hath set the one over against the other. Secondly, Yet never changed. It is constant in this inconstancy. These seasons have never ceased, nor shall cease, while the sun continued such a steady measurer of time and the moon such a faithful witness in heaven. This is God's covenant of the day and of the night, the stability of which is mentioned for the confirming of our faith in the covenant of grace, which is no less inviolable, Jer 33:20, Jer 33:21. We see God's promises to the creatures made good, and thence may infer that his promises to all believers shall be so.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv20–21 And the Lord smelled a sweet savour,.... Or a…
And the Lord smelled a sweet savour,.... Or a "savour of rest" (e); he was delighted and well pleased with his sacrifice, which was offered up in the faith of the sacrifice of Christ; the apostle says, "is for a sweetsmelling savour", Eph 5:2 referring to this passage; that being a satisfaction to the justice of God, an appeasing of his wrath, and a propitiation for the sins of men:
and the Lord said in his heart; within himself; it was awhile a secret there, but Noah being a prophet, as Aben Ezra observes, he revealed it to him, or "to his heart" (f), that is, to the heart of Noah, as some interpret it, he spoke comfortably to him, as follows, when the Jewish writers (g) say he stretched out his right hand and swore, agreeably to Isa 54:9.
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I will not again curse the ground for man's sake, or drown it for the sin of man, as he had cursed it for the sin of Adam, and which continued till this time; but now was taken off, and it became more fruitful, and very probably by means of the waters which had been so long upon it, and had left a fructifying virtue in it, as the waters of the Nile do in Egypt. Some interpret the phrase, "for man's sake", for the man Christ's sake, for the sake of his sacrifice, of which Noah's was a type, and the sense be, that God would no more curse the earth; for by his sacrifice the curse of the law is removed, with respect to his people; they are redeemed from it, and shall inherit that new earth, of which this earth, renewed after the flood, was a type, in which there will be no more curse, Rev 21:1 which sense, though evangelical, cannot be admitted, because of the reason following, unless the first word be rendered "though", as it may:
for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; his nature is depraved, his heart is corrupt, the thoughts of it evil, yea, the imagination of it, and of them, is sinful, and that originally, even from his birth; from the time he is shook out of his mother's womb, as Jarchi interprets the phrase: man is conceived in sin, and shapen in iniquity, and is a transgressor from the womb, and so a child of wrath, and deserving of the curse of the law upon himself, and all that belong to him; and yet this is given as a reason why God will not any more curse the ground for his sake: that which was a reason for destroying the earth, is now one against it, see Gen 6:5 which may be reconciled thus, God for this reason destroyed the earth once, for an example, and to display his justice; but such is his clemency and mercy, that he will do it no more to the end of the world; considering that man has brought himself into such a condition, that he cannot but sin, it is natural to him from his birth; his nature is tainted with it, his heart is full of it, and all his thoughts and imaginations are wicked and sinful, from whence continually flow a train of actual sins and transgressions; so that if God was to curse and drown the world as often as man sins, he must be continually doing it; for the words may be rendered, "though the imagination of man's heart is evil", &c. (h); yet I will not do it; and so they are expressive of the super abounding grace of God over abounding sin:
neither will I again smite any more everything living, as I have done; this hinders not but that there might be, as has been since, partial calamities, or particular judgments on individual persons, towns, and cities, as those of Sodom and Gomorrah, or partial inundations, but not a general deluge, or an universal destruction of the world and creatures in it, at least not by water, as has been, but by fire, as will be; for that the earth will have an end, at least as to its present nature, form, and use, may be concluded from the following words.
(e) "odorem quietis", Pagninus, Montanus, Munster, &c. (f) "ad cor suum", Montanus, Tigurine version; "prophetae suo", Arab. (g) Jarchi in loc. Pirke Eliezer, c. 23. (h) "quamvis", Piscator; so Ainsworth.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv20–21 And Noah builded an altar - Hitherto he had…
And Noah builded an altar - Hitherto he had done nothing without particular instructions and commands from God but altars and sacrifices being already of Divine institution, he did not stay for a particular command thus to express his thankfulness. And he offered on the altar, of every clean beast and of every clean fowl - One, the odd seventh that we read of, ver. 2, 3.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv20–22 Verse 20. Noah builded an altar] As we have…
Verse 20. Noah builded an altar] As we have already seen that Adam, Cain, and Abel, offered sacrifices, there can be no doubt that they had altars on which they offered them; but this, builded by Noah, is certainly the first on record. It is worthy of remark that, as the old world began with sacrifice, so also did the new. Religion or the proper mode of worshipping the Divine Being, is the invention or institution of God himself; and sacrifice, in the act and design, is the essence of religion. Without sacrifice, actually offered or implied, there never was, there never can be, any religion. Even in the heavens, a lamb is represented before the throne of God as newly slain, Re 5:6; Re 5:12-13. The design of sacrificing is two-fold: the slaying and burning of the victim point out, 1st, that the life of the sinner is forfeited to Divine justice; 2dly, that his soul deserves the fire of perdition.
The Jews have a tradition that the place where Noah built his altar was the same in which the altar stood which was built by Adam, and used by Cain and Abel, and the same spot on which Abraham afterwards offered up his son Isaac.
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The word מזבח mizbach, which we render altar, signifies properly a place for sacrifice, as the root זבח zabach signifies simply to slay. Altar comes from the Latin altus, high or elevated, because places for sacrifice were generally either raised very high or built on the tops of hills and mountains; hence they are called high places in the Scriptures; but such were chiefly used for idolatrous purposes.
Burnt-offerings] See the meaning of every kind of offering and sacrifice largely explained on Le 7:1-38.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv20–22 Gen 8:20. Noah builded an altar — The first…
Gen 8:20. Noah builded an altar — The first altar that we read of; but not the first which was built; for the sacrifices which were offered before, Gen 4:3-4, presuppose an altar or altars. And it ought to be well observed, that the silence of Scripture concerning any thing is not sufficient evidence that it was not done; to remember which will greatly assist us in understanding many passages of the sacred oracles. Here we see, that the first thing that he did after his wonderful preservation was to pay this debt of gratitude so justly due to that God who had so wonderfully preserved him. Hitherto he had done nothing without particular instructions and commands from God: but altars and sacrifices being already of divine institution, he did not stay for a particular command thus to express his thankfulness. And he offered on the altar, of every clean beast, and of every fowl — One, the odd seventh that we read of, Gen 7:2-3.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv20–22 Holocausts, or whole burnt offerings. In which the whole…
Holocausts, or whole burnt offerings. In which the whole victim was consumed by fire upon God’s altar, and no part was reserved for the use of priest or people. (Challoner) --- This is the first time we read of an altar, though Abel had surely made use of one. (Menochius) --- Noe delays not to shew his gratitude to God, St. Ambrose. (Worthington)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v20 THE GENESIS OF THE NEW, WORLD-HISTORICAL, HUMAN RACE; OF…
FOURTH PART
THE GENESIS OF THE NEW, WORLD-HISTORICAL, HUMAN RACE; OF THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THE FORM OF SIN THAT NOW COMES IN, AND OF THE NEW FORM OF PIETY; OF THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THE BLESSING OF SHEM (CULTUS, THEOCRACY) AND THE BLESSING OF JAPHETH (CULTURE, HUMANISM); OF TEE CONTRAST BETWEEN THE DISPERSION OF THE NATIONS, AND THE BABYLONIAN COMBINING OF THE NATIONS; BETWEEN THE BABYLONIAN DISPERSION, OR THE MYTHICAL HEATHENISM, AND THE INDIVIDUAL SYMBOLIC FAITH IN GOD OF THE PATRIARCHS, THE FIRST TYPICAL COVENANT. Gen_8:20 to Gen_11:32
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FIRST SECTION
The First Typical Covenant. The Primitive Precepts (Noachian Laws). The Symbol of the Rainbow
Gen_8:20 to Gen_9:17
20And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord, and took of every20 clean beast and of every clean fowl and offered burnt offerings on the altar. 21And the Lord smelled a sweet savour,21 and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake: for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth [here, excusing]; neither will I again smite any more everything living as I have done. 22While the earth remaineth [all the days of the earth] seedtime and harvest [the order of nature], and cold and heat, and summer and winter,22 and day and night, shall not cease.
Gen_9:1 And God [Elohim] 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, and upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hands are they delivered. 3Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green 4herb have I given you all things. But flesh which is the life thereof [its soul, its animation], which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat. 5And surely your blood of your lives1 [of each single life] will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it [take vengeance for it], and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of Man_1:6 Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by Man_1:2 shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he Man_1:7 And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth 8abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein. And God [Elohim] spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying [לֵאמֹר], 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 [that shall proceed from them in the future]. 11And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off anymore by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. 12And God [Elohim] 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 bow3 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:4 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 16become a flood to destroy all flesh. And my bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every 17living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. And God [Elohim] said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. Gen_8:20-22. The offering of Noah and the acceptance and promise of Jehovah. The offering of Noah is not, as has been maintained, to be referred back from the later time of the law, to the primitive history. It reflects itself, moreover, in the mythological stories of the flood (Delitzsch, p. 268). An altar to the Lord. The altar is called מִזְבֵּהַ, place of slaying the victim, from זָבַח, as θυσιαστήριον from θύειν. That the sons of Adam offered without an altar is a mere supposition. According to Keil there was no need of an altar, because God was still present in paradise to men. In the judgment of the flood was paradise destroyed; the place of his presence was withdrawn, and he had taken his throne in the heaven, that from thence, hereafter he might reveal himself to men. (Comp. Gen_2:5; Gen_2:7). “Towards heaven must now the hearts of the pious lift up themselves; their offerings and their prayers must go up on high, if they would reach God’s throne. In order to give the offerings this upward direction, elevated places were fixed upon, from which they might ascend heavenwards in fire. Hence the offerings derived their name of עֹלוֹת, from עֹלָה, the ascending, not so much because the animal offered was laid upon the altar, or made to ascend the altar, but rather because of the ascending (of the flame and smoke) from the altar towards heaven. (Comp. Jdg_20:40; Jer_48:15; Amo_4:10). In like manner Delitzsch in relation to Psa_29:10; (according to Hofmann: “Prophecy and Fulfilment,” pp. 80, 88). If by this is meant that the religious consciousness, which once received God as present in paradise, must now, through its darkness by sin, revere him as the Holy One, far off, dwelling on high, and only occasionally revealing himself from heaven, there would be nothing to say against it; but if it is meant as a literal transfer of the place of the divine dwelling and of the divine throne, it becomes a mythologizing darkening of the divine idea (see Psalms 139). Christ was greater than the paradisaical Adam; notwithstanding, in prayer, he lifted up his eyes to heaven (Joh_11:41); and already is it intimated, Gen_1:1, that from the beginning, the heaven, as the symbolical sign of God’s exceeding highness, had precedence of the earth. That, however, the word עוֹלָה may have some relation, at least, to the ascendency of the victim upon the altar is shown by the expression העלה in the Hiphil. The altar was erected to Jehovah, whose worship had already, at an earlier period, commenced (Gen_4:4). Everywhere when Elohim had revealed himself in his first announcements, and had thus given assurance of himself as the trusted and the constant, there is Jehovah, the God amen, in ever fuller distinctness. As Jehovah must he especially appear to the saved Noah, as the one to whom he had fulfilled his word of promise in the wonderful relation he bore to him.—Of every clean beast.—According to Rosenmuller and others, we must regard this as referring to the five kinds of offerings under the law, namely, bullock, sheep, goats, doves, turtle doves. This, however, is doing violence to the text; there appears rather to have been appointed for offering the seventh surplus example which he had taken, over and above the three pairs, in each case, of clean beasts.—And offered it as a burnt offering.—We are not to think here of the classification of offerings as determined in the levitical law. The burnt offering forms the middle point, and the root of the different offerings (comp. Gen_22:13); and the undivided unity is here to be kept in view. There is, at all events, contained here the idea of the thank offering, although there is nothing said of any participation, or eating, of the victim offered. The extreme left side of the offering here, as an offering for sin and guilt, was the Herem or pollution of the carcases exposed in the flood (like the lamb of the sacrifice of Moses as compared with the slain first-born of the Egyptians); the extreme right side lay in that consecrated partaking of flesh by Noah which now commenced.—And the Lord (Jehovah) smelled a sweet savor.—The savor of satisfaction. An anthropomorphic expression for the satisfied acceptance of the offering presented, as a true offering of the spirit of the one presenting it.5—And said in his heart.—Not merely he said to himself or he thought with himself; it means rather, he took counsel with, his heart and executed a purpose proceeding from, the emotion of his divine love.—I will not again curse.—In words had he done this, Gen_3:17, but actually and in a higher measure, in the decree of destruction Gen_6:7; Gen_6:13. With the last, therefore, is the first curse retracted, in as far as the first preliminary lustration of the earth is admitted to be a baptism of the earth. According to Knobel, the pleasing fragrance of the offering is not the moving ground, but merely the occasion for this gracious resolve, But what does the occasion mean here? In so far as the saving grace of God was the first moving ground for Noah’s thank offering, was this latter also a second moving ground (symbolically, causa meritoria) for the purpose of God as afterwards determined.—For the imaginations of man’s heart.—The ground here given for God’s forbearance and compassion seems remarkable. Calvin: “Hic inconstantiœ videtur deus accusari posse. Supra puniturus hominem, causam consilii dicit, quia figmentum cordis humani malum est. Hic promissurus homini gratiam, quod posthac tali ira uti nolit, eandem causam allegat.” Between this passage, however, and the one Gen_6:6, there is a twofold difference. In the latter there precedes the sentence: Jehovah saw that the wickedness of man was great upon the earth; in connection with this corruption of actual sin, the evil imagining of the human heart itself, is reckoned for evil, as being its fountain. Here, however, the burnt offering of Noah goes before. In connection with tills sacrificial service, expressing the feeling of guilt and the want of forgiveness, the evil imagination of the human heart appears as a sufferer of temptation. The innate sinfulness is not disease merely, but as it stands in organic connection with the actual sin, is also guilt. It is, however, disease too; and precisely in its connection with the disposition for pardon, and the better desire of man, is it regarded as disease by God, and as being, therefore, an object of his compassion. Moreover it is called here simply יֵצֶר לֵב, the involuntary unconscious sense and imagination, but there (Gen_6:6), it was “the imagination of the thoughts (the purposes) of his heart,” and, therefore, a matter of consciousness; here it is wickedness from his youth up, there, it is only wickedness, nothing else but wickedness, wickedness throughout and continually. In the effect of the flood, and in the light of the sacrificial offering, which Noah offers not only in his own name, but in that of his family and race, the guilt of the innate sinfulness of the human race appears typically weakened in the same way as in the evangelical church-doctrine, the condemnation of hereditary sin is taken away by baptism, of which the flood is a type.6 Knobel lays stress on the fact that it is said from his youth up, not from his mother’s womb; but the word evidently means that just as soon as the heart comes to its peculiar imagining, or the sensual imagining that is appropriate to it, then immediately appears the innate sinfulness.—Whilst the earth remaineth.—“The three first pairs of words do not denote, as the Jewish interpreters (see Raschi) explain it, six times of the year reckoned by two months each (a division found in the Vedas and the Avesta), but they divide the year into two halves each, as the old Greeks did into θέρος and χειμών (in Hesiod it is ἄμητος and ἀροτος), namely the summer (including the autumn), beginning with the early rising of the Pleiades, and the winter (including the spring, see Job_29:4) beginning with the early setting (Ideler, Chron. 1, p. 241).” Delitzsch. And yet the antitheses are not tautological. Seed-time and harvest denote the year according to its most obvious significance for man. Cold and heat are according to the equilibrium of the year, lying at the ground of seed-time and harvest, and conditioned by the regular change of temperature. Summer and winter present the constant appearance of this change, the order of which is imaged in the small and ordinary changes of day and night that belong to the general course of nature. Delitzsch supposes that this new course of nature, consisting in interchanges of temperature, is opposed to a “serene or uninterrupted warmth that prevailed before the flood.” That the earth in the primitive period had an even temperature may be regarded as very probable; but not that the flood, in this respect, made any sudden turning point, although such an epoch in the earth’s life must, at the same time, denote the beginning of a change. At all events, the new order of nature is not denoted as a mere imperfect earth, for this purified earth will God never again cover with a flood. Delitzsch admirably remarks: “they are God’s thoughts of peace which he gives to Noah’s inner perception as an answer to his offering; as even now every one who prays in faith gets from the heart of God an inward perception that his prayer is answered.” The doubled form, לֹא אֹסִף, has as in Isa_54:9, the power of an oath. As an establishment of the new order of nature, this promise corresponds to the creative words Genesis 1.
2. The blessing of God on the new humanity, its dominion, its freedom and its laws (Gen_9:1-7). The benediction of Noah and his sons, Gen_9:1, corresponds to the blessing of Adam and Eve, Gen_1:28. In like manner, the grant of dominion over the animal world corresponds to the appointment there expressed. The distinct license here given for the slaying of the beasts corresponds to Gen_1:29, and Gen_2:16. The prohibition of eating blood corresponds to the prohibition of the tree of knowledge. Finally, the command against murder has relation, without doubt, to the murder committed by Cain (Genesis 4). Delitzsch: “After that the general relations of nature, in view of such a ruin as has happened in the flood, are made secure by promise, there are given to men new physical, ethical, and legal foundations.”—And the fear of you.—Your fear, as the effect, מוֹרָא. The exciting of fear and terror are to be the means of man’s dominion over the animals. Delitzsch remarks: “It is because the original harmony that once existed between man and nature has been taken away by the fall and its consequences. According to the will of God, man is still the lord of nature, but of nature now as an unwilling servant, to be restrained by effort, to be subjugated by force.” Not throughout, however, is nature thus antagonistic to man; it is not the case with a portion of the animal world, namely, the domestic animals. It is true, there has come in a breach of the original harmony, but it is not now for the first time, and the most peculiar striving of the creature is against its doom of perishability (Rom_8:20). Moreover, it is certainly the case, that, the influence of the fear of man upon the animals is fundamentally a normal paradisaical relation. But a severer intensity of this is indicated by the word dread. Knobel explains it from the fact, that hence-forth the animal is threatened in its life, and is now exposed to be slain. Since the loss of the harmonic relation between man and the animals (in which the human majesty had a magical power over the beast), the contrast between the tame and the wild, between the friendly innocence and the hostile dread of the wilder species, had increased more and more, unto the time of the flood. Now is it formally and legally presented in the language we are considering. Man is henceforth legally authorized to exercise a forcible dominion over the beasts, since he can no longer rule them through the sympathy of a spiritual power. Also the eating of flesh, which had doubtless existed before, is now formally legalized; by which fact it is, at the same time, commended. A limitation of the pure kinds is not yet expressed. When, however, there is added, by way of appendix, all that liveth (that is, is alive), the dead carcase, or that which hath died of itself, is excluded, and with it all that is offensive generally. There is, however, a distinct restriction upon this flesh-eating, in the prohibition of the blood: But flesh with the life thereof.—Delitzsch explains it as meaning, “that there was forbidden the eating of the flesh when the animal was yet alive, unslain, and whose blood had not been poured out,—namely, pieces cut out, according to a cruel custom of antiquity, and still existing in Abyssynia. Accordingly there was forbidden, generally, the eating of flesh in which the blood still remained.” It is, however, more to the purpose to explain this text according to Lev_17:11; Lev_17:14, than by the savage practices of a later barbarous heathenism, or by Rabbinical tradition. “With its life,” therefore, means with its soul, or animating principle, and this is explained by its blood, according to the passage cited (Deu_12:23); since the blood is the basis, the element of the nerve-life, and in this sense, the soul. The blood is the fluid-nerve, the nerve is the constructed blood. The prohibition of blood-eating, the first of the so-called Noachian commands (see below), is, indeed, connected with the moral reprobation of cruelty to animals, as it may proceed to the mutilation of the living; it is, therefore, also connected with the avoidance of raw flesh (בָּשָׂר חַי, or living flesh, 1Sa_2:15. Knobel). “The blood is regarded as the seat of the soul, or the life, and is even denoted as נֶפֶשׁ, or the soul itself (Lev_1:5), as the anima purpurea of Virgil, Æn. ix. 348; even as here נַפשׁוֹ is explained by the apposition דָּמוֹ. But the life belongs to God, the Lord of all life, and must, therefore, be brought to him, upon his altar (Deu_12:27), and not be consumed by man.” Knobel. This is, therefore, the second idea in the prohibition of the blood. As life, must the life of the beast go back to God its creator; or, as life in the victim offered in sacrifice, it must become a symbol that the soul of man belongs to God, though man may partake of the animal materiality, that is, the flesh. Still stronger is the restriction that follows: And surely your blood of your lives.—“The soul of the beast, in the blood of the beast, is to be avoided, and the soul of man, in the blood of man, is not to be violated.” Delitzsch. At the ground of this contrast, however, lies the more general one, that the slaying of the beast is allowed whilst the slaying of man is forbidden.–Will I require; that is, the corresponding, proportionate expiation or punishment will I impose upon the slayer. The expression לְנַפְשֹׁתֵיהֶם, Knobel explains as meaning “for your souls,” for the best of your life (comp. Lev_26:45; Deu_4:15; Job_13:7). According to Delitzsch and Keil לְ expresses the regard had for the individual. And this appears to be near the truth. The blood of man is individually reckoned and valued, according to the individual souls.—At the hand of every beast.—The more particular legal regulation is found in Exo_21:28. Here, then, is first given a legal ground for the pursuit and destruction of human murderous and hurtful beasts. Still there is expressed, moreover, the slaying of the single beast that hath killed a man. “In the enactments of Solon and Draco, and even in Plato, there is a similar provision.” Delitzsch.—And at the hand of man. “אִישׁ אָח, brother man, that is, kinsman; comp. Gen_13:5; so, אִישׁ כֹּהֵן, a priest-man, etc. By the words אִישׁ אָחִיו is not to be understood the next of kin to the murdered man, whose duty it was to execute the blood-vengeance (Von Bohlen, Tuch, Baumgarten), as the one from whom God required the blood that was shed, but the murderer himself. In order to indicate the unnaturalness of murder, and its deep desert of penalty, God denotes him (the murderer) as in a special sense the brother of the murdered.” Knobel. Besides this, moreover, there is formed from אִיש the expression every man (Delitzsch, Keil). Every man, brother man.—The life of man.—Man is emphasized. Therefore follows, emphatically, the formula: Whosoever sheddeth man’s blood, and at the close again there is once more man (הָאָדָם) prominently presented.—By man shall his blood be shed: “namely, by the next of kin to the murdered, whose right and duty both it was to pursue the murderer, and to slay him. He is called גֹּאֵל הַדָּם, the demander of the blood, or the blood-avenger. The Hebrew law imposed the penalty of death upon the homicide (Exo_21:12; Lev_24:17), which the blood avenger carried out (Num_35:19; Num_35:21); to him was the murderer delivered up by the congregation to be put to death (Deu_19:12). Among the old Hebrews, the blood-vengeance was the usual mode of punishing murder, and was also practised by many other nations.” Delitzsch and Keil dispute the relation of this passage to the blood-vengeance. It is not to be misapprehended, 1. that here, in a wider sense, humanity itself, seeing it is always next of kin to the murdered, is appointed to be the avenger; and 2. that the appointment extends beyond the blood-vengeance, and becomes the root of the magisterial right of punishment. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that in the patriarchal relations of the olden time it was a fundamental principle that the next of kin were not only justified in the execution of the law of blood, but on account of the want of a legal tribunal, were under obligation to perform the office. This primitive, divinely-sanctioned custom, became, in its ideal and theocratic direction, the law of punishment as magisterially regulated in the Mosaic institutions (but which still kept in mind the blood-vengeance), whereas, in the direction of crude heathenism, which avenged the murder even upon the relations of the murderer, it became itself a murderous impulse. Delitzsch remarks, that God has now laid in the hands of men the penal force that belonged to him alone, because he has withdrawn his visible presence from the earth,—according to the view, before cited, of his transfer of the divine throne to the heavens.—For in the image of God made he man.—This is the reason for the command against murder. In man there is assailed the image of God, the personality, that which constitutes the very aim of his existence, although the image itself, as such, is inviolable. In murder the crime is against the spirit, in which the divine kinsmanship reveals itself, and so is it a crime against the very appearing of God in the world in its most universal form, or as a prelude to that murder which was committed against the perfect form of man (or image of God in man), Zec_12:10; Joh_3:10; Joh_3:15).—But be ye fruitful.—The contrast to the preceding. The value of human life forbids its being wasted, and commands its orderly increase.—Bring forth abundantly in the earth—In the spreading of men over, the earth, and out of its supplies of food (by which, as it were, the life of the earth is transformed into the life of man) are found the conditions for the multiplication of the human race. Thus regarded, there is only an apparent tautology in the verse, not an actual one.
3. Gen_9:8-17. The covenant of God with Noah, with his race, and with the whole earth.—To Noah and to his sons with him.—Solemn covenanting form. The sons are addressed together with Noah; for the covenant avails expressly for the whole human race.—And I, behold I establish.—The words, and I, (וֹאני) form a contrast to the claims of God on the new humanity as an introduction to the promise. According to Knobel, God had established no covenant with the antediluvians. Not, indeed, in the literal expressions here employed; since it was after men had had the experience of a destroying judgment. According to the same (Knobel), the Jehovist, in Gen_8:21 presented the matter in a way different from that of the Elohist here. Clearly, however, does the offering of Noah there mentioned, furnish the occasion for the entire transaction that follows in this place. The making of a covenant with Noah is already introduced, and announced Gen_6:13; it stands in a development conditioned on the preservation of Noah’s faith, just as a similar development is still more evident in the life of Abraham (see Jam_2:20-23). Keil remarks that “חֵקִים בְּרִית is not equivalent to כָּרַת בְּרִיתּ, that is, it does not denote the formal concluding, but the establishing, confirming, of a covenant,—in other words, the realization of the covenanting promise” (comp. Genesis 22 with Genesis 17, 15). Delitzsch: “There begins now the era of the divine ἀνοχή(Rom_3:26) of which Paul preached in Lystria (Act_14:15).” In its most special sense, this era begins with the origin of heathenism, that is, from the Babylonian dispersion. With a right fulness is the animal world also included in this covenant, for it is elohistic,—universalistic; it keeps wholly predominant the characteristic of compassion for the creaturely life upon the earth, although man forms its ethical middle point, with which the animal world and the kosmos are connected. The covenant with the beasts subsists not for itself, and, in respect to its nature, is only to be taken symbolically.—Shall not be cut off any more.—This is the divine covenant promise—no new destruction,—no end of the world again produced by a flood.—My bow in the cloud, it shall be for a token.—In every divine covenant there is a divine sign of the covenant; in this covenant it is said: my bow do I set. According to Knobel the rainbow is called God’s bow, because it belongs to the heaven, God’s dwelling place. It is a more correct interpretation to say, it is because God has made it to appear in the heaven, as the sign of his covenant. According to the same, the author of the account must have entertained the supposition that there had never been a rainbow before the time of the flood. Delitzsch is of the same opinion.7 It is, indeed, a phenomenon of refraction, which may be supposed of a fall of water, and sometimes, also, of a dew-distilling mist. But the far visible and overarching rainbow supposes the rain-cloud as its natural conditioning cause. We have already remarked that from the appointment of the rainbow, as the sign of the covenant, it by no means follows that it had not before existed as a phenomenon of nature (Genesis 2). The starry night, too, is made the sign of a promise for Abraham (Genesis 15). Keil is not willing to infer that hitherto it had not rained, but only presents the conjecture that at an earlier period the constitution of the atmosphere may have been different.—And I will look upon it that I may remember.—An anthropomorphising form of expression, but which like every other expression of the kind, ever gives us the tenor of the divine thought in a symbolical human form. Here it is the expression of the self-obligating, or of the conscious covenant truthfulness, as manifested in the constant sign. “In his presence, too, have they power and most essential significance.” (Von Gerlach).
[Note on the Appointment of the Rainbow as the Sign of the Covenant.—In regard to this it may be well to give the views of some of the older Jewish commentators, if for no other purpose, to show that what is really the most easy and the most natural interpretation comes from no outside pressure of science, but is fairly deducible from the very letter of the passage. Thus reasons Maimonides respecting it: “For the words are in past time, אֵת קַשְׁתִּי נָתַתִּי, my bow have I set (or did set) in the cloud, not, I am now setting, or about to set, which would be expressed by אֲנִי נוֹתִן, according as he had said just before, הַבְּרִית אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי נֹתֵן, the covenant which I am now establishing. Moreover the form of the word קַשְׁתִּי my bow, shows that there was something to him so called from the beginning. And so the Scripture must be interpreted: the bow which I put (נתתי) in the cloud in the day of creation, shall be, from this day, and henceforth, for a sign of the covenant between me and you, so that every time that it appears, I will look upon it and remember my covenant of peace. If it is asked then, what is meant by the bow’s being a sign, I answer that it is like what is said Gen_31:48, in the covenant between Jacob and Laban, הִנֵּה הַגַּל הַזֶּה עֵד, lo, this heap is a witness, etc., or Gen_31:52, עֵדָה הַמַּצֵּבָה, and this pillar shall be a witness, etc. And so also Gen_21:30, אֶת שֶׁבַע כְּבָשׁוֹת תִּקַּח מִיָּדִי, seven lambs shalt thou take from my hand, לְעֵדָה for a witness. In like manner everything that appears as thus put before two, to cause them to remember something promised or covenanted, is called אוֹת. And so of the circumcision; God says, it shall be a sign of the covenant, לְאוֹת בְּרִית, between me and you. Thus the bow that is now visible, and the bow that was in nature (בטכע) from the beginning, or from of old (מעוֹלם) are one in this, that the sign which is in them is one.” He then proceeds to say that there are other and mystic interpretations made by some of the Rabbins, but this great critic is satisfied with the one that he has given. Aben Ezra says that the most celebrated of the Jewish Rabbins held the same opinion as Maimonides, namely, that the rainbow was in nature from the beginning, though he himself seems to dissent.
“And I will look upon it to remember the בְּרִית עוֹלָם, the covenant of eternity.” Let us not be troubled about the anthropopathism, but receive the precious thought in all its inexpressible tenderness. Lange most beautifully characterizes such mutual remembrance as eye meeting eye. We all know that God’s memory takes in the total universe of space at every moment of time: but there are some things which he remembers as standing out from the great totality. He remembers the act of faith, and the sign of faith, as he remembers no other human act, no other finite phenomenon. May we not believe that there is the same mutual remembrance in the Eucharist? The “remember me” implies “I will remember thee.” The eye of the Redeemer looking into the eye of the believer, or both meeting in the same memorial: this is certainly a “real presence,” whatever else there may be of depth and mystery in that most fundamental Christian rite—the evangelical אוֹת בְּרִית עוֹלָם, or sign of the everlasting covenant.
The Hebrew אוֹת is not used of miraculous signs, properly, given as proofs of mission or doctrine. It is not a counteraction of natural law, or the bringing a new thing into nature. Any fixed object may be used for a sign, and here the very covenant itself, or a most important part of it, being the stability of nature, there is a most striking consistency in the fact that the sign of such covenant is taken from nature itself. The rainbow, ever appearing in the “sunshine after rain,” is the very symbol of constancy. It is selected from all others, not only for its splendor and beauty, but for the regularity with which it cheers us, when we look out for it after the storm. Noah needed no witness of the supernatural. The great in nature, in that early age when all was wonderful, was regarded as manifesting God equally with the supernatural. Besides, in the flood itself there was a sufficient witness to the extraordinary. There was wanted, then, not a miracle strictly as an attestation of a message, or as a sign of belief, like the miracles in the New Testament (when there was a necessity for breaking up the lethargy of naturalism), but a vivid memorial for the conservation rather than the creation of faith. The Hebrew word for miracle is more properly פֶּלֶא, though it may be used simply for prodigy, like the Greek τέρας, in distinction from the New Testament σημεῖον, which is properly a proof or attestation of a miraculous kind. Τέρας simply means anything wonderful, whether in nature or not. Superstition converts such appearances into portents, or signs of something impending, but in the Bible God’s people are expressly told “not to be dismayed at the signs of the heavens as the heathen are.” Jer_10:1. The word there used is this same אוֹתוִֹת in the plural, but accommodated to the heathen perversion. To the believing Israelites the signs of the heavens, even though strange and unusual, were to be regarded as tokens of their covenant God above nature yet ruling in nature, and ever regulating the order of its phenomena. There is a passage sometimes quoted from Homer, Il. xi. 27, Genesis 28 :
̔́Ιρισσιν ἐοικότες ἅστε Κρονίων
’Εν νέφεϊ στήριξε ΤΕΡΑΣ μερόπων ἀνθρώπων.
“Like the rainbows which Zeus fixed in the cloud a sign to men of many tongues.” But τέρας there has the sense of prodigy, or it may denote a wonderful and beautiful object. We cannot, therefore, certainly infer from this any traditional recognition of the great sign-appointing in Genesis. So Plato quotes from Hesiod the genealogy of Iris (the rainbow), as the daughter of Θαύμας or Wonder, as a sort of poetical argument that Wonder is the parent of philosophy, as though the rainbow were placed in the heavens to stimulate men in the pursuit of curious knowledge. But it is the religious use that is prominent in this as in all the Bible appeals to the observation of nature. It is for the support of faith in the God of nature, “that we may look upon it and remember;” and this is admirably expressed in a Rabbinical doxology to be found in the Talmudic Kidduschin, fol. 8, and which was to be recited at every appearance of the rainbow, ברוך אתה יהוה אלהינו וגו, “Blessed be thou Jehovah our God, King of eternity (or of the world), ever mindful of thy covenant, faithful in thy covenant, firm in thy word,” comp. Psa_119:89, Forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. The Targum of Oukelos translates Gen_9:13 : “And it shall be a sign, בין מימרי ובין ארעא, between my word and the earth.”
It is not unreasonable to suppose some reference to this place in that difficult passage Hab_3:9, עֶרְיָה תֵּעוֹר קַשְׁתֶּךָ, most obscurely rendered in our English version, “thy bow was made quite naked—the oaths of the tribes—the word.” Kimchi translates it revealed, made manifest. It is commonly thought that all that is said in that sublime chapter has reference to events that took place during the exodus, but there is good ground for giving it a wider range, so as to take in other divine wonders, in creation and in the patriarchal history.—T. L.]
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. There are the most distinct indications that the flood, as the greatest epoch of the primitive time, made a turning point, not only in the spiritual life of humanity, but also in its physical relations,—yea, in the very life of the earth itself. Only we may not, in the first place, regard this turning point as a sudden change of all relations; just as little as the fall (Genesis 3) suddenly brought in death, or as the confusion of tongues produced immediately the wide-spread diversities of language. And, in the second place, again, it must not be regarded as a change of all relations for the worse. There is supposed to have been a change of the atmosphere (concerning the rain and the rainbow, see above). At all events, the paradisaical harmony of the earth had departed at an earlier day. But, on the other hand, there comes in now a more constant order of the atmospherical relations (Gen_8:22). Again, some have called it a sudden change in the duration of human life. But to this is opposed the fact that the aged Noah lived 350 years after the flood. It is evident, however, that during the period of Noah’s life the breaking through of death from the inner to the outer life had made a great advance. And to this the fear which the flood brought upon the children and grandchildren of Noah (not upon himself) may have well contributed. As far as relates to the increasing ferocity of the wild beasts towards men, the ground of their greater estrangement and savageness cannot be found in their deliverance in the ark. Already had the mysterious paradisaical peace between man and beast departed with the fall. Moreover, the words: “all flesh had corrupted its way,” (Gen_6:12) indicate that together with men’s increasing wickedness the animal world had grown more ferocious. But if the mode of life as developed among men made the eating of flesh (and drinking of wine) a greater necessity for them than before, then along with the sanctioning of this new order of life, must there have been sanctioned also the chase. And so out of this there must have arisen a state of war between man and the animal world, which would have for its consequence an increased measure of customary fear among the animals that were peculiarly exposed to it.
2. Immediately after the flood, Noah built an altar to Jehovah, his covenant God, who had saved him. The living worship (cultus) was his first work, the culture of the vineyard was his second. The altar, in like manner, was the sign of the ancestral faith, as it had come down from paradise and had been transmitted through the ark. This faith was the seed-corn as well as sign of the future theocracy and the future church. It was an altar of faith, an altar of prayer, an altar of thanksgiving, for it was erected to Jehovah. But it was also an altar of confession, an acknowledgment that sin had not died in the flood, that Noah and his house was yet sinful and needed the symbolic sanctification. In this case, too, was the offering of an animal itself an expression of the greater alacrity in the sacrifice since Noah had preserved only a few specimens of the clean animals. This readiness in the offering was in that case an expression of his faith in salvation, wherein, along with his prayer for grace and compassion, there was inlaid a supplication for his house, for the new humanity, for the new world. His offering was a burnt-offering, a whole burnt-offering (Kalil) or an ascending in the flame (Olah), as an expression that he, Noah, did thereby devote himself with his whole house, his whole race, and with the whole new earth, to the service of God. The single kinds of offering were all included in this central offering. It was this sense of his offering which made the strong burnt odor of the burning flesh, a “sweet savor” for Jehovah in a metaphorical sense. The attestation of Jehovah makes it evident in what sense Noah offered it. It expresses 1. an averting of the curse from the ground, 2. the fact that the hereditary sinfulness of man was to be an object of the divine compassion. The sinful tendency in its connection with the act of sin is guilt, but in its connection with the need of salvation and salvation itself, it is an evil, the sorest of diseases and suffering (see above); 3. the promise that Jehovah would not again destroy every living thing; 4. the establishment of a constant order of nature; such as the prosperity of the new human race demanded. On this promise of sparing compassion for sinful men, and which God as Jehovah pronounces, there is grounded the renewed relation into which, as Elohim, he enters with all humanity, and the creature world connected with it. This relation is denoted by grants made by God to man, and demands which he makes of man, whereupon follows the establishment of the Elohistic covenant with Noah and all living. The Grants of God: 1. the repetition of the blessing upon Noah and upon all his house, as before upon the animals; 2. the renewed grant of dominion over the beasts; the sanction given to the eating of flesh. In contrast with these grants that guarantee the existence and well-being of the human race, stand the demands or claims made in respect to human conduct. The first is the avoidance of the eating of flesh with the blood, whereby there is together established the sanctification of the enjoyment, the avoidance of savageness as against nature, and of cruelty as against the beast. The second not only forbids the shedding of human blood, but commands also the punishment of murder; it ordains the magistracy with the sword of retribution. But it expresses, at the same time, that the humane civil organization of men must have a moral basis, namely the acknowledgment that all men are brothers (אִישׁ אָחִיו every man, his brother man), and with this again, a religious basis, or the faith in a personal God, and that inviolability of the human personality which rests in its imaged kinsmanship with God. On this follows the establishment of the covenant. Still it is not made altogether dependent on the establishment of the preceding claims. It is a covenant of promise for the sparing of all living that reaches beyond this, because it is made not for individuals but for all, not merely for the morally accountable but for infants, not merely for men but also for the animal world. Notwithstanding, however, this transcending universality of the divine covenant, it is, in truth, made on the supposition that faith in the grace and compassion of Jehovah, piety in respect to the blessing, the name and the image of Elohim, shall correspond to the divine faithfulness, and that men shall find consolation and composure in the sign of the rainbow, only in as far as they preserve faith in God’s word of promise.
3. In the preceding Section we must distinguish between what God says in his heart, and what Elohim says to Noah and his sons. The first word, which doubtless was primarily comprehensible to Noah only, is the foundation of the second. For God’s grace is the central source of his goodness to a sinful world, as on the side of men the believing are the central ground for the preservation of the world, as they point to Christ the absolute centre, She world’s redeemer, having, however, his preserving life in those who are his own, as his word testifies: Ye are the salt of the earth. We must, then, again distinguish between the word of blessing, which embraced Noah and his sons, and with them humanity in general, and the word of the covenant which embraced all living (Gen_9:10).
4. The institutions of the new humanity: 1. At the head stands the altar with its burnt-offering as the middle point and commencing point of every offering, an expression of feeling that the life which God gave, which he graciously spares, which he wonderfully preserves, shall be consecrated to him, and consumed in his service. 2. The order of nature, and, what is very remarkable, as the ordinance of Jehovah, made dependent on the foregoing order of his kingdom of grace. 3. The institution of the marriage blessing, of the consecration of marriage, of the family, of the dispersion of men. 4. The dominion of man over the animal world, as it embraces the keeping of cattle, the chase, manifold use of the beasts. 5. The holding as sacred the blood—the blood of the animal for the altar of God, the blood of man for the priestly service of God; the institution of the humanitat,8 of the humane culture and order, especially of the magistracy, of the penal and judicial office (including personal self-defence and defensive war). 6. The grounding of this humanitat on the religious acknowledgment of the spiritual personality, of the relation of kinsman that man bears to God, of the fraternal relation of men to each other, and, consequently, the grounding of the state on the basis of religion. 7. The appointment of the humanization of the earth (Gen_9:7) in the command to men to multiply on the earth—properly, upon it, and by means of it. As men must become divine through the image of God, so the earth must be humanized. 8. The appointment of the covenant of forbearance, which together with the security of the creature-world against a second physical flood, expresses also the security of the moral world against perishing in a deluge of anarchy, or in the floods of popular commotion (Psalms 93). 9. The appointment of the sign of the covenant, or of the rainbow as God’s bow of peace, whereby there is at the same time expressed, in the first place, the elevation of men above the deification of the creature (since the rainbow is not a divinity, but a sign of God, an appointment which even the idolatrous nations appear not to have wholly forgotten, when they denote it God’s bridge, or God’s messenger); in the second place, their introduction to the symbolic comprehension and interpretation of natural phenomena, even to the symbolizing of forms and colors; thirdly, that God’s compassion remembers men in their dangers, as indicated by the fact, that in the sign of the rainbow his eye meets their eye; fourthly, the setting up a sign of light and fire, which, along with its assurance that the earth will never again be drowned in water, indicates at the same time its future transformation and glorification through light and fire.
5. In the rainbow covenant all men, in their dealings with each other, and, at the same time, with all animals, have a common interest, namely, in the preservation of life, a common promise, or the assurance of the divine care for life, and a common duty in the sparing of life.
6. The offering as acceptable to God, and its prophetic significance.
7. The disputes concerning original sin have variously originated from not distinguishing its two opposing relations. These are, its relation to actual sin, Rom_5:12, and to the desire for deliverance, Rom_7:23-25.
8. The magical or direct power of man over the beasts is not taken away, but flawed, and thereupon repaired through his mediate power, derived from that superiority which he exercises as huntsman, fisher, fowler, etc. In regard to the first, compare Lange’s “Miscellaneous Writings,” vol. iv. p. 189.
9. The ordinance of the punishment of death for murder, involves, at the same time, the ordinance of the magistracy, of the judicial sentence, and of the penal infliction. But in the historical development of humanity, the death-penalty has been executed with fearful excess and false application (for example, to the crime of theft); since in this way, generally, all humane savageness and cruelty has mingled in the punitive office. From this is explained the prejudice of the modern humanitarianism against capital punishment. It is analogous to the prejudice against the excommunication, and similar institutes, which human ignorance and furious human zeal have so fearfully abused. Yet still, a divine ordinance may not be set aside by our prejudices. It needs only to be rightly understood according to its own limitation and idea. The fundamental principle for all time is this, that the murderer, through his own act and deed, has forfeited his right in human society, and incurred the doom of death. In Cain this principle was first realized, in that, by the curse of God, he was excommunicated, and driven, in self-banishment, to the land of Nod. This is a proof, that in the Christian humanitarian development, the principle may be realized in another form than through the literal, corporeal shedding of blood (see Lange’s treatise Gesetsliche Kirche als Sinnbild, p. 72). It must not, indeed, he overlooked, that the mention is not merely of putting to death, but also of blood-shedding, and that the latter is a terrific mode of speech, whose warnings the popular life widely needed, and, in many respects, still needs. Luther: “There is the first command for the employment of the secular sword. In the words there is appointed the secular magistracy, and the right as derived from God, which puts the sword in its hands.” Every act of murder, according to the Noachian law, appears as a fratricide, and, at the same time as malice against God.
10. To this passage: “for in the image of God made he man,” as also to the passage, Jam_3:9, has the appeal been made, to show that even after the fall there is no mention of any loss of the divine image, but only of a darkening and disorder of the same. Others, again, have cited the apparently opposing language, Coloss. Gen_3:10, and similar passages. But in this there has not always been kept in mind the distinction of the older dogmatics between the conception of the image in its wider sense (the spiritual nature of man) and the more restricted sense (the spiritual constitution of man). In like manner should there be made a further distinction between the disposition of Adam as conformed to the image (made in, or after the image) and the image itself as freely developed in Christ (the express image, Hebrews 13.), as also finally between the natural man considered in the abstract, in the consequences of his fall, and the natural man in the concrete, as he appears in the operation of the gratia prœveniens. This perfect developed image Adam could not have lost, for he had not attained to it. Neither can men lose the ontological image as grounded in the spiritual nature, because it constitutes its being; but it may darken and distort it. The image of God, however, in the ethical sense, the divine mind (φρόνημα πνεύματος), this he actually lost to the point where the gratia prœveniens laid hold on him, and made a point of opposition between his gradual restoration and the fall in abstracto. But to what degree this image of God in fallen man had become lost, is shown in this very law against murder, which expresses the inalienable, personal worth, that is, the worth that consists in the image as still belonging to man, and thus, in contrast with grace, must man become conscious of the full consequences of his sinful corruption according to the word: what would I have been without thee? what would I become without thee?
11. With this chapter has the Rabbinical tradition connected their doctrine of the seven Noachic precepts. (Buxtorf: Lexicon Talmudicum, article, Ger, גֵר). They are: 1. De judiciis; 2. de benedictione Dei; 3. de idolatria fugienda; 4. de scortatione; 5. de effusione sanguinis; 6. de rapina; 7. de membro de animali vivo sc. non tollendo. The earlier supposition, that the Apostolical decree (Acts 15) had relation to this, and that, accordingly, in its appointments, it denominated the heathen Christians as proselytes of the gate (on whom the so-called Noachian laws were imposed) is disputed by Meyer, in his “Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles” (p. 278), though not on satisfactory grounds. The matter of chief interest is the recognition, that in the Israelitish consciousness there was a clear distinction between revealed patriarchal precepts and the Mosaic law. Such a distinction is also expressed by Christ, Joh_7:22-23. So, too, did the Levitical law make a distinction between such precepts as were binding upon aliens (proselytes of the gate) and such as were binding upon the Jews (Lev_17:14; see Bibelwerk, Acts of the Apostles, p. 215). It lies in the very nature of the case, that in Acts 15 the seventh precept of the tradition, according to its wider appointment, was divided into two (namely, abstinence from blood and from things strangled), and that, moreover, only those points came into the general view, in respect to which heathen Christians, as freer Christians, might be liable to fail. It was, in fact, a monotheistic patriarchal custom, which, as the expression of the patriarchal piety and humaneness, became the basis of the Mosaic law, and on this basis must the heathen Christians have come together in ethical association, if, in their freedom from the dogmas of the Mosaic law, they would not endanger even the churchly and social communion of the Jewish Christians (see Lange: Geschichte des Apostolischen Zeitalters, ii. p. 187). The prohibition of blood-eating has here no longer any dogmatic significance, but only an ethical. The Greek Church mistook this in its maintenance of the prohibition (Trullanic Council, 692), whereas, the Western Church, in the changed relations, let the temporary appointment become obsolete.
12. On the symbolical significance of the rainbow, see Delitzsch, p. 277, and Lange’s “Miscellaneous Writings,” i. p. 277, from which Delitzsch gives the following passage: “The rainbow is the colored glance of the sun as it breaks forth from the night of clouds; it is its triumph over the floods—a solar beam, a glance of light burnt into the rain-cloud in sign of its submission, in sign of the protection of all living through the might of the sun, or rather the compassion of God.” To this adds Delitzsch: “As it lights up the dark ground that just before was discharging itself in flashes of lightning, it gives us an idea of the victory of God’s love over the black and fiery wrath; originating as it does from the effects of the sun upon the sable vault, it represents to the senses the readiness of the heavenly light to penetrate the earthly obscurity; spanned between heaven and earth, it announces peace between God and man; arching the horizon, it proclaims the all-embracing universality of the covenant of grace.” He then cites some of the mythical designations of the rainbow. It is called by the Hindoos, the weapon of Indras; by the Greeks, Iris, the messenger of the gods; by the Germans, Bifröst (living way), and Asen-brücke, “bridge of Asen;” by the Samoeids, the seam or “border of God’s robe.” There are, besides, many significant popular sayings connected with its appearance. Knobel: “The old Hebrews looked upon it as a great band joining heaven and earth, and binding them both together; as the Greek ἶρις comes from εἴρω, to tie or bind,9 they made it, therefore, the sign of a covenant, or of a relation of peace between God in heaven, and the creatures upon the earth. In a similar manner the heavenly ladder, Gen_28:12.” On this, nevertheless, it must be remarked, that the Hebrews were conscious of the symbolic sense of the designation; not so, however, the Greeks, who were taken with the fable merely. In like manner, too, did the Hebrew view rest upon a divine revelation. How far the mere human interpretation may be wide of the truth, is shown by the fact, that classical antiquity regarded the rainbow as for the most part announcing “rain, the wintry storm, and war.”
[Note on the Ancient, the Universal, and the Unchanging Law of Homicide.—The divine statute, recorded Gen_9:6, is commonly assailed on grounds that are no less an abuse of language, than they are a perversion of reason and Scripture. The taking the life of the murderer is called revenge—no distinction being made between this word, which ever denotes something angry and personal, and vengeance, which is the requital of justice, holy, invisible, and free from passion. On this false ground there is an attempt to set the Old Testament in opposition to the New, notwithstanding the express words of Christ to the contrary. This perverse misnomer, and the argument grounded upon it, apply equally to all punishment, strictly such—to all retributive justice, or to any assertion of law that is not resolvable into the merest expediency, excluding altogether the idea of desert, and reducing the notion of crime simply to that of mischief, or inconvenience. It thus becomes itself revenge in the lowest and most personal sense of the term. Discarding the higher or abstract justice, giving it no place in human law, severing the earthly government wholly from the divine, the proceeding called punishment, or justice, is nothing more nor less than the setting the mere personal convenience of the majority, called society, against that of the smaller numbers whom such society calls criminals. This has all the personality of revenge, whether with passion, or without; whereas, the abstract justice, with its moral ground, and its idea of intrinsic desert, alone escapes the charge. Intimately connected with this is the question respecting the true idea and sanction of human government,—whether it truly has a moral ground, or whether it is nothing higher than human wills, and human convenience, by whatever low and ever falling standard it may be estimated. If the murderer is punished with death simply because he deserves it, because God has commanded it, and the magistrate and the executioner are but carrying out that command, then all the opposite reasoning adverted to falls immediately to the ground. It has neither force nor relevancy.
The same, too, may be said in respect to much of the reasoning in favor of capital punishment, so far as it is grounded on mere expediency, and is not used as a collateral aid to that higher principle by which alone even a true expediency can be sustained. Should it even be conceded that this higher principle is, in itself, and for its own sake, above the range of human government, still must it be acknowledged in jurisprudence as something necessary to hold up that lower department of power and motive which is universally admitted to fall within it. Reformation and prevention will never be effected under a judicial system which studiously, and even hostilely (for there can be no neutrality here) shuts out all moral ideas. There may be a seeming reform in such case; but it has no ground in the conscience, because it is accompanied by no conviction of desert, to which such influences must be wholly alien. The deterring power, on the other hand, must constantly lose its vigor, as the terror of the invisible justice fades away in the ignoring of the law, and there takes its place in the community that idea of punishment which is but the warring of opposite conveniences, and the collision of stronger with weaker human wills.
Men are not merely permitted to take the life of the murderer, if the good of society require it, but they are commanded to do so unconditionally. In no other way can the community itself escape the awful responsibility. Blood rests upon it. Impunity makes the whole land guilty. A voice cries to heaven. Murder unavenged is a pollution. Num_35:33; Psa_106:38; Mic_4:11. Such is the strong language of the Scripture as we find it in Genesis, in the statute of the Pentateuch—which is only a particular application of the general law—and in the Prophets. Such, too, is the expression of all antiquity—so strong and clear that we can only regard it as an echo of this still more ancient voice—the τριγέρων μῦθος, as Æschylus styles it in a passage before referred to, Note, p. 257. The Greek dramatic poetry, like the Scriptures, presents it as the crime inexpiable, for which no lesser satisfaction was to be received: “Moreover ye shall take no satisfaction for the life of the murderer, who is guilty of death.” Num_35:31.
τὰ πάντα γάρ τις ἐκχέας ἀνθ̓ αἳματος
ἑνός, μάτην ὁ μόχθος—
Lavish all wealth for blood, for one man’s blood—
’Tis all in vain. Æsch., Choæph. 518.
And this gives the answer to another false argument: It was only a law for the Jews, it is said. The first refutation is found in this passage, which is certainly universal, if anything can be called such. It was just after that most fearful judgment which had been brought upon the earth by lust and murder. It is not a prediction, but a solemn statute made for all, and to all, who then constituted the human race. It has the strongest aspect of universality. The reason for it, namely, the assailing the image of God, not only embraces all earthly humanity, but carries us into the spiritual and supernatural world. The particular law afterwards made for the Jews refers back to this universality in that repeated declaration which makes it to differ from all other Jewish laws that do not contain it: “This shall be a statute to you in all your places, in all generations.” The language is universal, the reason is universal, the consequences of impunity are universal.
Such, too, was the sentiment of all antiquity, a thing we are not to despise in endeavoring to ascertain what is fundamental in the ideas of ethics and jurisprudence. The law for the capital punishment of homicide was everywhere. The very superstitions connected with it, as shown in the expiatory ceremonies, are evidence of the deep sense of the human mind, that this crime, above all others, must have its adequate atonement; and that this could only be, life for life, blood for blood—
φόνοι φόνους αἰτούμενοι.
Even in the case of accidental homicide, an expiatory cleansing was demanded. These ideas appear sometimes in harsh and revolting forms. The language is occasionally terrific, especially as it appears in the ancient tragedy; but all this only shows the strength and universality of the feeling, together with the innate sense of justice on which it was grounded. Aristotle reckons the punishment of murder by death among the νόμιμα ἄγραπτα, the universal “unwritten laws,” as they are styled by Sophocles in the Antigone, 451, although, in the latter passage, the reference is to the rights of burial, and the sacredness of the human body—ideas closely connected with the primitive law against murder as a violation of the divine image in humanity. All of this class of ordinances are spoken of as very ancient. No man knew from whence they came, nor when they had their origin.
οὐ γάρ τι νῦν γε κἀχθές, ἀλλ’ ἀεί ποτε
ζῇ ταῦτα, κοὐδεὶς οἶδεν ἐξ ὅτου ’φάνη.
Not now, nor yesterday, but evermore
Live these; no memory tracks their birth.
To the same effect does the philosopher quote the lines of Empedocles, περί τοῦ μὴ κτείνειν τὸ ἔμψυχον, “on the crime of taking life,” or slaying that which has soul in it,
Very much in the language of the Hebrew phrase הֹרֵג נֶפֶשׁ. Num_31:19. For this, he says—namely, the punishment of homicide by death—is not the law in one place, and not in another,
ἀλλὰ τὸ μὲν πάντων νόμιμον.
See Aristotle’s Rhetorica, lib. i. ch. xiii. Comp. also Sophocles: Ajax, 1343, and the Œdipus Tyran. 867.
The “blood revenge,” or rather, “the blood vengeance,” as it should be called, Die Blutrache, has an odious sound, because pains have been taken to connect with it odious associations, but it is only a mode of denoting this strong innate idea of justice demanding retribution in language corresponding to the horror of the crime,—the enormity of which, according to the Scripture, is not simply that it is productive of inconvenience—pain and deprivation to the individual and loss to society—but that it is assailing the image of God, the distinguishing essence of humanity. So that it seems to justify the Rabbins in what might otherwise appear an extravagant saying, namely, that “he who slays one man intentionally is as though he had slain all men.” He has assailed humanity; as far as lies in his power, he has aimed at the destruction of the human race. The same thought, Koran, v. 35.
The crime of murder must be punished, the land must be cleansed; and so before organized human government had, or could have had existence, to a sufficient extent for prompt and methodical judicial processes, it was not merely permitted, but enjoined upon, those nearest the transaction, to execute the divine sentence. Those who were disobedient to this command were themselves stained with blood, or as long as it was unexecuted. Hence the phrase גוֹאֵל הַדָּם, which becomes the general name for the pursuer or prosecutor; whence it has passed into the law language of almost all criminal codes. He is also called the Redeemer or rescuer. In this sense it is transferred to the Great Redeemer, our next of kin, the avenger of the spiritual murder of our race, as against the great demonic homicide who is called ἀνθρωποκτόνος ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς—“a manslayer from the beginning,” Joh_8:44; compare also Job_19:25. From the criminal side of justice, we may say, this term, by a very natural transition of ideas, is carried to the civil, and so the Goel, or Redeemer, is also the next of kin who buys back the lost inheritance.
Sometimes the objection to capital punishment assumes a pious tone, and quotes the Scriptural declaration: “Vengeance is mine.” See, however, the true interpretation of this phrase, as given by the Apostle himself, Rom_12:19, and in what immediately follows in Genesis 13, about the magistracy as ordained of God. It is God’s justice, not merely delegated to, but imposed upon, human society, thus making it the very antithesis of that revenge with which it is so sophistically confounded. The odious term, it may be repeated, is far more applicable to that doctrine of expediency which, in discarding the idea of desert, has nothing deeper or firmer to build upon than the shifting notions of human convenience, and the antagonism of human wills. There is undoubtedly given to men great freedom in determining the details of jurisprudence, and in fixing the gradations of punishment. Here, to a certain extent, expediency may come in as a modifying influence, harmonizing with the higher moral principle which cannot be kept out of law without destroying all its healthy, conserving power. But some things are fundamental; and they cannot be changed without weakening all the sanctions of human government. Among these is the punishment due to the crime of blood-shedding. God has fixed it. The State, indeed, may disobey; it may contemn other social ordinances having a like divine institution; but in so doing it discards its own highest idea, and rejects the only foundation on which it can permanently rest. It builds alone on human wills, and that is building on the sand.
The reason here given: “for in the image of God made he man,” seems to have an intensity of meaning which forbids its being confined to the spiritual or immaterial. It penetrates even the corporeal or organic nature, as Lange appears to intimate. There is a sense in which it may be said to inhere even in the body, and, through it, to be directly assailable. The human body itself is holy, as the residence of the Spirit, as the temple in which this divine image is enshrined, and through which it is reflected. Compare the ναὸς Θεοῦ, 1Co_3:16. Something like this seems to be implied in the strange expression הֹרֵג נֶפֶשׁ, as it occurs, Num_31:19, and which is identical with the ancient Arabian phrase ב ׀׃, as found in the Koran. See Surat. v. 35, ױה ב ׀׃ ֿד ׀׃ , “he who slays a soul except for a soul,” that is, unless in retribution for a soul. This is the literal sense, strange as it may sound; but נֶפֶשׁ may be taken here in the general sense of person, as ψυχὴ is used in several passages of the New Testament—the soul put for the whole personality. Or there may be the ellipsis of some such word as אֹהֶל, the tabernacle of the soul, an assault upon which is an assault upon the soul itself; and this may also be the explanation of the Hebrew phrase מַכֵּה נֶםֶשׁ, he who smiteth a soul. Compare Gen_37:21, לֹא נַכֶּנּוּ נֶפֶשׁ, “let us not smite him (Joseph) the soul.” But in a still closer sense the body may be called the image of the soul, the reflection of the soul, even as the soul is the image, or in the image of God. And this furnishes good ground for such transfer of the sense, even to that which is most outward in the human constitution. We may trace the shadow of the idea as surviving even in the Greek poetry, where the human body is styled ἄγαλμα θεῶν. See Euripides: “Suppliants,” 616, where it is applied to the decomposed and mouldering remains of the Argive warrior when carried to the funeral-pyre:
τὸ σὸν ἄγαλμα πόλεος ἐκκομίζομαι
πρὸς πυρὰν ὑβρισθέν.
To the funeral-pyre thine image bear I forth
Marred as it is.
It is spoken of as something sacred to the patron deity of the Argive state, like a statue or a shrine. See also Plato: Phœdrus, 251 A. The expression הֹרֵג נֶפֶשׁ may also have some connection with the old idea of the blood as the seat of the soul, regarded as representing it, and thus indirectly bearing the image of God. In any view, there is implied something holy in humanity, and even in the human body—something in it transcending matter or material organization, and which is not thus inherent in any other organic life, or corporeal structure.
But the murderer, too, it may be said, is made in the image of God, and therefore should he be spared. The answer to this is simply the citation of the divine command. His life is expressly demanded. He is חֵרֶם, ἀνάθεμα, one devoted. See 1Ki_20:42 : “Because thou hast sent away אישׁ חֶרְמי, the man of my doom (or of my dooming), therefore shall thy soul be in place of his soul,” נַפְשְׁךָ תַּחַת נַפְשוֹ. See also עַם חֶרְמִי, “the people of my doom,” Isa_34:5. The judicial execution of the murderer is truly a sacrifice, an expiation, whatever may be objected to such an idea by a false humanitarianism which seems to have no thought how it is belittling humanity in its utter ignoring of anything above man, or of any relation between the human and the eternal justice.
Harsh as they may seem, we need these ideas to give the necessary strength to our relaxing judicial morality, and a more healthy tone to the individual and social conscience. The age is fast going into the other extreme, and crime, especially the crime of blood-shedding, is increasing in the ratio of our spurious tenderness. The harshness is now exhibiting its other and more hypocritical phase. Those who speak with contempt of the divine law, are constantly railing at society as itself the criminal in the punishment of crime, and as especially malignant and revengeful in discharging the divinely imposed duty of executing justice upon the murderer.—T. L.]
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
See the Doctrinal and Ethical. Gen_8:20 would present a good text for a thanksgiving sermon. In connection with Gen_9:21, it would be suitable for an exposition of thankfulness. Gen_9:21 would be adapted to a sermon on human sinfulness in the light of the divine compassion. How God’s speaking in his heart re-echoes in the innermost heart of the believer. Gen_9:22 would be suitable for a representation of the connection between the kingdom of grace, and the kingdom of nature with its laws. Gen_9:1, A marriage-blessing at the celebration of a wedding. Gen_9:2-3, The worth and sacredness of the creaturely life (sparing of the animal, consecration of all enjoyment). Gen_9:5, The holy estimation of human life. The chief point of view in the whole Section is the covenant of God with Noah as the type of all covenants that follow; since they all rest upon the personal relation of God to man; all are of God’s free institution; all, moreover, as ethically personal alliances (after the manner of a contract), are an interchange of divine promises and human vows, of divine claims and human faith; all are sacramentally sealed. How God binds himself in his sacramental signs, and in them truly remembers the man who remembers him. How the divine eye of grace and the human eye of faith meet each other in the sacrament. The rainbow, the extraordinary phenomenon of heaven, and, on that account, an image of the divine kindness, compassion, and friendship. The light of the heavenly sun in the colors of the earthly rainbow.
Starke: Gen_8:20. The building of the altar; probably upon the mountains of Ararat. Noah valued thankfulness before all earthly business. It is not said through what means God made known to Noah his acceptance of the offering. We may conjecture that the offering was set on fire by fire from heaven (but the expression of satisfaction here follows the burning of the offering).
Gen_8:21, concerning the abuse of these words in the exculpation of sin (in many ways does the element of mildness in them become misapprehended).—Gen_9:1, Because before the flood God was provoked at the sin of unchastity, it becomes necessary, in consideration of the fearful display of wrath, to show that he is not hostile to the lawful connection of man and woman, nor does he condemn, but rather designs through it the multiplication of the human race. Therefore, in this text is the marriage-state praised and celebrated, since thereout flows not only the order of the family and the world, but also the existence of the church.
Gen_9:3, Just as every herb does not serve for food, so also is not everything thereto serviceable that, by means of life, moves upon the earth.
Gen_9:4, The aim of the prohibition is mainly that the way of cruelty may be barred to men.
Gen_9:6, The magistracy is God’s ordinance, and derives the sword from no other authority (Rom_13:14). Starke prefers the view that the rainbow had existed before the flood, as in like manner he supposes, that before the flood men might eat of flesh.
Gen_9:15, Luther: When the Scripture says “God remembers,” it means that we feel and are conscious that he remembers it, namely, when he outwardly presents himself in such a manner, that we, thereby, take notice that he thinks thereon. Therefore it all comes to this: as I present myself to God, so does he present himself to me.
Schröder: After God’s curse on the occasion of the fall, we meet with the offerings of Cain and Abel; again do offering and altar connect themselves with the judicial curse of the flood.—“The Lord smelled a sweet savor,” in the Hebrew, a savor of rest (resting, or satisfaction); (“it denotes that God rests from his wrath and has become propitiated.” Luther). Therefore is it a savor of satisfaction—a chosen expression that becomes fixed in its application to the burnt-offering.—“Jehovah spake to his heart,” that is, he resolved with himself. In the creation of man, Gen_1:26; Gen_2:18, and also in his destruction, there precedes a formal decree of God; and no less does the divine counsel precede the covenant for man’s preservation. Prayer was always connected with the sacrifice; in fact, every offering was nothing else than an embodied prayer.—While the earth remaineth. There is, therefore, even to the earth in its present state, a limit indicated (2Pe_3:5; 2Pe_3:7; 2Pe_3:10; Isaiah 66.; Rev_20:11; Rev_21:1).—Gen_9:1, The Noachian covenant is a covenant of Elohim, a covenant with the universal nature. Luther finds in our Section the inauguration of an order of instruction, of economy, and of defence (Noah’s offering, the blessing of the family, inauguration of the magistracy).
Gen_9:7, God does not love death, but life. The covenant is re-established, for as made with Adam it had failed. According to Calvin the rainbow had existed before, but was here again consecrated as a sign and a pledge.
Footnotes:
[20][Gen_8:20.—מִכֹּל—from all the pure of the cattle, and from all the pure fowl. The word denotes selection. It can hardly mean one of every kind deemed pure among the cattle; much less can it have this large meaning in respect to the fowl (or the birds), among whom the pure species far excelled the impure, which are mentioned as exceptions (twenty-four in number), Lev_11:13; Deu_14:12. If Noah had had every earthly species of bird in the ark (seven of all that were regarded as pure), and offered of each in sacrifice, it would have required an immense altar. There was evidently a selection, and such use of the term מִכֹּל here may serve as a guide in respect to its antecedent uses, justifying us in limiting it to the more common kinds of all species known to Noah, and inhabiting the portion of the earth visited by the flood.—T. L.]
[21][Gen_8:21.—נִיחֹחַ A word of a very peculiar form, like נִיצֹץ, Isa_1:31. Aben Ezra compares it with נַאֲפוּף, Hos_2:4. It denotes rest intensively; the rest, not of mere quietude, or cessation, but of satisfaction, complacency, delight. An odor of rest—of complete and gratified acceptance. Compare the suggested language, Zep_3:17, expressing God’s great satisfaction in Jerusalem, יַחֲרִישׁ בְּאַהֲבָתוֹ, He shall rest in his love. The word ניחח occurs here for the first time, and is evidently meant to have a connection with the name נֹחַ (Noah), but becomes the common phrase (ריח ניהח) to denote the pleasant odor of the sacrifice, in Exodus, Leviticus, etc. Hence the New Testament Hebraism as seen in the word εὐωδία, in such passages as 2Co_2:15, a sweet savour of Christ, Eph_5:2, a sweet-smelling savour, Php_4:18, as also the use of ὀσμή, 2Co_2:16, the savour of life unto life. The Jewish interpreters here, as usual, are afraid of the anthropophatism, and so the Targum of Onkelos renders generally, The Lord received the offering graciously. In like manner the Jewish translator Arabs Erpenianus. Aben Ezra affects a horror of the literal sense. חלילה, he says—“O profane! away with the thought that God should smell or eat.” With all their reverence for their old Scriptures, these Jewish interp reters had got a taste of philosophy, and hence their Philonic fastidiousness, as ever manifested in a desire to smooth over all such language.—T. L.]
[22][Gen_8:22.—חֹרֶף, rendered winter—more properly autumn, though it may include the winter, as קַיִץ may include the spring.—T. L.]
Footnotes:
[1][Ch. 9. Gen_9:5.—דִּמְכֶם לְנַפְשׁוֹתֵיכֶם, your blood of (or for) your souls. Maimonides renders it דמכם שהוא נפשותיכם, your blood which is your souls. LXX., αἶμα τῶν ψυχῶν ὑμῶν, blood of your souls.—T. L.]
[2]Gen_9:6.—בְּאָדָם. E. V. by man. This would seem rather to require the term בְּיַד, by the hand of man, the usual Hebrew phrase to denote instrumentality. That it was to be by human agency is very clear, but the ב in באדם may be better taken, as it is by Jona ben Gannach (Abul-Walid), in his Hebrew Grammar, p. 33, to denote substitution,—for man, in place of man—life for life, or blood for blood, as it is so strongly and frequently expressed in the Greek tragedy. The preposition ב, in this place, he says, is equivalent to בַּעֲבוּר, on account of, and he refers to 2Sa_14:7, “Give us the man who smote his brother, and we will put him to death, בְּנִפֶשׁ אָחִיו, for the soul (the life, or in place of) his brother,” Exo_20:2, וְנִמְכַּר בִּגְנֵבָתוֹ, “and he shall be sold for his theft,” as also, among many other places, to Gen_44:5. וְהוּא נַחֵשׁ יְנַהֵשׁ בּוֹ, where, instead of “divining by it,” as in our English versions and the Vulgate, he gives what seems a more consistent rendering: “he will surely divine for it” (בעבורו), that is, find out by divination, who has in his possession the lost cup. Such also seems to have been the idea of the LXX. in Gen_9:6, where they have nothing for באדם but ἀντὶ τοῦ αἵματος αὐτοῦ, in return for his blood. Arabs Erpenianus renders it ׁ זב ַ׀׃ַ ה by the word, or command, of man, indicating a judicial sentence. So the Targum of Onkelos, by the witnesses according to the word of judgment, and so also Rushi and Aben Ezra, בארם בעדים, by man, that is, by the witnesses.—T. L.]
[3][Gen_9:13.—קַשְׁתִּי, my bow, as just before, Gen_9:11, בְּרִיתִי, my covenant. The language seems, on the very face of it, to imply a thing previously existing, called, from its remarkable appearance, the bow of God, and now appointed as a sign of the previously existing covenant. Had it been a new creation, the language would more properly have been: I will make, or set, a bow in the cloud. See remarks (in the Introd. to the I. ch. p. 144) on the rainbow as the symbol of constancy in nature, from its constant and regular appearance whenever the sun shines forth after the rain. For further views on this, and for the opinions of the Jewish commentators, see also note, p. 328.—T. L.]
[4][Gen_9:14.—This verse should be connected, in translation, with the one following. As it is rendered in E. V., the appearing of the bow is made the subject of the sentence (though apparently the predicate), whereas the sequence of the conjunction ו, and of the tenses, would give the sense thus: And it shall come to pass, when I bring the cloud, etc., and whenever the bow appears in the cloud, that I will remember my covenant; the conjunction before זָכַרְתּי having an illative force.—T. L.]
[5] [The flame mounting heavenward from the great altar of Noah, the vast column of smoke and incense majestically ascending in the calm, clear atmosphere, transcending seemingly the common law of gravity, and thus combining the ideas of tranquillity and power, would of itself present a striking image of the natural sublime. But, beyond this, there is a moral, we may rather say, a spiritual sublimity, to one who regards the scene in those higher relations which the account here indicates, and which other portions of Scripture make so clear. It offers to our contemplation the most vivid of contrasts. There comes to mind, on the one hand, the gross selfishness of the antediluvian world, ever tending downward more and more to earth and a sensual animality—in a word, devoting life to that which is lower than the lowest life itself; whilst now, on the contrary, there rises up in all its rich suggestiveness, the idea of sacrifice, of life devotion to that which is higher than all life, as symbolized in the flame ascending from the offered victim. It is, moreover, the spirit of confession, of penitence, of perfect resignation to the will of God as the rational rule of life,—all, too, prefiguring One who made the great sacrifice of himself for the sins of the world, and who, although historically unknown to Noah, was essentially embraced in that recognition of human demerit, and of the divine holiness, which is styled “the righteousness of faith.” Whilst thus the new spirit of sacrifice ascends from the baptized earth, heaven is represented as bending down to meet the symbol of reconciliation; the infinite descends to the finite, and humanity, in verification of the Scripture paradox, rises through its very act of lowliness and self-abasement. The wrath all gone, infinite compassion takes now its place, and this is expressed in that striking Hebraism, רִיחַ נִיחֹחַ “the odor of rest,” typifying the εὐωδία Χριστοῦ (2Co_2:4) “the sweet savor of Christ in them who are saved.”
The writer of this old account knew as well as Philo, or Strauss, or any modem rationalists, that God did not smell nor eat; but the emotional truthfulness of his inspiration made him adopt the strongest and the most emotional language without fear of inconsistency or anticipated cavil. “How gross!” says the infidel, “this representation of God, snuffing up the odor of burning flesh;” but it is he who “snuffs” at God’s holy altar (Mal_1:13). It is he who is “gross” in his profane mockery of a spirituality which his carnal earthliness utterly fails to comprehend.—T. L.]
[6] [There is no need here of labored attempts to remove apparent inconsistencies. The most simple and direct interpretation of Scripture is generally that which is most conservative of its honor as well as of its truthfulness. The passage seems to assign the same reason for sparing the world that is given Gen_6:5-6, for its destruction; and in both cases there is used the same particle כִּי. Some would render it although: “I will not again smite, etc., although the imagination of the heart of man is evil.” Others, like Jacobus, would connect it with the words בַּעֲכוּר הָאָדָם for man’s sake, intimating that it should never more be done for this reason. But nothing of the kind helps the difficulty, if there be any difficulty. There are but very few places (if any) where כִּי can be rendered although. The passages cited by Noldius under this head in almost every case fail to bear him out. It is n particle denoting a reason, and sometimes a motive, like the two senses of the Greek ὅτι and the Latin quod, or the two English conjunctions because and that. The idea presented by Lange gives the key. Sin is both guilt and disease. Man’s depravity, therefore, is the object both of vengeance and compassion, two states of feeling which can exist, at the same time, perfect and unweakened, only in the divine mind, but which are necessarily presented to us in a succession, produced by varying circumstances on the finite or human side. It is in reference to the former that the language is used, Gen_6:5-6, where כִּי denotes the reason of the vengeance. Here, in like manner, it expresses the reason of the mercy. Noah’s offering had made the difference, not changing God, but placing man in a different relation to him as viewed under a changed aspect. He is the poor creature, as well as the guilty creature. He is depraved from his youth, not meaning, we think, a less severe description of his sinfulness, as Lange seems to intimate, but giving a deeper view of it, as a greater calamity. It is not the mere habit-hardening or world-hardening of manhood and old age, as contrasted with the comparative innocence of childhood; but the seeds of the evil lie deep, away back in his very infancy. It is the hereditary, or disease, aspect that induces the language, which seems like regret on the part of Deity for an act so calamitous, though so just and necessary: “neither will I again smite every living thing as I have done.” It is as though his heart smote him, to use a transplanted Hebraism elsewhere employed of man, or as it is said of David. 1Sa_24:6. It would not be a stronger expression, or more anthropopathic, than that used Gen_6:6,” and he was grieved at his heart.” It is not, however, simply the idea of hopelessness in view of man’s incorrigibility, but an expression of holy and infinite compassion, such as the closest criticism will more and more discover as abounding in this old book of Genesis, even in the midst of the severest threatening of judgment. The greatness of man’s sin reveals the greatness of the divine sorrow on account of it. The sinner, too, is allowed to feel it, and make it a ground of his pleading for forgiveness; as the Psalmist prays, Psa_25:11 “pardon mine iniquity, for (כִּי) it is great.” In that passage, too, some would render כִּי although, to the great marring of the force and pathos of the supplication. Christ did not die for small sins, as Cranmer has well said.
It is a peculiarity of the Holy Scriptures thus to set forth unshrinkingly the sharp contrasts, as we may reverently call them, in the divine attributes. None but inspired writers could venture to do this; and how boldly do they present them! often, too, in closest connection without betraying any fear of cavil, or charge of inconsistency. The tremendous wrath, and the most melting mercy appear in the same chapters, and sometimes in immediately succeeding verses. Among others, compare Nah_1:1; Nah_1:7. What a burning stream of indignation finds its closing cadence in the words: “Jehovah, he is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble, he knoweth them that put their trust in him.” Such strong contrasts appear especially in portions of Scripture which the careless reader passes over as indelicate, like Ezekiel 16, that awful picture of impurity and utter depravity, as presented in the history of the meretricious and utterly abandoned woman who symbolized the Jewish and Israelitish people. A too fastidious taste would forbid the reading of that chapter, at least in any public religious service, but it is this most revolting representation (as some would style it) which is the very thing that makes the divine forgiveness and compassion at the close so full of a melting tenderness, beyond what any other kind of language could express: “Nevertheless I will remember my covenant with thee in the days of thy youth, and I will establish with thee a covenant of eternity. Then shalt thou remember thy ways, and be ashamed, and thou shalt know that I am thy Lord, that thou mayest remember and be confounded, and never open thy mouth any more because of thy shame, when I am pacified toward thee for all that thou hast done, saith Adonai Elohim, thy Lord and thy God.” The Hebrew is, literally, when I have made an atonement (בְּכַפְרִי לָךְ) for thee, or a covering for thee. Eze_16:63. It is in these strong contrasts,—in these apparent inconsistencies, as some would call them,—that the great power and pathos of the Scripture appear.—T. L.]
[7][The opinion of Delitzsch is not so broad as this. He seems, rather, to hold that the rainbow existed in nature before the flood, but had not appeared, on account of the absence of the conditions. See Delitzsch, p. 276.—T. L.]
[8][Our word humanity will not do here at all; as it corresponds to the German menschheit; whilst our humanitarianism, on account of its abuse, would be still worse. It is defined by what follows.—T. L.]
[9][Plato, in the Cratylus, fancifully connects it with εἴρω, εἴρομαι = φημι, to speak, and gives it the idea of messenger (Hermes], or interpretation.—T. L.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv20–22 Noah builded an altar--literally, "a high place"--probably a mound…
Noah builded an altar--literally, "a high place"--probably a mound of earth, on which a sacrifice was offered. There is something exceedingly beautiful and interesting to know that the first care of this devout patriarch was to return thanks for the signal instance of mercy and goodness which he and his family had experienced.
took of every clean beast . . . fowl--For so unparalleled a deliverance, a special acknowledgment was due.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv20–22 20. Noah builded an altar — This is the…
20. Noah builded an altar — This is the first altar mentioned in history, although it is generally supposed that Abel built one for his acceptable offering. It is possible that the antediluvian saints brought their gifts to the gate of Eden, where God had “tabernacled the cherubim.” Chap. 3:24. Whether this were so or not, all traces of that paradise were obliterated by the deluge, so that even the geographical marks of the antediluvian record cannot now be identified. מזבח, the Hebrew for altar, is from זבח, to slay, a place where victims were slain in confession of the desert of sin. Noah, the priest of the human race, type of the Great High Priest who offered himself without spot unto God, comes forth upon the baptized earth, and his first act is to make this solemn confession of sin in behalf of the rescued remnant of humanity. This man, who alone was perfect in his generations, and who walked with God, built the first altar, and sprinkled it with the blood of every clean bird and beast as a confession of sin. Sacrifice is symbolic in its very essence. The slain victim represents the worshipper, its death being typical of the desert of sin; the consumed offering going up from the earth in smoke typifies the prayer in which the man sends his inmost being up to God; while at the same time all these sacrifices, divinely appointed, prepared man to understand God’s great Sacrifice, wherein Christ offered himself up unto God, that He might be just and the justifier of all that come unto him by faith. Noah did not see Calvary, but God saw it; and we now see the smoke from this first historic altar, together with that from the tabernacle and the temple, blending in the cloud on the gospel mercy-seat.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv20–22 20. builded an altar unto the Lord] It will…
20. builded an altar unto the Lord] It will be noticed that, in this account by J, the first thing that Noah does, on leaving the ark, is to build an altar, and to offer sacrifice. In J’s estimation sacrifice was primitive, and not merely Mosaic, in origin. See note on Gen_7:2.
In P there is no mention of “altar” or “sacrifice” before the institution of the Levitical system in the wilderness.
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of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl] The clean animals were used for sacrifice. Cf. Gen_7:2. Observe the mention of “clean fowl” implying the distinction between clean and unclean fowl. This distinction was not observed in Gen_7:3; Gen_7:8. The number of “clean” animals, seven pairs of each, in the ark, according to J, would allow for the offering of sacrifice.
In the Babylonian account, also, sacrifices were at once offered to the gods on quitting the ark.
and offered burnt offerings] The word for “burnt offering” is ‘ôlâh, which is derived from a verb meaning “to go up.” A burnt-offering, or ‘ôlâh, was the sacrifice which “went up” to God, being different from other sacrifices, because the whole of it was consumed in the fire of the altar. The offerer of an ‘ôlâh ate nothing of the sacrifice; nor did the priest. It was in an especial sense a propitiatory offering: compare David’s offering in 2Sa_24:25. The ‘ôlâh is different from the minḥah of Gen_4:3. LXX renders εἰς ὁλοκάρπωσιν, Lat. holocausta.
20–22. Noah’s Burnt-offering and Jehovah’s Acceptance of it. (J.)
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv20–22 (20) Noah builded an altar unto the Lord (Jehovah).—The…
(20) Noah builded an altar unto the Lord (Jehovah).—The account of this sacrificial act is said to have been an interpolation of the Jehovist. Really it forms an integral portion of the numerous traditions of the flood. Thus in the Chaldean Genesis, after the sending forth of a dove, a swallow, and a raven, we read (p. 280):—
“I sent them forth to the four winds; I sacrificed a sacrifice;
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I built an altar on the peak of the mountain.”
This extreme antiquity of sections ascribed to the Jehovist, and supposed to be an after-thought, is seriously detrimental to the whole theory.
One result of the flood was to sweep away all traces of the earthly paradise and of the subsequent abode of Adam; and it is probable also that Noah was removed far away from his previous home by the floating of the ark. Thus to him and his family it was a new earth, with no holy places, no spots hallowed by the past history of man. He therefore determines to consecrate the earth to Jehovah, who had been the object of the worship of his family since the days of Enos, and therefore builds an altar, the first mentioned in the Bible. By so doing he provided for future generations a central spot and sanctuary, round which their religious ideas would group themselves. The animals offered were probably the seventh of all clean kinds (see Note on Gen_7:2). With Noah’s burnt offerings we must not connect any of the later Levitical ideas. Apparently it was a simple thank-offering, the dominant thought of which was the hallowing man’s future life by commencing it with worship. It thus contained within it the presage that a better state of things had now begun. Subsequently the thank-offering became a feast, at which the offerer and his family partook of the victim as Jehovah’s guests; and as God during this sacrifice gave Noah permission to eat flesh (Gen_9:3), it is probable that such was the case now, and that the eating of flesh was inaugurated in this solemn way. We have, however, previously seen reason to believe that the flesh of animals had occasionally been eaten before, though not as an ordinary article of diet.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv20–22 And Noah builded an altar. Mizbeach, a place for…
And Noah builded an altar. Mizbeach, a place for slaying sacrifices, from zabach, to slaughter animals, (Gen_31:54) to slay in sacrifice (Lev_9:4; 1Sa_1:4) as qusiasthrion, from quein, is the first altar mentioned in history. The English term (from altus, high) signifies a high place, because the altar was commonly a raised structure or mound of earth or stones. (Exo_20:24) Keil thinks that altars were not required prior to the Flood, the Divine presence being still visibly among men at the gate of Eden, "so that they could turn their offerings and their hearts towards that abode." Poole, Clarke, Bush, and Inglis hold that the antediluvian sacrifices presupposed an altar. Unto the Lord. Jehovah, the God of salvation. And took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl. Vide. Gen_7:2. "Seldom has there been a more liberal offering in proportion to the means of the giver. His whole stock of clean animals, wherewith to fill the world, was seven pairs of each" (Inglis) And offered. By Divine appointment, since his service was accepted; and "all religious services which are not perfumed with the odor of faith are of an ill savor before God (Calvin); but "God is peculiarly well pleased with free-will offerings, and surely, if ever an occasion existed for the exercise of grateful and adoring sentiments, the present was one" (Bush). Burnt offerings. oloth, literally, things that ascend, from alah, to go up, alluding not to the elevation of the victims on the altar, but to the ascension of the smoke of the burnt offerings to heaven (cf. Jer_48:15; Amo_4:10) On the altar.
Vers. 20-22.
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The sanctification of the earth.
The sweet savor of man"s burnt offerings
(1) not the offerings of caprice, but the fulfillment of Divine commands,
(2) the reciprocation of Heaven"s communications
(3) ascends from the earth-built altar and fills the Lord with satisfaction. In return for that obedience and devotion the curse is removed, the earth is sealed with the saving strength of God in a covenant of peace.
I RELIGIOUS LIFE IS ACCEPTABLE TO GOD when it is
(1) grateful acknowledgment of his mercy;
(2) humble obedience to his own revealed will;
(3) consecration of place, time, life, possessions to him.
II UNION and COMMUNION between God and man is the foundation on which all earthly happiness and security rest.
III The FORBEARANCE AND MERCY OF GOD in his relation to those whose hearts are yet full of evil is at once probation and grace. The ground is not cursed any more for man"s sake, but, the more evidently, that which falls upon the ground may fall upon man himself. The higher revelations of God in the post-Noachic period were-certainly larger bestowments of grace, but at the same time they involved a larger responsibility. So the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews reasons as to the punishment of those who trample underfoot the covenant of the gospel. The progressive covenants which make up the history of God"s grace recorded in the Scriptures are progressive separations of the evil and the good, therefore they point to that complete and final separation in which God"s righteousness shall be eternally glorified. R.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv20–22 And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord
Gen_8:20
And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord
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Noahs sacrifice
I.
THERE IS AN EVIDENT DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE SACRIFICE OF NOAH AND THOSE OF CAIN AND ABEL. Here, under Gods guidance, the mound of turf gives place to the altar which is built. An idea is discovered in the dignity of the inferior creatures; the worthiest are selected for an oblation to God; the fire which consumes, the flame which ascends, are used to express the intention of him who presents the victim.
II. WE MUST FEEL THAT THERE WAS AN INWARD PROGRESS IN THE HEART OF MAN corresponding to this progress in his method of uttering his submission and his aspirations. Noah must have felt that he was representing all human beings; that he was not speaking what was in himself so much as offering the homage of the restored universe.
III. THE FOUNDATION OF SACRIFICE IS LAID IN THE FIXED WILL OF GOD; in His fixed purpose to assert righteousness; in the wisdom which adapts its means to the condition of the creature for whose sake they are used. The sacrifice assumes eternal right to be in the Ruler of the universe, all the caprice to have come from man, from his struggle to be an independent being, from his habit of distrust. When trust is restored by the discovery that God means all for his good, then he brings the sacrifice as a token of his surrender. (F. D. Maurice, M. A.)
I. That worship should succeed every act of Divine deliverance.
Sacrificial worship
The text teaches--
II. That sacrifice is the only medium through which acceptable service can be rendered. Noahs sacrifice expressed--
1. A feeling of supreme thankfulness.
2. A feeling of personal guilt.
III. That no act of worship escapes Divine notice.
IV. That human intercession vitally affects the interests of the race. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The devout conduct of a good man after a special deliverance from imminent danger
I. THAT NOAH GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGED HIS DELIVERANCE AS FROM GOD.
II. THAT NOAH DEVOUTLY OFFERED TO GOD A SACRIFICE IN TOKEN OF HIS DELIVERANCE.
1. This sacrifice was the natural outcome of Noahs gratitude.
2. This sacrifice was not precluded by any excuse consequent upon the circumstances of Noah.
III. That the sacrifice of Noah was ACCEPTABLE TO GOD AND PREVENTIVE OF FURTHER EVIL TO THE WORLD.
1. It was fragrant.
2. It was preventive of calamity.
3. It was preservative of the natural agencies of the universe. (J. S.Exell, M. A.)
Noahs offering on coming forth from the ark, and its results
I. THE OCCASION ON WHICH THIS OFFERING WAS MADE.
1. How impressively would Noah and his family be reminded of the Divine forbearance which had been displayed to the whole world.
2. With what solemn awe would Noah and his family now view the earth bearing on every part of its surface the marks of recent vengeance.
3. With what adoring and grateful feeling would Noah and his family view their own preservation on this occasion.
II. ITS NATURE.
1. An expression of gratitude.
2. An acknowledgment of dependence.
3. A lively exhibition of his faith in the future atonement, as well as an appropriate testimony that his recent preservation was owing to the efficacy of that atonement.
III. ITS RESULTS.
1. The offering was accepted.
2. The promise which was given.
3. The covenant which was made. (Sketches of Sermons.)
Priest, altar, sacrifice
1. A believing priest.
2. A sanctified altar.
3. A clean sacrifice.
4. A type of Christ. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Fragrant offerings
I. NOAHS SACRIFICIAL OFFERINGS.
1. Observe WHAT HE OFFERED.
(1) Burnt offerings.
(2) Clean beasts.
2. See how he offered.
(1) Voluntarily.
(2) Promptly.
(3) Liberally.
(4) Simply.
II. THE LORDS GRACIOUS ACCEPTANCE THEREOF.
1. The Lord accepts a limited offering, if it be our best.
2. It is the sacrifice of faith which pleases God.
3. The Lord loves gratitude in return for mercies received.
4. The Lord visits the remnant of His people where there is family devotion.
5. In seeking to please God, the Christian secures richest blessings. (The Congregational Pulpit.)
Noahs sacrifice blessing the world; and Gods decree for all nature
I. THE ACCEPTANCE OF NOAHS SACRIFICE AND ITS TYPICAL IMPORT.
1. Look at the acceptance of Noahs sacrifice.
2. Noahs sacrifice was typical of Christs, and like His brought a blessing on the world.
II. THE WISE ECONOMY OF GOD, IN HIS WISE LAWS OF NATURE FOR TEMPORAL BLESSINGS.
1. The wisdom and benevolence of God are visible in the variety of the seasons, and in the profusion of earthly blessings.
2. The wisdom of God is visible for faith in all His providential arrangements for the good of the world.
III. PRACTICAL REFLECTIONS.
1. Reflect that it is because of Christs sacrifice the whole world is blessed.
2. Reflect how God deals with sinful men in great long suffering mercy.
3. Reflect and remember that the Lord Jesus shall stand like Noah, when a deluge of fire rolls over this world. (J. G. Angley, M. A.)
The worshippers of the new world
1. It was an altar of obedience. With Noah the will of God was paramount. What is religion but obedience?--the obedience of faith--of which the entire simplicity constitutes its true perfection. Noahs career in the new world began in the spirit of essential obedience. At the command, Go forth, the Ark is deserted; and, doubtless, in the spirit of faith the altar was erected.
2. It was an altar of gratitude and dedication. Noah was grateful to his Almighty Friend; and, as gratitude is a quality which loses its fragrance by delay, so he postponed every business and consideration to the thankful acknowledgment of his mercies.
3. It was an altar of propitiation. This is its most important feature. Worship and sacrifice are incorporated and identified from the beginning of the world. Man was always a sinner. He could never approach his Maker in any other character.
4. The altar of Noah was a family altar. He was the priest of his family. He required their presence before the throne of grace. He persuaded them to assist in praising God, and in making a covenant by sacrifice. A family altar is, transcendently and incalculably, a family blessing. With Noah, the worship of God was the first business he attended to. He lacked neither calls of necessity nor momentous cares; but he postponed all ether considerations to the service of God. Not like the majority amongst us, who fancy that they have too much to do to devote any time to religion. In the patriarchs worship there was no trace of selfishness. Many think there is no worship like free worship, and are most willing to pray where they have little to pay. What a reproof may they find in Noah! The seventh part of his whole stock and substance he dedicated to God. He reasoned not about future wants, but made an instant and a whole burnt offering to his Maker. He did it because it was Gods appointment. (C. Burton, LL. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v20 MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Gen_8:20-22
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Gen_8:20-22
THE DEVOUT CONDUCT OF A GOOD MAN AFTER A SPECIAL DELIVERANCE FROM EMINENT DANGER
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I. That Noah gratefully acknowledged his deliverance as from God. True, Noah had built the ark, and might have taken much credit to himself for so doing. He might have considered this an important element in his preservation from the waters of the deluge. And in contemplation of his own effort he might have lost sight of the Divine providence over him. How many men after a period of especial deliverance from peril, magnify their own forethought, their own skill; they almost entirely forget the aid which heaven has rendered them, and without which they could not have escaped the common doom. Such conduct is most ungrateful, and those who are guilty of it show themselves unworthy of the help they have received. The truly grateful soul will always acknowledge the deliverances of life as from the loving care of God. He only can save men from the deluge occasioned by sin.
II. That Noah devoutly offered to God a Sacrifice in token of his deliverance. Noah built an altar for burnt sacrifice, to thank God for gracious protection and to pray for his mercy to come. This is the first altar mentioned in history. The sons of Adam had built no altar for their offerings, because God was still present on the earth in Paradise, so that they could turn their offerings and hearts toward that abode. But with the flood God had swept Paradise away, withdrawn the place of His presence, and set up His throne in heaven, from which he would henceforth reveal himself to man (Gen_11:5-7). In future, therefore, the hearts of the pious had to be turned towards heaven, and their offerings and prayers needed to ascend on high if they were to reach the throne of God.”
1. This sacrifice was the natural outcome of Noah’s gratitude. Noah had been commanded to do everything else connected with his wondrous deliverance; he was commanded to build the ark, and was given the pattern after which he was to construct it; was told who were to occupy it, and when he was to leave it. But no command was issued in reference to the offering of this sacrifice; that was left to the judgment and moral inclination of the patriarch. A truly grateful soul has no need to be told to offer a suitable sacrifice to God upon deliverance from danger.
2. This sacrifice was not precluded by any excuse consequent upon the circumstances of Noah. Noah did not give way to excessive grief at the destruction wrought by the waters, and so delay his devotion till his sorrow was assuaged. He did not excuse himself upon the ground that his resources were scanty, and that therefore he would wait till his wealth was augmented before he would sacrifice to the Lord, and that then he would offer a sacrifice worthy the occasion. Noah offered according to his circumstances and did not allow any duty to take precedence of this. He did not indulge the joy of triumph so as to forget the claims of God upon him. He was a true man, alike in sorrow as in success. He showed himself worthy to be entrusted with the care of the new world.
III. That the sacrifice of Noah was acceptable to God and preventive of further evil to the world.
1. It was fragrant. “And the Lord smelled a sweet savour.” He was propitiated. He had respect to the offering. It was welcome to him as the outcome of a grateful soul, and as emblematical of a sacrifice in the days to come, which would come up before Him as a “sweet smelling savour.”
2. It was preventive of calamity. “And the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every living thing, as I have done.” The more we sacrifice to God the safer we become in our circumstances of life. Sacrifice is wisdom. If God were to destroy the world on account of the sin of man, it would never exhibit leaf or fruit, it would be seldom free from the angry waters of deluge.
3. It was preservative of the natural agencies of the universe. “While the earth remaineth seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” There is a close connection between the sacrifices of the good and the fruitful springs of the universe. Devotion of soul is allied to the constancy of nature more than we imagine. The world’s Noahs are allied to the world’s seed time and harvest. What sacrifice have we offered to God for our many deliverances through life?
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
NOAH’S OFFERING ON COMING FORTH FROM THE ARK, AND ITS RESULTS
Gen_8:21-22.
I. The occasion on which this offering was made. It was no ordinary occasion. During the sixteen hundred and fifty years in which the world had existed, there had been no such manifestation of the Divine character as this family had seen.
1. On this occasion how impressively would Noah and his family be reminded of the Divine forbearance which had been displayed to the whole world. There had been since the Fall a gradual unfolding of the scheme of mercy in the institution of sacrifice, the preaching of the patriarchs, and the teaching of the Spirit.
2. With what solemn awe would Noah and his family now view the earth bearing on every part of its surface the marks of recent vengeance. When they entered the ark the earth was smiling with plenty and thickly populated; now all are gone. They are the sole remnant of the human population.
3. With what adoring and grateful feeling would Noah and his family view their own preservation on this occasion. Singled out by Divine mercy, preserved by Divine power, directed by Divine wisdom, they had built the ark in which they had been preserved, while all around was destroyed.
II. In its Nature.
1. An expression of gratitude. It was his first act. He stayed not to build a habitation for himself. His stock was small, yet he took the best of his flock.
2. An acknowledgment of dependence. Noah remembered his recent preservation, and in his offering expressed his confidence that He who had preserved him under such circumstances would still continue to provide for his safety.
3. The offering of Noah was a lively exhibition of his faith in the future atonement as well as an appropriate testimony that his recent preservation was owing to the efficacy of that atonement.
III. In its results.
1. The offering was accepted.
2. The promise which was given.
3. The covenant which was made [Sketches of Sermons by Wesleyan Ministers].
Obedience and sacrifice are sweetly set together by God, and kept together by saints.
The first work due to God’s salvation is the setting up of His worship in truth.
The saints in faith built altars and brought sacrifices to God upon His word.
God would have but one altar at a time in the place which he should choose.
Altar and sacrifice worship is most requisite for sinners to come to God. Therefore Christ is both for propitiation.
1. A believing priest.
2. A sanctified altar.
3. A clean sacrifice.
4. A type of Christ.
The sacrifice which God accepts must ascend and come up to Him, to be available.
The sacrifice which brings peace to man, giveth glory to God.
Gen_8:22. God pleased in Christ is resolved in heart, and promises to do good unto His people.
The sons of Adam are from birth evil in their principles to high provocations.
Grace in God’s covenant glories over sin and will overcome it.
Sinners may be exempt from one kind of punishment, though not from all.
The seasons:
1. Secured by covenant.
2. While the earth remains.
3. Varied in fertility.
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY THE
REV. WM. ADAMSON
Acceptance! Gen_8:21. As Abel came with the appointed lamb, and was accepted; so Noah came with his sacrifice, and his service was grateful incense. Both offerings teach that there is a virtue in the death of Christ so precious and so mighty that it has resistless power with God. To use the expressive language of Law, “the curtains of God’s pavilion are here thrown back, and each attribute appears rejoicing in redemption.” The Spirit says that the Lord smelled a sweet savour—that clouds of prevailing odours pierced the skies. Its flame was a light to pious pilgrims in patriarchal times, and after the lapse of centuries it contributes this diamond-radiance to us; when as of old—
“The smoke of sacrifice arose, and God
Smell’d a sweet savour of obedient faith.”
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v21 the Lord said in heart
the Lord said in heart
The Third Dispensation: Human Government. Under Conscience, as in Innocency, man utterly failed, and the judgment of the Flood marks the end of the second dispensation and the beginning of the third. The declaration of the Noahic Covenant subjects humanity to a new test. Its distinctive feature is the institution, for the first time, of human government--the government of man by man. The highest function of government is the judicial taking of life. All other governmental powers are implied in that. It follows that the third dispensation is distinctively that of human government. Man is responsible to govern the world for God. That responsibility rested upon the whole race, Jew and Gentile, until the failure of Israel under the Palestinian Covenant (Deu 28:1 to Deu 30:10) brought the judgment of the Captivities, when "the times of the Gentiles" (See); Luk 21:24; Rev 16:14 began, and the government of the world passed exclusively into Gentile hands; Dan 2:36-45; Luk 21:24; Act 15:14-17. That both Israel and the Gentiles have governed for self, not God, is sadly apparent. The judgment of the confusion of tongues ended the racial testing; that of the captivities the Jewish; while the Gentile testing will end in the smiting of the Image (Daniel 2.) and the judgment of the nations Mat 25:31-46.
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See, for the other six dispensations:
INNOCENCE (See Scofield "Gen 1:28")
CONSCIENCE (See Scofield "Gen 3:23")
PROMISE (See Scofield "Gen 12:1")
LAW (See Scofield "Exo 19:8")
GRACE (See Scofield "Joh 1:17")
KINGDOM (See Scofield "Eph 1:10")
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v20 The Promise of God
The Promise of God
v. 20. And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. Noah’s first act after leaving the ark of deliverance was an act of worship. He built an altar, a place of slaying the sacrificial victim, and brought a sacrifice of thanksgiving to God. That is a proof of true faith, of true piety, if men wait for the help of the Lord in all patience, even when deliverance seems long in coming, and finally give all praise and thanks to God for the revelation of His goodness in sending help.
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v. 21. And the Lord smelled a sweet savor; and the Lord said in His heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more everything living as I have done. When Noah made his offering, the Lord smelled the smell of pleasure, of satisfaction, that is, He accepted the prayers and the disposition of mind which was revealed in this sacrifice in mercy. Therefore He said to Himself, to His heart, He thought within Himself, a conclusion which He afterward revealed to Noah, that He would never again bring such a judgment of total destruction upon the earth within the period which He had fixed for its existence; for the earth will not stand forever, will not last throughout eternity. A day is coming when the almighty Lord will bring upon the world His wrath and the fire of His jealousy to consume the corrupt world. Meanwhile it is His mercy and long-suffering that causes Him to abstain from smiting every living thing. For that which the human heart and mind shapes within itself, what it imagines, what it thinks, what it plans, is evil from the earliest days of youth. Since the Fall all men are naturally depraved and corrupted, inclined only to that which is evil. There is only one way of effecting deliverance from this inherited disposition toward everything that is evil, namely, through the obedience and merit of Jesus Christ the Savior. As for the earth:
v. 22. While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease. That is the promise, that is the order of God, who fixes the laws of nature and, according to circumstances, changes or suspends them as He finds best. The human race, but not the great Creator, is dependent upon the order and upon the laws of nature. The consideration of the goodness and of the patience of God, therefore, should be an earnest incentive to us to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On v20 built an altar to Yahweh
built an altar to Yahweh
"built an altar dedicated to Yahweh" or "built an altar for worshiping Yahweh." He may have built it with stones.
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clean animals ... clean birds
Here "clean" means that God allowed these animals to be used in sacrifice. Some animals were not used for sacrifices and were called "unclean."
offered burnt offerings
Noah killed the animals and then completely burned them up as an offering to God. AT: "burned the animals as offerings to Yahweh"
pleasing aroma
This refers to the good smell of the roasted meat.
said in his heart
Here the word "heart" refers to God's thoughts and emotions.
curse the ground
"do very serious harm to the earth"
because of mankind
This can be made more explicit: "because mankind is sinful." (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
the intentions of their hearts is evil from childhood
"from their earliest years they tend to do evil things" or "when they are young, they want to do evil things"
the intentions of their hearts
Here the word "hearts" refers to people's thoughts, emotions, desires, and will. AT: "their tendency" or "their habit"
from childhood
This refers to an older child. AT: "from their youth"
While the earth remains
"While the earth lasts" or "As long as the earth exists"
seed time
"the season for planting"
cold and heat, summer and winter
These expressions both refer to two major weather conditions in the year. Translators may use local expressions. (See: Merism)
summer
the hot, dry time of the year
winter
the cool, wet or snowy time of the year
will not cease
"will not cease to exist" or "will not cease to occur." This can be expressed in a positive manner. AT: "will continue" (See: Double Negatives)
translationWords
altar
Yahweh
clean
sacrifice
burnt offering
heart
curse
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv20–22 8:20 This first mention of an altar in the…
8:20 This first mention of an altar in the Bible shows Noah’s gratitude for having passed through the judgment. • sacrificed as burnt offerings: The same wording is used of the whole burnt offering in Leviticus (Lev 1:3-9); however, it can refer to any offering that is burned. Noah gave this offering to thank and worship God, who had delivered him and his family from the flood.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.