Chapter 9

And God pronounced his blessing on Noe and his sons; Increase, he said, and multiply, and fill the earth.

All the beasts of earth, and the winged things of the sky, and the creeping things of earth, are to go in fear and dread of you, and I give you dominion over all the fishes of the sea.

This creation that lives and moves is to provide food for you; I make it all over to you, by the same title as the herbs that have growth.

Only, you must not eat the flesh with the blood still in it.

The shedder of your own life-blood shall be held to account for it, whether man or beast; whoever takes the life of his brother-man shall answer for it to me.

Man was made in God’s image, and whoever sheds a man’s blood must shed his own blood in return.

And now, increase and multiply; occupy and fill the earth.

This, too, God said to Noe, and to Noe’s sons:

Here is a covenant I will observe with you and with your children after you,

and with all living creatures, your companions, the birds and the beasts of burden and the cattle that came out of the Ark with you, and the wild beasts besides.

Never more will the living creation be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again a flood to devastate the world.

This, God said, shall be the pledge of the promise I am making to you, and to all living creatures, your companions, eternally;

I will set my bow in the clouds, to be a pledge of my covenant with creation.

When I veil the sky with clouds, in those clouds my bow shall appear,

to remind me of my promise to you, and to all the life that quickens mortal things; never shall the waters rise in flood again, and destroy all living creatures.

There, in the clouds, my bow shall stand, and as I look upon it, I will remember this eternal covenant; God’s covenant with all the life that beats in mortal creatures upon earth.

Such was the pledge God gave to Noe of his promise to all living things.

These, then, were the names of Noe’s three sons, who came out of the Ark with him, Sem, Cham and Japheth; and of these, Cham was the ancestor of Chanaan.

All three were Noe’s sons, and from them the race of mankind overspread the earth.

And now Noe turned farmer, and on the ground he tilled, he grew a vine.

So he came to drink wine, and, drunk with it, lay all naked in his tent.

And Cham, Chanaan’s ancestor, saw how his father’s body lay naked, and went out to tell his two brothers of it;

whereupon Sem and Japheth spread a cloak over their shoulders, and walked in backwards to cover their father’s nakedness, their faces turned away, so that they never caught sight of his naked body.

When Noe had slept off his wine, he found out how his younger son had treated him;

Cursed be Chanaan, he said, he shall be the slave and drudge of his brethren.

He said, too, Blessed be the Lord God of Sem; may Chanaan be a slave to him.

May God give Japheth dwelling-space,2 and let him share the tents of Sem, but let Chanaan be his slave.

And Noe lived three hundred and fifty years after the flood,

so that his lifetime, when he came to die, had filled the measure of nine hundred and fifty years.