Covenant with Noah.
1
God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them: Be fertile and multiply and fill the earth.
2
Fear and dread of you shall come upon all the animals of the earth and all the birds of the air, upon all the creatures that move about on the ground and all the fishes of the sea; into your power they are delivered.
3
Any living creature that moves about shall be yours to eat; I give them all to you as I did the green plants.
4
Only meat with its lifeblood still in it you shall not eat.
5
Indeed for your own lifeblood I will demand an accounting: from every animal I will demand it, and from a human being, each one for the blood of another, I will demand an accounting for human life.
6
Anyone who sheds the blood of a human being,
by a human being shall that one’s blood be shed;
For in the image of God
have human beings been made.
7
Be fertile, then, and multiply; abound on earth and subdue it.
8
God said to Noah and to his sons with him:
9
See, I am now establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you
10
and with every living creature that was with you: the birds, the tame animals, and all the wild animals that were with you—all that came out of the ark.
11
I will establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all creatures be destroyed by the waters of a flood; there shall not be another flood to devastate the earth.
12
God said: This is the sign of the covenant that I am making between me and you and every living creature with you for all ages to come:
13
I set my bow in the clouds to serve as a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.
14
When I bring clouds over the earth, and the bow appears in the clouds,
15
I will remember my covenant between me and you and every living creature—every mortal being—so that the waters will never again become a flood to destroy every mortal being.
16
When the bow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature—every mortal being that is on earth.
17
God told Noah: This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and every mortal being that is on earth.
Noah and His Sons.
18
The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan.
19
These three were the sons of Noah, and from them the whole earth was populated.
20
Noah, a man of the soil, was the first to plant a vineyard.
21
He drank some of the wine, became drunk, and lay naked inside his tent.
22
Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness, and he told his two brothers outside.
23
Shem and Japheth, however, took a robe, and holding it on their shoulders, they walked backward and covered their father’s nakedness; since their faces were turned the other way, they did not see their father’s nakedness.
24
When Noah woke up from his wine and learned what his youngest son had done to him,
25
he said:
“Cursed be Canaan!
The lowest of slaves
shall he be to his brothers.”
26
He also said:
“Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem!
Let Canaan be his slave.
27
May God expand Japheth,
and may he dwell among the tents of Shem;
and let Canaan be his slave.”
28
Noah lived three hundred and fifty years after the flood.
29
The whole lifetime of Noah was nine hundred and fifty years; then he died.